(Presenting Christ #1) the Need for Fullness — Dana Congdon

Good evening brothers and sisters. It's a wonderful blessing to be here and to share together with you in this family conference. I've received so much help myself here at this conference over the years and feel it's a privilege to be able to share as well even this year.

And as you see tonight, we've changed things around, we're hitting the ground running here. Usually you have an evening to sort of snooze and catch up from the day. I know my wife and I, we drove down here, took seven hours and we relaxed along the way as best we could.

So I'm wearing my wake-up shirt. Actually, Polo makes this, as you can see. It's a Lance Lambert line. It's a special wake-up shirt. And Lance has one on tonight as well, as you can see. His is in green.

And actually, Lance will be sharing most of the evenings during the week, but they decided not to go with him tonight because, you know, with the unstable weather in the past, we've had electric outages, we've had tremendous thunderstorms just when Lance gets up to speak, and perhaps even earthquakes.

So they've asked me to sort of more gently begin the whole process. Let's turn to the scripture in which we find these words regarding the summing up of all things in Christ. And of course, we know that's in Ephesians chapter one.

The Summing Up of All Things in Christ

And let's read the first fourteen verses together as actually grammatically they're all together in one great sentence. Ephesians chapter one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and to the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.

In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will, the mystery according to his kind intention, which he purposed in him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.

In him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to his purpose who works all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory.

In him you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.

Prayer for Spiritual Reality and Fullness

Let's just have a word of prayer. Our Father, we gather together tonight in the name of your precious Son and of our Lord Jesus. We thank you for all the events of our history that have gathered us to this moment and realize that your ongoing purpose has called for this meeting together.

And so we lift our hearts to you, O Lord, perhaps even in tiredness, in minds that are tired as well, and ask that by your Spirit you would quicken our mortal bodies and give us a hunger for Christ that would overcome our physical fatigue, and that you would give us to recount together the fullness and the summing up that is found in him.

Lord, we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit, without which all we can do is share words tonight. But you can move us beyond words into a realm of reality by your Spirit, into the very presence of our Lord.

We thank you for his presence here tonight. We pray in everybody's life it would be known as we're together in this place. We just thank you for this time. We set it apart for your purposes. In the precious name of our Lord Jesus, we pray.

Now, tonight I realize it's the first of the messages, and people have been coming, traveling, perhaps some of you. So we won't take a full time, I hope. I hope to be a little more brief. I actually have some audiovisuals to perhaps help the drooping eyes.

And this shirt, I'm hoping will be useful. Anything we can. Because we come into something that's described as a mystery revealed, something having to do with the fullness of time. A summing up of all things of Christ, both of things in heaven and things on earth.

Paul's Mature Vision of Christ's Fullness

Paul is speaking from a mature heart. He's speaking from great spiritual experience. As most of you know, when he wrote this letter to the Ephesians, he was at the mature age of having had several years of preparation and then a number of years of ministry and now in jail, in prison, the bondservant of the Lord.

And I'm sure without him realizing it, he was in the process of fulfilling his most fruitful time of ministry. Now I have no doubt that even though he was in prison, his prayers and his wrestling for the Ephesians and the Colossians and the Corinthians and the others was affecting greatly the life of the Lord in the midst of those dear saints.

He carried these saints on his heart. He prayed for them often. And there as he languished in jail, I'm not sure how much he realized the value of those letters he was writing. But they have become our treasure and a way for us to come to know something of Christ and all of his size and wonder and fullness.

How magnificent a Christ Paul was apprehending. Talking about the fullness of Christ. Now I don't know if you're aware of this, but until he wrote these two sister letters, Ephesians and Colossians, he hadn't used this word, fullness, before.

It's possible, and I believe true, because it's true with all of us as Christians, that as we go on with the Lord and grow in the Lord, we grow in our understanding of his greatness. And Paul was in this mature time in his life, finding spiritual words to interpret spiritual intuition that he's had for a long time.

I don't know when he first began to use this word, fullness, nor do I know when he began to use this term, summing up of all things in Christ. But here is the first time we have it on record. And as you know as well, he mentions fullness in the book of Colossians.

But even though he's just using these words now, late in his ministry, if you want to say that, the wonderful thing about the reality in Christ is, from the very first, Paul experienced the fullness of Christ.

