Tent Making 1 Cor 9 — George Verwer

We apologize for the rather rough quality of this recording. 1 Corinthians chapter 9. In chapter 9 we read about the laborer being worthy of his hire. Then Paul goes on, verse 12. If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather?

Nevertheless, we have not used this power, but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple, and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?

Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel. But I have used none of these things. Nevertheless, have I written these things that it should be so done unto me.

For it were better for me to die than that any man should make my glowing void. For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid upon me. Yea, woe is me, or woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.

Paul's Right to Gospel Support and His Choice to Work

Now the clear teaching of this chapter is that the laborer of the gospel, the minister of the gospel, is worthy of his hire. We're not going to go into the theological aspects of that. Yet Paul goes on to say, I don't use this power.

In other words, Paul has a right to take from the offerings of the church in order to live. He had that right, but he never used it. Instead it tells us in scripture that basically Paul earned his living through tent making.

And of course now we have that expression, tent making. In that day it was an expression, that's what Paul did. He made tents and he sold them. And he took the money from the sale of tents and he lived.

Now most of us have never pictured Paul that way, have we? Picture Paul the great preacher, the great theologian. We never picture Paul sitting down sewing, making a tent, and then selling it. Almost sounds unspiritual, doesn't it?

Paul going out selling tents. And yet the scripture is quite clear about it. Paul made his own living. He tells in another place how he worked with his own hands, his own hands to support himself. You say, well my poor fellow, didn't he know the life of faith?

Didn't he know that he could have just believed God for that money and have gone to work? We have a great distorted idea, some of us, about the life of faith. And we have it confused with sort of a life of foolishness, a life of poverty.

There's a great verse in the New Testament, I like it very much, some people don't. It says, if a man not work, let him not eat. If a man not work, let him not eat. So it's very appropriate we're saying that hymn, work for the night is coming.

Operation Mobilization's Tent-Making Ministry

Ever since the beginning of this work, before it was ever called OM or STL or BDB or whatever other name you might want to call it by, we were convinced that God had given us the greatest tent making that ever could be thought about.

The very first campaigns were sponsored often by tent making. We kept ourselves alive by tent making. Now as you know, we're not living in a day in which tents are exactly the most flourishing business to get into, so we never got into the literal tent business, but we got into the selling of Christian books.

We were planning our first campaign for Mexico. We went out with Christian books, I must confess, with a rather mercenary viewpoint in some people's terms. We went out to sell Christian books to dear old Americans because we wanted to get the profit to buy Gospels of John from Mexico.

And now if you think there's something wrong with that, you're in the wrong movement. If you think there's something wrong with making money and giving it to the Lord Jesus Christ for the spread of the gospel, if you think that's not the life of faith, I'm not saying God's going to call you to make tents.

I'm not saying God's not going to call you to take the hire that the labor is worthy of. If you think there's something wrong with that, you're really on the wrong side of the fence. And so we went out from house to house, and we of course discovered that this was what we would call in the States a double-barreled ministry.

On one hand, we were tent-making. We were making our own way so that as gifts came in in answer to prayer, and we saw gifts come in in answer to prayer, we didn't have to touch them. We never had to touch them for our own food, our own clothing, our own little necessities.

But any gift that came in, we could put that right into literature, or into Mexicans, national workers, or into a bookshop, or whatever it might be. And so as we went out with these books in this tent-making, we saw that this brought in funds for our own support so that any gifts were given were given to literature ministry.

Now sometimes I think of it vice versa. Sometimes I like to think of it as the money I'm making at the doorstep paying for the literature, and the gifts paying for me. For example, when somebody sends me a personal gift, and they say, well, this must be for you, you must use this personally.

Well, in my mind, my bank account, where I keep it in my own head, I say, well, that's for me personally. So therefore today when I go out and sell books, I'll give the book money to the spreading of the gospel and printing of more literature.

So when people, you know, write you and they say, well, I want to give you a personal gift, you don't have to think, well, that's not possible. In other words, it is possible. That means if you get a personal gift, any money you make on the doorsteps can go for the literature.

Naturally, in any bookkeeping operation, any of you who know anything about accounting, it isn't a matter of holding the money here or here or in your pocket. It's a matter of keeping the books. And some people keep them on paper, which is best.

Others keep them at least to some extent in their head. And so we have that one side of the ministry, that of tent making, seeing money come in so that we can continue on in the work. But the second ministry, which was so tremendous, is that while we were doing the tent making, the gospel was going out in a tremendous way.

Now, I'm absolutely convinced that if the apostle Paul came back in the day of the printing press, he would throw his tent and he would become a cold porter. You don't have to believe that, but I believe it.

