Eyes to See a Better Country — Jackie Pullinger

Seeing Through Revelation and Faith

I don't know whether you've noticed but so far everything this evening has been about seeing. And we sang open the eyes of my heart lord. We sang about catching a glimpse of his glory. We've seen a bunch of people and a special lady who saw something that god revealed the plight of the unborn and those who'd parented the unborn.

We heard about some university students who saw. I want to talk about seeing and i want to pray for eyes. Jesus said seek first my kingdom and my righteousness and everything else will be added to you.

Sometimes people would ask me how i can get through difficult times. They always ask me what i would do in the middle and i always think that's the wrong question. It's really how you start not what you do in the middle.

It's what you see. It's what you see when you start. Because if you don't see the end from the beginning you will get upset. In the middle when i was very small i had the the very very unhappy impression that uh god was watching me now this was very unhappy because i didn't like him and i had looked around and it seemed to me quite clear that other children were doing wrong things and getting away with it.

And uh so i sort of worked this out. I was about five i can remember doing it and i thought well god if people get away with it is it worth being good. And came to this distressing conclusion. But he got you in the end.

And that was why i decided to be a missionary. So i thought it would count in my favor. And that was long before i liked him. I just had this unhappy understanding that he was counting things up and one day i would meet him and i would have to answer for my life.

But now no it's not like that. It's not like that at all. For the moment i understood and you can only understand by revelation by faith the moment i understood that the maker of heaven and earth in mercy sent his son to fetch me and to put me and my shortcomings and my pain and everything that would stop me being acceptable to him that he put all this upon himself when he died on the cross.

Then i saw differently a glimpse of heaven. And this time so different so different so different it is if i'm going to spend eternity with a lover who loved me so much that he would risk his son to fetch me forever.

I really can't wait to be with him. I saw a glimpse of heaven. Whom have i in heaven but you and being with you i desire nothing on earth. The fact is if you know him that is true. Because when this psalm says whom have i in heaven.

But you and being with you i desire nothing on earth. This is actually a fact. It's not a feeling being with you i desire nothing on earth. But most of us think we desire everything else on earth. Which is why we have a trouble concentrating on where we're going because we're distracted by where we are.

The fact is if we ever have understood by faith and by revelation a little bit of his love and his glory and his sweetness and his forgiveness for us which is forever of course we can get through anything on this earth.

Can't we it is. But for a second and when we for eternity live and dwell with him will we not look back and say i was so worried for for that time but it was so short or maybe we won't even remember. I don't know maybe we'll be too busy singing.

And in that wonderful place in heaven where there's a door standing open and the voices come up here and i'll show you. I will show you. I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And in this holy city there's no more pain there's no more crying and god dwells with man.

This is where we will be. And i always wonder. Well i have many thoughts about what it will be like but uh first of all when i meet him i don't know whether i'm going to fall on my face or whether i'm going to run into his arms.

I'm torn. I don't know which i suppose i will know when the time comes whether to prostrate myself in front of the king of glory or whether to run into the arms of my father. And the other thought i have about that place is that as there's no more pain and crying as there's no more death as there's no more sickness we are all perfect because of him.

And we wash clean because of him. The only one scarred in the whole of heaven is him. For that book called revelation tells us that there's a lamb looking as if he's been stained. How strange that for eternity we are perfected in the presence of a scarred lamb.

Abraham's Faith and the Better Country

And we sing these songs of glory you me we have to have a glimpse of this glory before we can proceed with our feet on this earth. And i know that this week david and philip have been talking about abraham and i'll read some verses about him from hebrews 11.

By faith abraham when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance he obeyed and he went even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country.

He lived in tents as did isaac and jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise for he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is god. And from him from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the stars in the sky in multitude innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.

All these people were living by faith when they died they didn't receive the things promised. They only saw them and they welcomed them from a distance and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

People who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own. Somebody asked me today how i got to hong kong and i really don't want to share that story but part of the journey was when i went to see he was a vicar in london and god had been telling me to go.