And from the very first, from the very moment on the road to Damascus that he met the Lord, he saw in a flash something that now for the rest of his life he was finding words to express. Those matters of fullness.

Why, he saw that there in that blazing light on the road. He saw something of the dimensions of Christ. Can you imagine the Shekinah glory of heaven hitting you there on the road? I mean, he had just a sense in his spirit of the immense person he was dealing with, this divine person.

And of course, when he heard his name was Jesus, well Jesus exploded from that human being he was persecuting into this tremendous Lord who was speaking with a voice from heaven. I mean, just the largeness of it, you could just imagine.

And even from that moment of his arrest on the road to Damascus, he himself was already in the process of being gathered up into Christ, summed up into Christ. I often tell the young people that from the moment you get saved, the Lord puts a big funnel over your head.

Now that big funnel comes down and you think you have a lot of room to move. I can move to the left, I can move to the right. I can go here, I can go there. But as you move up in Christ, it gets narrower that way, and it gets narrower that way, and you find yourself being drawn up under the Lordship of Christ.

You see, this is in part what this word summing up means. This is the second time Paul uses this word, summing up all things in Christ. Let's look at the first time, just so you can see another context.

Romans 13 and the Meaning of “Summing Up”

It's in Romans chapter 13, where he uses this word, and you see it in verse 9, and it makes sense as soon as you hear this. He's speaking about the law, and he says in Romans 13, 9, for this, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up, that's the word, the same Greek word.

It is summed up in this saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Well down there it's used in a very simple way. He's saying that all those commandments, given in those ten commandments, could be summed up with this one word, love your neighbor as yourself.

But we know from the Greek that this word summing up actually means heading up. And so some translations actually put it that way. The heading up of all things in Christ. And immediately that gives you some sense of the intent of Paul, because as you see, as he carries on with this idea of headship at the end of chapter 1, and speaks about Christ being head of his church, you see this implied.

And also in Ephesians 4 when he talks about the church coming to maturity, growing up in all things into the head. This is this very same process that we have used here in the term summing up. This is a tremendous process going on.

And yet you know, here's the just amazing thing. A believer can be a Christian only six months, and yet be very much a partaker of this gathering process. It's a matter of your heart. It's a matter of your will.

It's a matter of your yieldedness. And you know, even though a brand new Christian, just not very far along, but yet fully partaking to the degree that you're able of fullness. So we have a strange paradox, isn't it, in the Christian life?

We have some old Christians who have been Christians for a long time, like me, who may not be full at all, nor really be in the gathering process. And then you find some brand new Christians, just hardly, still wet behind the ears.

They've just been baptized and they're just growing. But you know what? They're in the gathering process. You can see the Lord kind of drawing them. And you can see them experiencing the fullness to the degree that they're able to understand.

So you see, these are very dynamic things. Although Paul is using these phrases to express something he is seeing at the most mature time in his Christian experience, he's finally found the words. Ah, I can almost see him in that jail saying, ah, that's the word.

That's how I describe what God is doing. It's a summing up of all things in Christ. Ah, I got the word. You see, Paul had to find those words. Have you ever had an experience with the Lord that you just couldn't quite explain for a while?

But he gives you the words with time. He gives you the understanding. And yet right from the very beginning of Paul's life, there was a fullness in Paul. I don't have to argue the case. I know you would agree that right from the moment Paul was captured and made a bond slave of Jesus, he was full of them.

He was full of himself too, you know, at the beginning. But he was full of the Lord. Oh, he gossiped the gospel and preached and witnessed everybody and got in trouble everywhere he went. He was experiencing a fullness.

And we want to look at that a little bit in these days, what that means. And also there he was feeling like he was far behind his brethren because of his late capture. And yet we can see the Lord funneling him up under his headship, giving him to understand things which eyes have never seen and ears have never heard, had never entered into the heart of man.

And yet the Spirit was revealing them to Paul. And Paul was in a process of being gathered. I hope you can see that simple picture of being gathered. Body, soul, and spirit gathered under the Lord. Now you see that this gathering has many dimensions to it.

Fullness as Corporate, Not Merely Individual

So I'm just going to try to present a gathering Christ tonight really. And our brother Stephen is going to share on the need for this recovery because, you know, that which is of fullness and that which is being gathered can lose its way.

