Things God Wants Us to Know - Part 1 — Brother Andrew

As John was sharing on his very recent trip to Russia, I only saw him in this church tonight, my mind went back to Russia. The time I still worked and traveled there, ministered and took thousands of Bibles in there.

A Gospel Tract Shared on the Road to Russia

And I'm going to share a story which I've never, ever shared in public. And I even now don't know why I would share it with you, but I will, because it's in my heart. So, he's the first. But don't publish it in the newspaper, will you?

It happened to me personally in Russia, as I was traveling there, and we had just delivered 800 Bibles safely to the believers, and we were heading with our vehicle toward the Czechoslovakian border. At that time, there were not that many cars on the road in Russia, and whenever you saw a car come on, coming on the other way, you would slow down and decide whether or not you would stop and exchange information.

For instance, on how far is the next gas station, or petrol station, you may say. It may be 100 miles or 120 miles further, you see, so then you may have to make some readjustments. Or where is the next restaurant?

There may be four or five hours drive, if at all, that day. So, suddenly we saw a small car approaching us. We were in a bigger vehicle, because we had just delivered a big load of Bibles. And as we came close, we saw a Dutch registration plate.

So, of course, we slammed on the brakes, stopped, so did the other car. Two Dutch in Russia, that is really something. And they got out of their car, and we got out of ours. Two young men, traveling into Russia, and we traveling out of Russia.

So, how are you doing? And we didn't say, what are you going to do? You never ask that kind of question in Russia. And, well, they said, where is the next restaurant? We haven't eaten for a day. So, we said, well, that's a long way.

You won't even get there today, but we have some extra food. But we'd like to drink something. And they had some orange juice. So, we sat at the side of the road, and we had a nice kind of breakfast there.

And, of course, as you talk, you soon discover where a person stands spiritually. And we discovered they were not Christians. So, then, of course, we began to share about the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sins forgiveness, the new life, and a little more.

And I remembered I had with me a little piece of paper, four things that God wants you to know, that little gospel tract from Britain. I had one spare one. I said, I would like to give this to you. Maybe in the near future you have time to read it.

And I wanted to ponder on what they said here, and then make a decision for Jesus. Well, they kind of looked at us, not, not all that interested. But, of course, after just having shared breakfast with them, they couldn't possibly refuse a little spiritual food.

That's how you can catch people. So, they accepted, and they got into their car, and drove on into Russia, and we out into Czechoslovakia. When I came home in Holland, big headlines, two NATO spies caught in Russia.

I thought, well, what date? I checked up on the morning of that Tuesday, when I had just given them breakfast. An hour after we had given them breakfast, and a gospel tract on four things God wants you to know, they were arrested by the Russian authorities.

It really shook me. And the names are in the paper, and the trial was listened to on the Dutch radio. So, I got in touch with their parents, and they came to visit me, and I prayed with them, and prayed for their children out in Russia, as they were sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

After a while, you know, you forget that, because life goes on, and you have lots of other interesting adventures, and other problems to think about, and people to pray for. I really forgot clean about the two guys in Russian prison.

But years later, I was still living in the same home in the village in Holland. One evening, we were home, and the bell rang. I opened the doors. A man, he said, do you recognize me? No, I don't. He said, well, several years ago in Russia, you gave me a little gospel tract, four things God wants you to know.

And I've come here tonight to tell you that in Russia, in that prison cell, I have found Jesus Christ as my Savior. Can you imagine how excited I was? I was so happy. You sow a little seed, a small effort really, but in a unique place, and somewhere out in a Russian prison cell, a young man reads what you gave him, and gets right with God.

It's so marvelous to think of how God wants to use every one of us. Four things that God wants you to know. I've never published this story, of course, for security reasons, and I've never told it, except tonight for the first time.

So be it. And the story is out now. Brother Andrew meets spies in Russia. Four things God wants you to know. I guess there are four things that God wants you to know tonight. And without trying to compete with God, there are even more things I want you to know.

Prayer as the Means of Gospel Partnership

And for that reason, we have with us, not just God's book that will give you the four things that God wants you to know for tonight, but we have with us the open doors prayer letters. It's not just a magazine, it's a prayer letter.

How many of you already get that prayer letter in the mail regularly? Let me see your hands. That's terrific. Thank you for coming, and thank you for your prayer. That is how we do it. Many people say, how can you do all that?