And uh he'd spoken to me through a dream and through a prophecy which was unusual in the mid -60s and and through a vision which people weren't talking about and every time he just said go. And i finally went to see this vicar in shoreditch in london.

And i said well um god is not being very helpful uh because he keeps saying go. And when i ask him where he says go and uh and when i say yes god i got that where he says go and i'll show you and i will lead you.

And i said well that really isn't very helpful i've i've applied for missionary societies and they failed me because i wasn't 25 and um so i said well to the speaker i think i'll stay here in shoreditch and help you.

And he said no no if god's telling you to go you must go. And i said well i can't go because he hasn't shown me where to go. And he said uh well if he gave you an airplane ticket and a pension uh and a sick fund and a house and a salary you really wouldn't need to trust him.

So um why don't you go out find the cheapest ship you can calling in the greatest number of countries get on it and pray that god will tell you where to get off. Well it was it really was like a bell going off in my heart and i thought oh that's wonderful.

But immediately the religious bit sort of got in and i said well you know i'd love to do that but it must be cheating because i thought missionaries had to suffer and i'd like that. And and he said no it's quite scriptural.

Abraham was told to leave his country and go to the country that god showed him. And he spent most of his life not getting there. But he went because he trusted and he was a very wise man very wise man who shared this with me.

I mean he he later went to rygate by the way in in surrey he's not at all what you would imagine he's a very sort of stiff correct gods type of man. So it must have been god. And he he he didn't give me the understanding that i had to do anything.

And i think sometimes when people talk about visions um it's what they've decided would be a very good idea and huge it's always huge. But what god shows you is what god has decided. And you probably don't share it for a long time.

In fact it's not too smart you know. Look what happened to joseph. You keep quiet about some things like mary did too. And he said well maybe just get on this ship and you go all the way around the world and you stop off at singapore and you play the piano for a week for youth meetings and come back.

Or you go all the way around the world just to talk to one sailor about jesus. And into my mind came shipwreck. And i thought great maybe i'm going to be shipwrecked and there'll be i will land on an island where one person is waiting to hear about jesus.

But i thought can't lose. Really you know if if you if you let god lead you and you go because he can't lead you if you don't move understand that. Right. Uh then you can't lose. And so in god's mercy i was spared from having to think when i got somewhere i had got to do anything.

And i was also in god's mercy spared from having to uh because i didn't have a group behind me. I mean this guy prayed he never sent money or anything. But i didn't have a group behind me. So i didn't have to achieve anything in my newsletters i i didn't i didn't have to feel ashamed that there were no converts you know.

Or write moving stories in order to get cash or anything like that. You know this really in god's mercy i was spared and it was a journey and it still is. And the journey is it's just telling people about jesus along the way.

That's all. That's all ministry is. It's terribly simple. It's not difficult. It's not about starting groups or this or that it's just about seeing where you're going and then seeing whom you meet along the way.

And seeing by revelation who they may become. And seeing by revelation sometimes those you haven't yet met but you should be. It's about seeing. And when i got to hong kong i went to many many different places and i was very young and very bumptious.

And i found all these missionaries you know and i said i'm here. And they weren't thrilled. I can see why now. Because you know there are heaps of christian travelers that travel around the world expecting to stay with us so i can see that and so but once they saw that i could support myself they all said well maybe you could do this job or that job or that job.

Till i got about 30 part-time jobs. And um i said but god i've got one life and i would like to use it. Well would you please show me um where i should be by the way while you're waiting for him to show you you have to get on with it.

You understand i i i'm always having to pray for people who say where should i be. And i say it doesn't really matter it matters what you're doing now because what you're doing now gets you to where you should be.

That's how you get to where you should be. But if you stop and say i'm waiting on the lord for a year he can't use you anyway. And you'll never get there. When people write to me and say can i come and help your poor in hong kong.