Saints lose their way. They get distracted with things. Assemblies get distracted with things. We'll look at an example in the most simple way tonight in this introduction. But we can get distracted from fullness, though we think we're experiencing fullness.

And we can find ourselves resisting being gathered up, even though we're living busy lives as Christians. So we need to understand a little bit of this. But Paul for certain was experiencing this fullness and he was experiencing this summing up process, which he says that in the fullness of times, and now that's where our brother Lance will be sharing, because this verse is talking about something that will happen in the fullness of times when all things are summed up under Christ.

You know, since the cross, the cross was the great moment when the electromagnet was turned on. And everything is now being sucked up under the headship of Christ. That's another example I use with young people.

I tell them, you know, you've been magnetized. You're an iron filing and he goes, you're being drawn. You're being irresistibly drawn. And in the end, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Things in heaven, things on earth, things under the earth. There is going to be a heading up that is complete in the fullness of times. But isn't it wonderful? And I just ask you at the start, are you part of that gathering process going on?

Do you feel yourself being gathered into something? You know, as you go up in that funnel, you also get squeezed together with other brothers and sisters. Now, of course, you and I will have to look at this some more too as we go along.

But this matter of fullness does not have to do with me being filled up. Thank you, preacher, very much. You filled up my gas tank. And I go on my way of full Christian. Well, you can't have corporate fullness without individual fullness.

But this fullness that is talked about here in Ephesians is a corporate fullness. There's something that has to happen, not just with you, but with you and I together. That is a fullness that the Lord is looking for.

And again, isn't that amazing? People can gather together in a new way and be assembled together, just 11 people and sense fullness. And yet on the other hand, you can have 2000 people and the church not be full at all of His presence and of all that this fullness means.

So you see, we're dealing with two very dynamic words here, fullness and the summing up. And it should lead us to ask ourselves, are we being gathered by the Lord? Now, you see, part of this thing's being summed up is this whole process of being gathered up.

You remember how the Lord said that I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. Now, we know from the record, we'll look at this the next time I share, Lord willing, from the very beginning of time, God's been gathering together a people, gathering together history, gathering together a revelation of Himself, gathering people into this revelation, gathering people into covenants with Himself, gathering up judgments.

He's been gathering and gathering. But at the cross, this gathering was intensified. The electromagnet was turned on. And there was a gathering not only of Jews, but there was a gathering of Gentiles as well.

The far reaching range of this drawing and gathering could be seen to the ends of the earth by the gospel. This gathering is going on today, but it's a spiritual gathering as well. And when we look at this first sentence, and mind you that which we read there, those first 14 verses, you know, in Greek is just one sentence and just about the longest sentence in the whole Bible.

I don't think there's a longer sentence. You know, Paul just couldn't stop. And in Greek, he didn't have commas, so he just went on and on and on and on and on because he was expressing a full thought with Christ at the very center of the thought.

Now, can't you almost feel yourself getting drawn by the Lord Jesus as you see these wonderful aspects, these wonderful dimensions of the Christian life that are mentioned in passing in these verses. But the point is that we're to be drawn to Christ.

Christ as the Center of Every Spiritual Blessing

Now, the thing that I think probably we don't see at first, but we need to see, is that when we're talking about things being gathered unto Christ, the first and most simple vision that I see of it is this, that Christ is the stack pole around which everything is collected.

Now, a stack pole, what is a stack pole? Well, I wish I could say, well, being a farmer, but I'm not a farmer, but a stack pole was used in the old days of farming because here's what they did. Before they had combines that could make a bale of hay and tie it up and throw it out, people used to have to go and make bales of hay.

Well, now, how do you do it? Well, now, if you cut down the hay in the field, you know, with a nice size like this and you cut it all down, now it's just laying out in the field. Now, how are you going to gather it up?

I know, let's make a pile. So you take pitchforks and you start making a pile. Now, you can throw it over here and you throw it over here, but you never make a pile. It just spreads out bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

It never piles up. And then one day, perhaps somebody by accident, I don't know, but I suppose necessity was the mother of invention, somebody came up with it, or maybe somebody by mistake started throwing hay up against a pitchfork that was already stabbed in the ground.

But they said, hey, looky here. Why, when you throw hay up against that pole, it starts to stack up. So they started throwing the hay up on the pole and the thing would stack up like this. They'd get a whole bunch and they'd tie it up and they'd take the pole out of the middle.