And most of you know I'm stubborn enough to stick to believe it, despite the fact that it isn't found in scripture. Naturally, there are certain things we don't find in scripture. We don't find anything about automobiles, electric lights, tape recorders, microphones.

We don't even find much about chairs in the scriptures. And yet we see the basic principles. We understand the basic attitude of the apostle Paul. And so we see that these are things that are acceptable.

So the second barrel of ministry is flooding out the word of God. This thing is so unique. Why others have missed this, I don't know. Of course, we're not the first ones to think of this type of thing.

For years, some of the greatest Christian workers, who never could get support in days when they were, whether to try to pray in two pounds, or trying to move the walls off Astoria with a teaspoon, they had to depend.

They had to work their way. The Bible Society, some of the great work in its early years was done on this basis. The Waldensian Church, which was once a flaming church in Italy, was a group very similar up in some ways.

They carried on their work through going house to house, cold portage work. And of course, this is especially realistic in the mission field. It's one thing for us to talk when we're in these countries where there's money rolling around.

It's another thing when you get out in a place like India where there's hardly enough money to deliver, much less support lots of full-time workers. So God has given us this tent making. The tent making ministry of Operation Mobilization is its book selling, in that one aspect of it.

At the same time, of course, in many places we never make a penny on our books. We're still sold out and getting the books out. So if you don't like this side of it, you like this side of it, we don't care particularly which side motivates you.

But we do want you to see the absolute strategicness of using literature to the nth degree. And this is where many slip up on OM. Now I know some of you here don't slip up at all on this and you're really doing very well.

But others, they really don't see fully how this works in. And they've been praying for funds and they haven't seen much money come in. And they wonder sometimes, well, whether they should even stay with the work.

They feel that they're sort of being carried along on the OM gravy train and they get their meals, they get their clothing, they get their dentist or whatever else problem comes up. And yet they aren't seeing money come in as they pray.

They're not seeing money come in. What can you do? Well, I want to tell you when I first started in this work, I didn't have very much faith to believe God for money. I found that a tremendous battle.

But I did find that as I went out and faithfully sold books and did this work from house to house that God blessed. And I was making, selling books to Jews and Roman Catholics, mainly a few Protestants, once maybe every 50th person need evangelical or every 30th.

I was making a profit of two or three pounds every day, clear profit, not turned in gross. Gross doesn't represent profit, but profit. And I'm convinced that anybody who really wants to can see the same thing happen.

I know it. And I also know that salesmanship isn't learned overnight, like O. Emerson wants it to happen. They want one instruction session, one reading through the literature manual, go out on the docker, the Norah docker with their six phrases and expect to come back with their pockets full of pounds as the apostle Paul did when he sold a lot of tents.

I'm sure he wasn't quite that ignorant and I'm sure the apostle Paul knew quite a bit about tents. And so if you're going to accomplish anything in this work, you must understand something about it. And one thing is for sure, you must be convinced in your heart about book selling.

Prayer, Faith, and Practical Labor

Now tonight we're going to have a night of prayer. One of the things we'll have to pray for is the financial needs of the work. You know, when you think of dear George Mueller with his orphans many years ago, we might sit back and think, wow, what a tremendous need that was to feed those orphans.

Why? I mean, certainly he didn't have to pray through the night. He didn't have to fast, didn't have to exercise such faith and make such a big story out of all this believing God. I mean, God would supply for those orphans, wouldn't he?

God loves those orphans. He'd supply for them, wouldn't he? The fact of the matter is, is that there's hundreds of thousands of orphans in the world today. And whether we want to put it in this terminology or not, God is not supplying for them.

God is not supplying for them. And you can blame God like many an unbeliever does, many an agnostic, many an atheist, blame God for all his suffering. But God has given us this world in a sense. We're in charge down here, or to put it in clearer terms, the devil is in charge.

He's the prince and the power of the air. In a sense, God has given us the world. He's just said, okay, let it go. And I'm only going to deal with those people who come to me in love and brokenness and say, Lord, I'm yours.

When they say that, then I'm going to come in. I'm not going to force my way in. I'm not going to force my way in. And so God has chosen to use us. He's chosen to use us to pray, to believe for victories.

I don't fully understand that, but that's his message. He chooses to work through prayer. And so if we're going to see the finances come in, it isn't just a matter of sitting back and saying, well, Lord, you know our needs.

I mean, you know that we need this money. We can't go out to the field. We can't pay our grocery bills if you don't supply. Lord, you know all that, so we just trust you for it. It isn't a matter of just doing that.