Always traveling. Well, because of you. Because of your prayer. Meeting people, speaking, pouring out your heart, getting tired and sick, and close to death. How can you do it? Because of your prayer.

But there are still many people that did not receive the magazine, and I want you to know that this magazine will help you to pray for people. And our mission is a people-related, people-oriented mission.

We don't just talk about projects. When I speak about a million Bibles for China, or a million Bibles for Poland, or 10 million Bibles now for Russia, I think of 10 million people there who for years have prayed to God, Lord send someone someday with a Bible.

And somehow your prayer, your giving, your going, or John's going, or my going, is the answer to the prayer of that person. God hears the prayer, sends the answer back to us, sends us there to be the answer.

It's always people. God and people. It's people that we are concerned with because people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ have been persecuted today more than ever before. Many more Christian leaders have been arrested, and much, much more suffering goes on.

Galina and the Suffering Church

In one of our recent editions, this is the most recent I have here, is the story on Galina, how we have prayed for three years now for her while she was in prison, suffering because she had taught a youth group about Jesus Christ, and that is simply forbidden in Russia.

It is basically by law even forbidden for parents to teach their own children about Jesus. There can never be justice without liberty, without the freedom to worship God. This is a world full of terrible injustice.

So much that we can do about it. So we have published Galina's story, how she was suffering and getting sick in the concentration camp, her hair fell out, she lost seven teeth, and no dental treatment there, of course, for a prisoner for Jesus.

And then when she came out after suffering for three years as a young girl, she was 21 when she went to prison, one of our Open Doors teams quickly traveled to Russia and took a picture. And in this latest issue of Open Doors, you see both pictures of Galina, one just before she went to prison, one just when she came out, still dressed in her prison garb, with her prison number still on here.

You see the difference. Three years. It looks more like 20 years. The suffering that can be afflicted on a person in a Russian prison when they suffer for Jesus Christ, that's one of the things that I want you to know.

And I feel that God wants you to know it, that you know about those people that we publish about in Open Doors, so that you begin to pray for them, that you begin to share out of your abundance, your time, your faith, your love, your intercession, to supply their tremendous need.

I'll speak more about that later. There are things happening in the world today that we really ought to know. In the recent Bible Society publication, which I only came across the other day because I've only recently returned, I saw that 1984 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of no one else than Mary Jones, a Welsh girl whose determination to buy a Bible helped bring about the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804.

Mary Jones and the Hunger for Scripture

Now this is the story, in case you're not acquainted with it, there's a beautiful little book on her, on her life, and now there's even a musical written on that story. But she traveled 28 miles on foot at the age of 15 in order to buy a Bible with her savings from seven years work.

Seven years work for a 15 year old girl, that meant she started work at eight for a Bible. And then she traveled, she walked 28 miles to buy a Bible. And on the basis of that experience, one girl willing to pay that price, that be made known, then the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has become a blessing to millions of people around the world, came into being.

Now today we know of hundreds of people that will travel hundreds of miles on foot with even more money than Mary Jones carried, if only they could get a Bible. And the dangers are far greater than in her time, and the possibility of ever obtaining a Bible are much more limited.

In other words, there is today a greater need and more people to pay a greater price to get the Bible than even in the time of Mary Jones. With all the Bible societies we have, and with all the opportunities we have to share, we're still not meeting the need.

Biblical Prophecy and the Future of Persecution

Some time ago I was speaking on this whole theme of suffering, the suffering church, as I prefer to call it. I object to the title underground church, because a church can never be underground. Meetings could be underground, not the church of Jesus Christ.

It's like salt, it's permeating society. Believers can never be secret believers. There will come a time when everyone has to come into the open. But as we speak about the suffering church, we refer to people that meet openly, or with restrictions, or completely in the forest or in the home, like John has been sharing about tonight, people that really pay a price.

But all of them do, even in the registered Baptist churches in Russia, they pay a price. And I was speaking about that great subject, saying that never have we seen a time in which more people were less aware of that great need in the world than are today.

When a reporter, a journalist who is quite knowledgeable about the subject, writes on church in communistic societies, came to me and said, Brother Andrew, what in the world is open doors going to do if the time comes that there will be no more persecution?

Sounds like quite an enticing prospect. What will open doors do? I really, I've never thought of that. So it's quite a surprise. What will open doors do when the time comes when there will be no more persecution?