But you see, without that pole, it never stacks. It just lays flat and it's kind of horizontal. It's hard to make a bale like that. And Christ is the stack pole of our whole Christian life. Now, with that in mind, let's go back into this Ephesians chapter 1 and I'll try to explain what I mean.

Our temptation sometimes is to make the aspects of our Christian life the stack pole instead of Christ as the stack pole, around which everything coheres. So let's just see as an example. Well, now in verse 3, we've got blessings.

Oh, blessings. I'm so thankful for blessings. We should make a stack pole of blessings, don't you think? This is the church of the stack pole of blessings. If you come here, you're going to be blessed.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. You see, it's all blessings in Christ. Now, you have to throw the blessings up against the stack pole if they're going to be all together in your life, you see. Or in verse 4, you've been elected.

You've been chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Now, talk about being gathered. You were gathered before you were stuff. Think about that. Now, here's a God who chose you before you were born.

Now, maybe we should stand right here for a while and think about this whole matter of our election and predestination and all, but no, no, no, no, no, no. We're chosen to be before Him. Ah, you see. That's when election really makes all the sense in the world, you see.

Oh, but verse 5, we've been predestined to the adoption of sons. Oh, it's sonship. That's what we need to talk about, sonship. Let's stack it up around sonship. That's where we're going. We're going for the sonship thing.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not sonship. It's sonship together with Him. Or how about, oh, there's so many things here. In verse 7, our redemption. Now, brothers and sisters, you know, back many centuries ago when I was a young minister, I worked as a pastor in a church, and this was our stackpole, the redemption stackpole.

We preached the gospel, and people got saved, and we didn't know what to do other than throw them up against the redemption pole and talk about the redemption. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? Our redemption is wonderful.

But you see, it's only if we stay with any one of these aspects, we don't come to fullness. Because what Paul is seeing in the middle of this whole thing is Christ. It's redemption through Christ. It's our sonship with Christ.

It's our being chosen in Him. It's everything. It's Christ at the center, you see. And all of these things become marvelous in the light of that. Or how about this? There in verse 9, making known to us the mystery of His will.

Oh, maybe you like a good mystery. And maybe you like this mysterious wisdom and the thoughts of revelation. All of these marvelous things talked about in verse 9, and even this matter of the summing up, it's all a marvelous revelation.

Let's study more revelation. Let's get revelation. Let's sit around in a room until we receive revelation. But you see, if you get too revelation conscious and not Christ conscious, you're going to get a crazy revelation eventually.

Oh, and in verse 11, we've obtained an inheritance. Now, we should definitely talk about that. Or how about in verse 13? We were sealed with the Holy Spirit. Oh, now, there's a stack pole. But no, no, no, no.

You see, all of these things take on their proportion. These things all thrown against Christ, as it were. This is what it talks about, the summing up of Christ. Look at all these dimensions. Look how all these things point to Christ.

All these things reveal the kind intention of our God's purpose and will for us. So when we come to look at fullness, and when we come to look at summing up, we need to see Christ in His fullness and what He's doing with the cross.

Global Evangelism and the Lord of the Harvest

Now, the Lord is gathering in these days. He's gathered us together for this time. He's doing a great work of gathering in these days. Are you aware of it? I cheat. I have to confess, I cheat. Because, actually not of my own will almost, but I got talked into going to Russia a couple of years ago.

And ever since then, I've been cheating. It's because, like, I get to go to Russia and see some amazing things, and then I come back like a spy and report on them. Our God is doing a great work of gathering.

And actually what I would like to do tonight, in a very simple way, just taking Christ as this matter of the Spirit being sent out now. You know, the Spirit is out in the highways and the hedges, and He's compelling people to come in.

The Spirit right now is gathering people unto Christ in an amazing proportion, perhaps more than you realize. And I want to share with you a little bit of good news tonight if I could. Now, I went to some very stodgy technical books to discover this good news, but it's about our God, the Lord of the Harvest.

He is gathering in a mighty, mighty way. We should glorify our God. He has never stopped sending out faithful servants of the Gospel and gathering people to Himself. There's a great work going on. So I want to share some of this good news with you tonight.

Now, you know, do you know what evangelicals at the theological level are talking about today? I'm talking about at their schools. Now I'm talking about Gordon-Conwell Seminary up in Boston, Dallas Theological Seminary, or the wonderful seminary there outside Chicago.