It's a matter of exercising faith. It's a matter of believing that God is God and that he will supply. Last week, we hardly mentioned anything about finances. We had too much of a mixed multitude in our audiences.

We're not interested in dropping all kinds of hints to visitors that we're sort of on the rock pile. But economically speaking, business-like speaking, O .N. is on the economic rock pile. I can tell you that this afternoon.

We absolutely are on the economic rock pile, and if God doesn't come to our rescue in the next few weeks, in the next few days, there will be no campaign in 1966. And I can tell you that's the truth. In Turkey alone, there's $10 ,000 worth of bills.

And if you think $10 ,000 comes in quick on O .N., I know once in a while you hear a report of a great gift. You think those gifts are coming in every day. I don't jump out of my shoes and go halfway to the ceiling when these gifts come in because it's something that comes in every 24 hours, because they're just miracle mercy drops.

And I can tell you right now, as it stands, there's not one team that'll cross the English Channel. Not one single team. And I know that it is not our plan or God's plan for us to go launching out with unpaid bills.

We don't believe that we should. Amen. In this way, it's a poor testimony, and we don't believe it's God's plan. Now this means we have to see funds committed. Tonight we're going to deal with the area of faith.

We're going to believe God. We're going to enter into prayer. And I believe we're going to see answers. But the Bible says, faith without work is dead. The guy who can come to the prayer meeting and pray for five pounds and isn't willing to go out on the doorstep and exert himself a little and try to learn a few principles of salesmanship, that he might make his tents right and sell them right and get the job done right.

This person, I don't believe, is going to really see answer to prayer. The way it has always been in this work, that God wasn't just calling us to have an easy way in which we could just have a prayer meeting any night.

Bingo, we have $10 ,000 dropped in our lap. You know, we go along so far and the well runs dry, so we have another prayer meeting. After all, a prayer meeting is relatively easy, isn't it? Especially the way some pray.

I think it's a tremendous time to sing hymns, praise God. I know sometimes it gets very hard, but compared to knocking on the doors day after day and hour after hour being insulted and embarrassed and frustrated at times, I think most of us realize that prayer can be, can be easy.

It shouldn't be, but it can be. And so we don't believe it's God's will for us to sit back and make the other man pay. Let Christians give their money to us. We use it all up so we can't support any nationals.

We can't buy millions of tracts. We can't buy millions of books because we're using all the money up. Now, or we have no economic problems. All we have to do is stop buying books, stop buying tracts by the millions, stop traveling from here to India.

If we just consolidate and work in two or three countries, like most groups do, they certainly don't think of expanding into 20 countries in a couple of years because, I mean, the economic burden of this is impossible.

And you go down to London anytime you want and you look at the Christian offices, you look at the kind of desk, I mean, the average director in a work, I mean, expects to pay 150 bucks, $200 for a desk.

I mean, you can't have them working on a cardboard box or a wooden crate. And so of course, this is where all the money goes. And then they wonder why they haven't got enough to send out more missionary, why they can't print millions of tracts.

And so they write to OM and ask for free ones and all the rest. We believe God has given us a tent making ministry, a revolutionary tent making ministry, in a sense, tents with gospel text painted on all 10 sides.

If there is such thing as 10-sided tents. And so God has given us this ministry of book selling. And if we do it right, it's a profit-making ministry. Places like India, not so easy that way, all because of some nice donations by certain groups of books, where we get the books free, of course, then even if we only get a half a rupee or a few naya paisa, we make a little bit of money.

You know, in India, we have seen this is the most heaven-sent thing because the Indians don't want foreign funds. They think it's sin to take foreign funds. Many Indians, they teach that. For Indians to take dollars and pounds, they believe it's sin, but they'll take books even free and then they'll sell them and then they'll take the money from that.

And that's how we support our armies in India. And we stay free from this criticism of being a dollar pound organization. And yet we've got more national workers than practically very few groups have in India today.

All's happened within the past year and it's all done on this pen-making business. It also gives the Indian a tremendous feeling of self-support and satisfaction that he isn't leaning on the West, he isn't hanging on the crumbled dollar, but he's out working.

And we tell our Indians, all right, no work today, no ice today. And they go out and we never have to send money out to our Indian team. They go out and all the expenses are paid. In fact, many a team in India sends in money all the time to our central office.

And this is a tremendous unique thing. You need to understand this. This is part of the basic practical strategy that enables us to have 300 young people moving out this year instead of 30. Because this is our burden.

Our burden, those of us who were in it from the beginning, wasn't that we would just be able to go out and support ourselves. I would have no trouble with that. I know that I'd have no trouble getting support for myself and my family, but we weren't satisfied with it.