I said, do you mean when there's a super church and everybody agrees? They probably agree about nothing, or else you cannot agree. I said, now wait a minute. You must read the Bible again. Because what does the Bible say?

The Bible says that there will be more persecution and not less. Because the Bible in the end of the New Testament, in the last book and in some of the last chapters, and I'm now referring to Revelation chapter 17, speaks about a series of events.

It really starts already in chapter 16 when it speaks about the false prophet. And then in chapter 17 it speaks about the woman who is drunk with the blood of the saints. In case you want to look it up in your New Testament, it's a very interesting passage and it gives us light.

In verse 6 in chapter 17, I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled greatly. But the angel said to me, why marvel? Here is a question asked.

Now in the entire Bible there are 1022 questions asked, and this is the last one. So we might as well try to find an answer to the last question which is asked in the Bible. And as people who have access to the Bible and who can meet in churches, open churches, in a free society like you still have in England, we might as well ask the other questions as well.

How can I get saved? How can I get my name in the Lamb's book of life? How can I get to know Jesus Christ? How can I have peace with God? How can I be involved in the worldwide revolution of love for the sake of Jesus Christ in our time?

Why marvel? It is a question asked by John, who is the writer of the Revelation, the oldest remaining apostle in his time, who at a very high age, while living close to 100 years old in Ephesus, after spending time in a concentration camp on the isle of Patmos, saw heavens open and he wrote what he saw that God was going to show to his servants.

And here is what he saw. He saw a tremendous persecution taking place and he saw the false prophet involved. He saw a woman, he saw a harlot, he saw Babylon, he saw kings, he saw beasts with ten horns, he saw almost many terrible pictures and dramatic animals and events taking place that had all related to persecution on the saints, on the witnesses for Jesus Christ and on those that were faithful to the book of God, His holy word.

And then here in this passage it says, when I, John, saw who it was, I marveled greatly. I was surprised, I was amazed, never expected that to happen. I thought that in the end people would learn to be nice to each other and be friends, have one language, one political party, one big super structure in church and in society and in culture and everything.

John says, I was so surprised and my surprise then made the angel surprised. He said, why marvel? And that question is the last question asked in the scripture, why marvel? Why do we not see that the persecution taking place in the world today is something that has never happened before in the history of the church?

Of course, there have been persecutions in many countries, if not most, including Britain, Scotland particularly, Holland, all over the world there have been persecutions at one time or other. Look at the church history.

It's two years of persecutions now here than there. But for the first time in our generation a persecution is taking place masterminded in one specific geographic area, under one specific ideological heading of atheism, revolution, and I do not want to name any political names here, spreading all over the world, working with a pattern, a blueprint, a method, a timetable and causing the same results wherever they go.

Closing the churches, forbidding mission work, closing down bible society work, limiting the life and worship of believers, limiting the possibility of training young people and particularly children in a faith, and in the end closing all the churches and getting rid of all the believers.

That's the pattern. Why marvel? Why don't we see that? Because if we do see it, if we would see it tonight, then we will also know that we in Britain are not immune of the things that are happening in the world today.

The Book of Life and the Gospel Commission

And there are a few things I want you to know too, more than four incidentally, because the attacks come from the inside and from the outside on our society and on our church life. Just recently in my reading in the New Testament, I was struck by the fact that so often the phrase is used, the book of life, or the Lamb's book of life, and the utmost necessity of making sure that your name is written in that book of life.

In one of the magazines I have here is a picture of Krapow, it's a very interesting case, I don't know which it is, but I'll find it for you. Because Krapow died, and he died about in the same week as Brezhnev died.

This was a very interesting thing, because there's quite a difference between the two. One had a good during his life, and the other is going to have a good after his life. Well, Krapow died in the same week, his picture is in this particular issue, the same in which Galina's picture appears.

So make sure you rush toward the book table and get that copy of Galina. There's also a picture of Krapow. Krapow used to say, there are three books, he said it during the trial, there are three books that you godless judges cannot take away from me.

One is the Bible, and I have it in my heart. I've memorized so many verses, you can never take the Bible away from me. Second book is the book of life, in which God himself wrote my name. And no one can take my name out of that book, nor can anyone take that book out of the hands of God.

And the third book, he said, is the book in which God writes down all the things that we do for him. The book of life. And then I realized this week, as I was meditating on that book of life, that the tremendous attack against the church of Jesus Christ is that we should be more engaged in the things of the world instead of the super spiritual things.