I write back and say are you helping your poor where you live. Why would you love mine if you don't love yours. So this where should i be really depends entirely on what you're starting to get involved in here.

Because if you cannot see jesus next door to you what you say you're going to be wherever you go next. And it's all about seeing him wherever he may be. About seeing them about seeing heaven and people.

Seeing the Walled City Through Heaven's Eyes

I've been in hong kong for 38 years now and people say i suppose it's your home. And i say no who chews there. Not me. It's dirty polluted and crowded. I love the people but it's not a good place. Yesterday when the sun was shining norfolk looked a bit more like it.

But no that hong kong not my home. Hong kong was not my destination. I really am a pilgrim. I've just stopped off there for 30 something years but it's not my destination. I've always got another one and that's really where my home is.

But a strange strange strange thing happened when i was doing all this part-time stuff. A missionary took me to the walled city and in the natural it's a terrible terrible place. Uh there were about a hundred thousand people in about six or seven acres and that that's probably uh smaller than this showground uh for a hundred thousand people to live in.

And when i was first there there was no electricity uh one toilet which was had no water. It was standing uh and just open gutters where everybody else emptied their pots. So you had to be careful uh walking through the streets because sometimes things came out of the window.

And anyway the sewers were so open that when it rained they would overflow so and there were more rats than people. So you you had to be very careful. That was just physically awful. Of course in other ways much more awful because uh i i soon saw that there were little girls who were sold one of them i can remember i watched and she was visited on average once every 30 minutes.

She was a forced prostitute and she had a guard but she wouldn't need one. After a year she would have had nowhere to run to if she was still alive. And i saw the old ladies who looked after the young girls.

And you wouldn't be angry with them. Would you. For they were the young girls themselves you see. And they would need someone to live off in that old age. They had needle marks on the back of their hands the old ones.

And i saw the the old men drug pushers the old men who guarded the gambling dens and the kids. And that was what i saw in the natural but a strange thing after the second time i was there i came out with my heart singing and i didn't understand what it was to begin with just no idea.

And uh you know it's like when it's your birthday or somebody said how beautiful you are. You sort of go hmm you know you can go for the whole day. And i i was going for the whole day. And i thought well nobody said i look beautiful and it's not my birthday.

What's this. And uh every time i went in wall city it was like that. It was like i love to be there and people say you know how brave and dramatic. Well that's rubbish. No no i liked it. And uh you know i couldn't understand other people used to appear in hong kong and say jack i'm praying about my future.

And i thought why would you need to. Haven't you seen the wall city. Don't you want to spend your life here. You know i thought everybody did because i saw another city. I always saw another city where aliens and strangers on earth.

People who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own. If they'd been thinking of the country they'd left they would have had opportunity to return instead. They were longing for a better country a heavenly one.

Therefore god is not ashamed to be called their god for he has prepared a city for them. And i saw the other city. I saw the other city i saw. It's um a bit like it describes in zachariah a city with streets where children could play and all men could sit.

I saw the kids who were abandoned and many were locked up all day because their parents had to go out to work locked in one room. I saw them in families. I saw those old prostitutes holding up their heads.

And i saw the little girls who'd been sold having a proper childhood in safety with good men. I saw the lame jumping and the blind seeing everywhere. I walked down the street and i thought hmm what would he do if he were here now.

I it happened that way around you see because i had tried the other way around i i tried the booklet you know uh but the booklet didn't work because they couldn't read. I tried the questions like would you like to come to a meeting.

Well that's a silly thing to say. If you're watching a brothel why would you want to go to a christian meeting. I asked some people do you know jesus. And they said i can't read. Of course you can't be a christian if you can't read or i have no shoes.

What they meant was they wore flip-flops. And they knew that christians didn't go to church and flip-flops did not or i don't have sunday off. Of course you can't be a christian if you don't have sunday off.