We wanted to get a multitude of people with us and let's support them. Let's fight and battle and believe God so we can support a dozen Spaniards and a couple of dozen Indians and a few dozen Mexicans and some Italians.

And that's how we can have at this conference, Spaniards. The Spaniards aren't paying their own way. They're not seeing money come in. Very few of the Italians are doing it. It's beginning more and more.

But imagine what a difficult thing this is in their country, where there's so much poverty, where the Christians don't have very much money and where they've never really read any books about the faith principle or had any teaching along this line.

Why, to pray in 10 pounds in Spain is like praying in a hundred pounds in Britain. But they're beginning to learn. But how are we ever going to get them started? It's always nice. Many missionaries, they see the nationals say, well, just trust the Lord, brother.

The nationals, hoping that perhaps he could get maybe one or two pounds a week to support his family, a dear missionary, he's getting probably 50 pounds a week. He says, well, now we're faith missionaries.

We came out here by faith. You know, horse's neck, as we say, faith. Traveling around all the churches in the United States for two years until they finally decide to support you, either to get rid of you or some other falsely motivated reason.

Then you get out to the missionaries and say, we're the faith missionaries. You nationals want to work. Well, believe God, trust the Lord like we did. Step out by faith. The poor national, he doesn't understand this.

When you came over, you came over with four or five missionary battles. You came over with your little radio. You came over at least with a Bible and a few books. The average national in countries like India, he doesn't even have a proper Bible.

Many, they don't even have a library of books. And we try to tell them, step out by faith, believe God, we can't give you any foreign money. And of course, then on the other hand, you've had other groups that have gone to the field.

They've shelled out foreign money, right, left, and center. Some of the big denominations don't use the faith principles. They have salaries, give their missionary salaries. And then what's happened? Corruption, embezzlement, cheating, lying.

Oh, I tell you, it's going to grieve your soul. Isn't there an answer to this? We believe we've found the answer. The answer is we never give them money. We give them books. The books is the investment.

When they sell the books, they get the money. But to sell the books, they have to work. And you don't find too many Freud, Freud men and con men and fakers grabbing onto piles of books to go out seven hours a day.

Even if they don't return us a penny, they've had to work for their money. And it brings them back to a biblical position and keeps them from resting on American funds. So this is a tremendous part, a vital part of O .M.'s strategy that all of us, by God's grace, are booksellers.

We believe in selling books. Might we realize just what this is? Someone was just telling me the other day, I don't remember who it is, a story where someone was forced to buy a book. Now, one thing I've always said, never force people to buy a book.

And yet someone just told me the other day that they just heard of a case where a man was sort of forced to buy a book. He really didn't want it, but the guy was a high-pressure man, which we don't recommend.

But he was a high-pressure man, he sold the book, and the guy was wonderfully born again and his whole family saved because that book was sort of forced upon him. Now, if that can happen, the book is sort of forced upon him, which we don't recommend, how much can happen when the man buys the book out of his own will because he wants it, because he wants to read about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, let's remember that the gospel is free of charge. The Bible says the gospel is free, we believe that. We never charge people for testimony, do we? At any of our meetings last week, we could have passed the offering plate any night.

I could have put out a little pressure and got 20, 30, 40 pounds out of those meetings. I can raise money. By the time when I was seven years old, I knew how to raise money. At 11, I knew how to cheat at cards, you could take anything out of your wallet.

I can raise money, but I don't want any part of it. The only fundraising campaign I won at the Throne of Grace was the Trinity as my finance committee. And I believe, oh, some people say, why didn't you take an offering?

You missed out, you missed an opportunity. Look, if people aren't going to give willingly, if they aren't going to just come out and just give and just want to give, then I don't want it. I'm so sick of people being pressured, emotionalized, stimulized, derived into giving.

What does that money do in the long run? I think sometimes it's money that never values anything for the Kingdom of God. I'd rather go out and work. And isn't it strange? Some people that will look down on book selling will think of turning on a beg at a meeting and passing the flint and making a big offering.

And yet they'll despise somebody going out and book selling. Well, this is very hard for me to understand. This is work. If I go out seven hours a day on the doors working, I'm not a beggar, I'm not begging for money, I'm working and I've given them a better value than they've ever given for their money.

Because the books especially that we sell are usually very cheap. When I give a man a gospel in India, five Naya Paisa that cost 14 Naya Paisa to print, I think he's getting a pretty good deal. Now let's remember though, the gospel is free.