That we should take care of the of the of the earth and the people that are living now, as if dressing naked people and feeding hungry children will save them from eternity. You can feed and dress a person and they still go to hell.

But we have a far higher commission to speak about Jesus Christ and make people enter into the kingdom of God, have the names written in the book of life, and then because their lives are changed by the gospel of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, therefore they will change their own circumstances.

I believe it. I spoke to a leftist politician in Brazil who had just returned from exile, and he was by no means sympathetic towards Christianity. Being a leftist, you might understand that. But he said to me, Andrew, I have noticed one thing, that the charismatic renewal movement in Brazil has elevated the entire population that is in that Pentecostal movement, an entire level in society of the testimony that worldly rulers, leftist politicians, see the influence that Jesus Christ has in the lives of poor people.

You will not be poor much longer because God does elevate your level on which you live because of the way you live, because of the brotherhood of Christ in which you are drawn by a new birth, by having your name written in a book of life.

And I tell you that the evangelical Christians, those that still preach the old-fashioned gospel, will be attacked more and more from within for preaching exactly that old-fashioned message. And we will in that sense also have and feel and experience a touch of that persecution that's going all over the world.

Spiritual Conflict, Unity, and the Mission of the Church

Second thing I want you to know, the conflicts that they're raising in the world today are basically a theological conflict or a spiritual battle. That is why with all the talk about peace between the PLO and Israel, there will not be peace until the nations, including Israel, and certainly including the Arab countries, will bow their knees before Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.

I hope they keep talking. I'd rather see them talk for nothing than shoot for something. But nevertheless, whether they shoot or talk, they will not achieve peace without Jesus Christ. And we must know that.

And then of course, having said that, I could have said the same about Ireland. It's a little closer to our place, but as long as they still think it is fighting between the Catholics and the Protestants, already indicating it is a theological issue, there's only one solution at the feet of Jesus Christ.

And I do not yet see that happen. I was in Guatemala very recently, and one day I was in the refugee camps, pouring my heart out with those starving children, bringing back to my memory the years I used to work in the refugee camps from 1955 onward, in Berlin, in West Germany, in Austria with the displaced persons, in Korea, in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, other places.

Now I saw it again happen in Guatemala. For the same reason, a revolution changed the world, but without Jesus Christ. One mind. That's the other thing that God wants us to know. If we are going to help the Church in the suffering countries, in the countries of restriction, we have to become of one mind.

That means that all of you should be engaged somehow in our prayer groups, that all of you should read somehow, if not Open Doors Prayer Letter, then Slavic Gospel Association or whatever other good mission works in Eastern Europe.

I don't care. But get involved. We must become of one mind, because the enemy has a great day, because of the lack of unity in the Church of Jesus Christ. Later I will deal with that one mind and unity that the enemy has.

The Battle for Minds and the Demand for Bibles

I was in Angola not long ago and I saw some shocking things in Angola. The most shocking thing I saw is what I did not see. There were no shops open in the capital city, not one shop was open. Yeah, there were two shops open, Bible Society and the Communistic Bookstore.

The Bible Society shelves were empty, because the moment when 5 ,000 or 10 ,000 Bibles arrived in Angola, a few days later everything is sold. People are crying out for the Word of God and the Bible Society has no way of keeping up with the tremendous demand for scriptures.

But I'll be using the opportunities. Then I went over to the bookstore and I bought a book there that I have with me. It's a children's book and they say that it is all drawn by my children, but I have chosen not to believe it.

They are so clever and every page is on the revolution. Every page is on hatred, every page is on shooting, on military drill, on communistic flags, hammer and sickle, bush training, tanks, planes. Every page is on creating hatred in the hearts of children and exalting Marxism, Leninism and killing the white people, killing the capitalists.

Every page is the same. Every page of the hatred comes out of this book. And that was just about the only thing I could buy. The Bible Society shop was empty and the communist bookstore was open and the bookstore available for this beautiful book, beautifully printed, beautifully done, beautifully colored, nice glossy paper.

I paid only less than two pounds for it. A book that would cost ten times the amount in our country. Why is it? Why, I say, why are we losing the battle for the minds of men and women and boys and girls?

Why is the persecution, why is the revolution spreading? Is it because the revolution is so strong? Is it because atheism is strong? No, it isn't. They only succeed because we are so weak. They succeed because they have found a secret and we have not yet found that secret.