And some of them said well i smoke or i gamble. And i realized when i saw these people they knew nothing at all about jesus. All they knew was about christians carried a big book had sundays off had shoes and didn't smoke.

And i thought that's pathetic they've never met him. And that was when i started to look at the scripture. And i thought what would he do. And i saw him. Jesus goes up to a blind man and he spits in his eye and he sees.

And jesus goes to a high class dinner party and this prostitute has the god to gate crash publicly wash his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair. Why why. How could she dare to do that. And i thought god i'm spending my life trying to get people to meetings.

And by the way if you don't yet know jesus and you've come well done. You know we with never mind never mind. Anyway i thought jesus was on earth. All the right people ran after him. And the hungry i thought they've seen something.

How would they know. How would she know. How would she know. Do you think it was that on the way to the dinner party she looked at him do you think. And somehow understood he knows me still. For he said she loves much for she has been forgiven much.

She seemed to know that while she was washing his feet not after is why she washed his feet. How could she know. And i thought god i'd really like to do it like jesus. You know instead of organizing events and asking people to meetings i'd like to walk down the streets and have have people see jesus.

I'd like to lay my hands on the sick and see them healed. I'd like to see those who are demonized freed dear jesus. Would you teach me to do it like you did it. And i've shared a little bit over the last few days some of the stories of how this happened.

But you see i always saw another city. And this morning i shared about one young man called winson and how he was sent to guard me. I started a youth club in the wall city and when the power of god fell upon him how he came to know jesus.

He spoke in tongues and he prayed himself off opium. And i thought great. I always thought it would be like this. I mean why believe in god if you're not expecting him to do this stuff i mean don't. By the way i mean go completely off god.

It would be better to go completely off him than not to expect signs and wonders not to expect him to intervene in a sick and hurting world. Expect he wants to do this so much expect. And so when i saw this guy get off drugs miraculously i was very thrilled but not surprised.

After all the moment i believed in jesus it was going. He was going to be god or not. So not half. But i didn't understand what was going to happen next. So as i said this morning i said god bless you my son be fed be clothed be warmed go stay with the nice guys you know.

And of course he didn't know any nice guys except me. And he he was a he was a tribe leader and we had no believers at this point. And so later on i took him into my home and that's when all the troubles began.

Because i i found that when he believed in jesus all his friends queued up and said well if jesus has changed him i'll believe in jesus and i'll come and live in your house too. And because they always went together.

And when i said that this morning and when i said tonight see if you can catch what i mean because if they do go together i'll believe in jesus and i'll live in your house. If they do go together they do go together.

It isn't i'll come to your meeting. That's not at all the same as i'll come and live in your house. And most of the poor and the sick and the delinquent and the limping need a house. However that house works out to live in.

They need a family on monday and tuesday and wednesday not a cell group once a week they're coming into a family not an organization a body. And so all the troubles came because all his friends queued up.

Discipleship Requires Family and Perseverance

And then i learned it isn't they come to christ. And then because i'm an evangelist i move on let someone else disciple him and find the next. Not at all. How can you abandon those who are born. You can't.

So i trapped myself and instead of being an evangelist in the streets became a very reluctant and not very good house mother. I don't think i was cut out to be. I love it when i get valentine's cards from our brothers.

I hate it when i get mother's day cards. I just don't think of myself like that. You see i don't think of myself as a mother in the lord at all. You know i don't know what i am. But uh i really did not enjoy staying in the house looking after all these guys.

I wanted to be out in the street preaching but i hadn't got anyone else. This is why. By the way i'm completely unsympathetic to people who talk about this is my ministry. Um until you're ready to do everything on every single occasion you don't deserve something called my ministry.

They're not useful people who are specialists before you're willing to do everything. And of course it's not my ministry being a house mother. But if i if i'd let people to the lord who else was going to look after them.