What are the evangelicals talking about at Fuller Seminary these days? Surprisingly, not the megachurch, which is the church that has caught the fancy of a lot of pastors, of course, but not the megachurch.

Nor are they talking about the role of women in ministry and these kinds of things. There is a buzz about one thing, what God is doing in this gathering process. Now, I want to show you this. So now we're ready for, I just have a few overheads.

As I said, I'll try to keep you occupied with audiovisuals here, just for a second. Now, just so you, when I give you the statistics and things, just so you don't think I just made them up or went to some sort of a Christian comic book, I just wanted to give you the sources.

Now, can you, okay, so I made this too big, huh? Okay. I used two major sources to gather the information, and actually the first one there, which is called the World Christian Encyclopedia, it's a $350 book that you can get.

It's this thick. It's a very technical, expertly done collation of figures, facts, and statistics of global evangelism around the world. It has not only Christian statistics, but the statistics of other world religions and how fast they're growing, people, groups, countries.

It's an amazing, amazing book. And by the way, being used by missiologists all over the country today as a basis for understanding what's going on. It's thrown everybody into confusion. When this book came out in 2001, it threw people off.

And then also, the International Bulletin of Missionary Research comes out of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, where they have a special division called something like the Resources for Global Evangelism in the World, evangelization, global evangelization, something like that, in Gordon-Conwell.

And so, I got statistics from these things. I hope this encourages you, or perhaps even amazes you, but something's been going on from 1970, Lord of the Harvest mega-gathering, from 1970 to 2000. Now, most of you have been alive since 1970, right?

Now, we've got junior high kids. No, you weren't. But many of you have been around for that long. Do you know what's been going on while you've been sleeping in Sleepy Hollow? Well, let's just take a look.

Okay, let's get to the first chart. Now, you might have to move it around just a little bit, because in order to see everything, I think, okay, you can almost see that. Now, here's some statistics, just so you get an idea of what's going on today.

The world population has grown from 1970 to 2000 from 3 .6 to 6 billion people, or 64 in 30 years, or 2 per annum. Okay? This is the growth rate of the world population. The world population. Okay.

Catholics and Orthodox have grown from 804 million to 1 .26 billion, or they've grown 56%. They haven't kept up with the birth rate. That's not good. Usually, in evangelism, you count your own kids. The Protestants and Anglicans together have grown from some 258 million to 422 million, or 63%, just about at the birth rate.

The Evangelicals and Independents have grown from 1970 to 2000 from 98 million to 225 million, 130 increase, or 4 per annum. The Pentecostals and Charismatics have grown from 72 million to 527 million, or 631 in those 30 years, or 21 per annum.

Now, what the missiologists have done, feeling it's unfair because it's hard to categorize somebody, is they, are they an Evangelical, a Charismatic, a Neo-Charismatic, which is only the phrase, or the old line Pentecostals?

Because a lot of the old Pentecostals are actually out of the big growth curve. But the Neo-Pentecostals, the Neo-Charismatics, and the, well, anyway, it's a long story. So they've come up with a catchphrase term, Great Commission Christians, meaning people who take seriously this matter of going out with the Gospel and gathering people in with the Gospel of Salvation.

And that includes the Evangelicals and Independents and the Pentecostal Charismatics. Okay? That's, that's all that bottom one is. It's the addition of the top, the two just above it. Okay? You understand what I'm saying?

Okay. We've got 170 million in 1970 to 752 million in the year 2000 for a 342 increase, or 11 per annum. The world is becoming more and more Christian, percentage-wise, because of this global mega-gathering by our faithful God.

Now that's an amazing thing. Okay, now let's look at some other interesting statistics that also come out in this study. I'll just throw them out to you so you can see. And all we're trying to see is the dimensions of what God is doing that have been tabulated, and the half has not been told.

In 1970, Western Evangelicals outnumbered non-Westerns two to one. In the year 2000, non-Westerns outnumber the Western Evangelicals four to one. When they have an Evangelical convention, as they had in Lausanne to discover, to discuss global evangelism, it was filled with people from India, Asia, Africa, South America.

The bishops of the denominations are from Africa and other places, because that's where God is doing an amazing, amazing thing. Another fact, since 2000, more missionaries are now being sent out from non-Western nations than Western nations.