So my house got full up. Oh so many difficulties. This is just to encourage you you guys you know because if you if you if you win these kind of people to the lord they don't grow up in a day. Your children need 18 years with two parents.

And these people need as long as they need which may be long. And they don't need us to be disappointed because they're not next year's youth leader by the way don't do that to them. They need security and safety not prominence.

And at one time i got four men in my house and three of them ran away. And then sometime later two came back and then two more. And then i made the mistake of thinking that one might be a leader and they all ran away.

You know this. This goes on for years. It goes on for years. This is just to encourage you. Because when you start taking these people in and you're praying them off drugs and you see miracles and you see them turn back you'll think oh it wasn't like that for jackie.

Well it's like that for everyone. We're telling you the truth now just so you know you can keep going because you see something else. You see if jesus died for me before i said thank you of course i can keep going.

And if he still loves me when i mess up i can still love them when they mess up. Why would we be angry with them for not changing at the pace that we think they should we can still hope. Hope is a great word.

Hopes is something that god gives and he says i pray that the eyes of your heart may be open may may have light in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. And we need our eyes open.

There's always hope god hasn't finished with anyone. Why should we i tell you where it happened. But for a number of years it was like that we won them we saw them go and we laughed as much as we cried.

Or we cried as much as we laughed. It's always like that we just don't have a normal christian life you know. Or maybe we have the normal christian life. And then one day some stayed and a few more and a few more and and then a whole lot of what i call rich people came in because they saw what god had done in the poor.

And they were jealous. For we have got so much that most people haven't. We understand his grace most than more than most because we need it. We understand his forgiveness more than most because we've received it.

We understand his power more than most because we're so weak. We understand his heart because we feel it every day. We're so rich in these things. And and we're rich because we have to live it. It's not because we've read it in a book because many of us can't read.

And then one day it was different. One day it was different. Some state some more state. The rich came in. We worshipped together. The sitting room got too big. The government gave us some tin huts to live in.

We put a roof over the tin huts. It wasn't done like this except it did leak. In the summer we had umbrellas inside to keep the glare off. And in the winter umbrellas inside to keep the rain off. But suddenly we we'd grown and grown.

And suddenly we became the largest what other people call church in hong kong. And all these pastors came. They used to come in secret by the way they they wore proper clothes in the morning and in the afternoon they dressed down.

That was our meeting. And they came to us in disguise. And then they came and they said jackie how did you get this. And i said um how did you get all these people. I said well i don't really know. You know i wasn't.

I'm not a church planter. You know i know people use that word i just can't find it's biblical. But um uh you know they they just sort of. And uh nobody liked the way they'd grown. And they but they wanted that our kids.

They wanted our people. And what happened to the city. Some years on this city began to be a place this walled city. Our meetings weren't our big meetings were in somewhere else but in wall city was when the addicts used to come.

They used to come for something called an addicts meeting. And there was a little lady that i used to pass down the streets. Her name was alfreda. And she used to pull me by my sleeve and she'd say please please can i live in your house.

And i thought well no because uh my house which was now growing quite big was full of men. And that's not where you put a 60 year old prostitute who's still practicing. She had to still practice. She sat on a step in the wall city and she poked a stick into the sewer to make it run because it got clogged up either with sewage or rats.

So i began to walk another path because i didn't want to pass her by. You see one of the things i hate doing i hate telling people about jesus and not doing it. I hate it. I didn't want to say jesus loves you and walk past her.

I couldn't do it. And because i didn't know where to put her because i'd used up all my friends i thought i'd better not walk that street anymore. I know that shocks you. You see i i don't want to lead prostitutes to jesus and leave them in the streets.

I know that shocks you. But one day we couldn't resist it and i walked past her and i said we'll take you. And we found a cupboard but she's very small so she could fit in. She's only four foot something.

And we prayed for her just like we pray for other guys. The holy spirit came upon her and we saw her back. She had three large bruises on her back and that was um where she was injected with heroin. That was her payment for her work.