Did you know that? Now, Western nations spend the most, by 20 times, for missions work. And their results don't touch what the mission work going out from other countries is doing. But that's why they're so concerned.

That's why missiologists are concerned by all these statistics. 6 ,000 Christians will be added to the kingdom of God by the time I finish this message. Pentecost, 3 ,000 people were saved. 3 ,000 are saved every half hour right now in this world.

There is a harvest going on of mega proportions. The five nations with the highest per capita growth by counting baptisms, Bhutan, Mali, Mongolia, Nepal, and Saudi Arabia. Now, this does not mean these are the fastest growing, nor does it mean these are the ones that have the most baptisms, but this is more an indication of where the present harvest is beginning to be seen.

Do you understand? If you have a per capita of 26 Saudi Arabians and 12 get baptized, per capita you've had an amazing thing. But this is a statistic which is making them wonder and in amazement at what God's doing even in Muslim countries.

More evangelicals now attend church in Latin America than Catholics. Now, can you believe that? I mean, we're talking Mexico and South America. Of course, the population of Catholics combined with the population of evangelicals, of Great Commission Christians is more than the population of the countries.

Now, that's because Catholics don't take you off the rolls. But on any given Sunday throughout Latin America, there's been such a defection and such a moving, and so many people saved, that evangelicals more attend than the Catholics.

And last year, 171 ,000 Christians were martyred. It started in the 1970s with 340 ,000, and we know that's all about China, it's all about Nepal, it's all about some places. Now it's just down to 171 ,000 Christians a year being martyred for their faith, being martyred for their faith.

Then the last little page has to do with how these evangelical seminaries and everything are trying to interpret what's going on in these days. This mega-gathering is just throwing everybody off. We don't know what to do, what's going on.

So here's just some things that they're noticing. The most rapid growth segment is in non-established churches. That's throwing them off. That means these are unaffiliated indigenous assemblies with non-professional ministries meeting in houses or rented buildings.

This is what the evangelical missiologists have found out by counting beans. This is not a wacko study. They're saying, wait a minute, we're pouring all this money into missions. And what God has done in the last 30 years is raise up a rapidly growing gathering of people that aren't aligned with any denomination.

We don't get it. What are we doing wrong? You see what I'm saying? This is the thinking. The Great Commission Christians now outnumber traditional and denominational Christians. They now outnumber them.

And the continued defections from the older churches into these new frameworks is redefining 21st century Christianity. 20th century Christianity was all about what denomination you were in. 21st century Christianity is not about that anymore.

Now it's also caused, I didn't put it down, but it's caused a tremendous shakeup within the denominations. Some of the churches turning and really examining themselves and repenting and getting down to the business of being part of the gathering.

Others are slowly melting away and will not be around with much significance much longer. The figures of global evangelism for this period are conservative because of the unofficial and isolated nature of the groups involved.

The half has not been told how many. You see, as an example, for most of you, some of you know about Chinese figures, their figure here is 71 million as of the year 2000. Some people say there's 135 million.

But you see, this is just those that they could count the beans. And it doesn't even include any evangelistic crusades. Billy Graham's crusades have been over 120 million, just as an example. Not to mention other crusades that have been going on and go on right now throughout the third world.

They don't even count those numbers. Neither do they count radio and TV, which is claimed to reach over 40 million. And I just put the internet in there because that's not even a category yet. And yet is one of the most significant means of outreach across the world right now.

Neither does it include the Jesus movie, where 15 million people have reportedly confessed Christ after seeing the movie. Now brothers, now sisters, what can we glean from all of these things? Okay, well now, let me just tell you what I think.

Four Implications of the Global Gathering

Number one, I don't know about these statistics. I'm sure they're not as accurate as they could be. But they weigh on the conservative side. And so I would say this. If we use these statistics as statistics are used in the book of Acts, I'm sure it wasn't 3 ,000 people who were saved on the day of Pentecost.

It was about maybe 3 ,012. But statistics were used in the book of Acts to show the mighty working of a resurrected Lord who was gathering people through the gospel. And I think if we have eyes to see and ears to hear what's been going on as recorded in a feeble manner, this is a sign to us that God is moving in amazing ways.

He's a miracle working God. He's a gathering gospel God. He is a God of Jesus Christ who's bringing people to himself. People we don't even know about are being gathered right now at this hour. 6 ,000 people.