Three bowls of rice three injections of heroin a day. This lady had no identity card. She didn't exist. She had been her mother uh hanged herself when she was young. She watched her father having sex with various relations male and female through a keyhole.

She got engaged when she was about 18 and she slept with her boyfriend and her father such a hypocrite threw her out and then she became a prostitute. She uh she was born in macau and then she came to hong kong.

That's how she had no identity and had to sell her body for from the age of 18 to 60 pretty awful she'd seen two murders in her brothel and she was so frightened. That's why she wanted to live in my house.

Because they were unreported. One of them one of the other prostitutes who was slightly pregnant didn't want to sleep with a customer. So the owners put a pipe down her throat and filled it with water and she died.

And they made this lady take her to hospital fancy dying before you exist. Anyway we prayed with her and she came to know jesus. We prayed in tongues and she prayed in tongues. When we say we see this miracle all the time.

We do see this miracle all the time. But it's a working miracle it isn't. You lay hands the power comes. They uh they fall down and that's it. Uh we we work the miracle if you like we have four hour duties six people a day for 10 days.

That's 60 duties. Imagine if we're doing 10 people a week which we are at the minute that's 600 people involved. It's as much a miracle that people will do this as it is that god does for healing it's equal.

And uh so she came off drugs and started a new life. And uh very funny. Later on she got a suitor. Were you there. Another old man who'd come off drugs and he wooed her and she was so funny because uh she got married in this beautiful tin hut that we had and she walked down the aisle in virginal white so proud of herself.

And uh later on another older couple decided they would get married and one of them said to this lady whose name was elfrida please can i borrow your wedding dress. And elfrida said yes. And then she came to me and she said i said yes.

But of course she can't. And i said why can't she. Well she said it's a white wedding dress and that lady's been married before. Picture of heaven. Here's jesus with his bride in virginal white made pure and a new life.

A Church That Welcomes the Poor

We began to see actually see what i'd seen. Another time we began to have teams that go into the streets and they pray before they go into the streets. God show us show us the people who are there and uh they usually take rice boxes with them.

And we we find these people that sleep under the flyovers. And they found a couple with a young son he was uh three or four years old and uh they shared about jesus with this couple. They were both on heroin.

And a few days later the couple came to the walled city where we had meetings and we worshipped. We love worshipping. We do more more of worship than anything else. We were worshipping in this meeting.

And suddenly the spirit came on two other people and these two other people began to laugh and this couple were looking at them and i said yeah enjoy. In a minute the spirit's going to come on you you can have a look and see what jesus is doing.

And a few minutes later the lady of this couple she was flat on the ground and she was weeping. And after the meeting i asked her what did you see. What did you see. And she said well we were we were worshipping.

And she said. I suddenly saw a picture of jesus on the cross. I knew i put him there and i could not stand before him anymore. I had to lie prostrate before him. By revelation she understood that the lord of heaven the one who made the heavens on the earth died for her the one that others despise.

And her husband fell into a puddle the next day and died. But he's gone to heaven. And she came to live with us. And so did her son. Of course that's why we got so many people in our house. She saw heaven she saw a lord who loved her and gave her a new life.

And so many people began to queue up to live with us that we ran out of spaces we have now not that that means we will stop but we just have to look for more space. And there was a young guy called bb once who i'd known i visited him in prison for something he hadn't done.

And when he came out of prison i said now um would you like to come and get your life straight. And you can come and live in one of our houses. But he went back to heroin. He used to make his living um putting his fingers through the sewer to see what things he could pick up that someone had dropped.

And one day i had enough of this. So we went for noodles and i said to him um this is enough i i cannot eat noodles with somebody who's going to hell. I love you very much and i will not eat with you anymore.

You know now that jesus loves you you know now that i love you so i will not meet you anymore because it hurts me to love to do that. When you're ready to come to jesus give me a call. He could only handle three days.