What we charge for is the paper and ink. Well, I have told people, I said, look, you know, the gospel is free. I'll be glad to talk to you about Christ and explain the way of salvation. It's just the paper and the books and the ink that cost the binding.

And so we like to collect the donations so that we can buy more books for people that perhaps can't afford them. So the gospel is free, but the books cost money. I trust that you understand what I've just said.

I'd love to talk to you more about it. You don't know how I want to get these things over. I don't want to particularly come to these sessions. I've got so much work in my office now, it's getting depressing to walk in the door.

If I don't look at Jesus, I'm going to be discouraged. It's just everything piled up in my desk and letters and I haven't even opened. But I just pray that we can communicate to you something of this vision for being a tent maker.

Literature, Missions, and Converting Resources

Why? Because as a tent maker, the money you pray in can support nationals, Indians, Mexicans, Spaniards, Italians, because the money then that you pray in can be used to get more literature out, to get literature into the Soviet countries.

What's the thing that's holding up the work in the iron curtain countries? I'll tell you what it is. It's not manpower. It's not manpower. I've got men. We've got some men. It's money. It's money. Every time you look this way or that way, no money.

We haven't even paid right now. I've got sitting right here. I don't want to steal it. It's only me. A 1 ,100 pounds bill for secret of happiness in the Russian language. And it's due now. It's due right now.

I've got a letter on my desk written to them by Java. The only thing I have to do is put in the check. I have a partial payment. So the campaign from this past summer in the communist world isn't paid.

OM owes Dave Borman at least $1 ,000 yet because he's had to pay some OM bill with money that he prayed in. And in both places, we don't even have anybody like Dave who's laying hold of funds to carry on the work.

In fact, we don't for any communist country. Communist projects have had to come from sort of a general fund and from a few special gifts here and there. So we look at the communist world. If you want to do something in communist world, why don't you get literature going?

Why in Poland right now, they're ready to distribute all the Gospels we can give them. They're ready to move out with the Gospels. Who has any money for Gospels in Poland? Nobody. We haven't got two happenings to rub one against the other, right at this point.

Much less say, well, let's get some more Gospels for Poland. Somebody says, well, let's load up Mr. Barkas, our double-walled vehicle. Let's get him into Soviet Russia. That's right. I went down and ordered a hundred Bibles in the Bible Society for Russia.

Pocket Bibles. Everybody says, print more. That's right. I got the bill, 300 quid. No, a hundred quid, $300. So everybody likes to think, you know, and what can be done? Let's do this. We got all kinds of people with vision, all kinds of people with ideas of how the money can be spent, what we can do, what we can accomplish for God.

And I doubt if we have 20 people that know how to lay hold of the resources to do it. Now, this is the same with all over the world. Not only with our Christian organization, this is true of every nation other than practically America and one or two other countries.

Why do they make you register your money in all the communist countries? Why is it you can't even take a rupee into India? Because these countries have all kinds of plans, projects, ideas to solve their million and one problem.

No resource. No resource. That's why in the black market in India, I can take a rupee and sell it. I can take a dollar and sell it for eight rupees when the official rate is only four. Because they're trying some way, some way to get the resources.

And the dollar represents merely resources. It represents manpower and resources. And that's what you must remember about money. Money only represents something. Money isn't worth anything. Just like having German Deutschmarks in West Germany, East German Deutschmarks in West Germany.

They're not worth very much. You can have a whole barrel full of them and you don't get too much of a rate on them. Some other kinds of currency, like we have a pile of Indian rupees that came out of India by mistake.

We can't do anything with them. Actually, we're not even supposed to take them back. I don't know what we're going to do with these rupees. But this is the same way with money. The paper is worth nothing.

It's what's behind it. It's what it represents. So a Christian, he's working very hard. What does he get for all of his work if he's working in a secular job? At the end of the week, he goes in and he collects a million gospel tracts for a week's work.

What secular firms pay that way? Did any of your firms, some of you have worked in the world, did any of them at the end of the week give you a stack of Bibles or a pile of tracts? No! They gave you money.

But that money, just as well, could have been a stack of tracts or a pile of Bibles. You could take that money and immediately go to the Bible Sciences. They'll give you, exchange this money for Bibles.

You could have any printer and you can exchange this money for tracts. So remember, money is merely the conversion unit to convert your energy into tracts, to convert your energy into something that counts for eternity, to take temporal power and convert it into eternal investment.

That's why I'm not ashamed to make money. And if the Lord ever calls me back into business, I'll do it very happily. I'll tell you, I'd never be settled at 10 and 20 pounds a week. If I couldn't make 200 pounds a week in the world, well, I'd be a very frustrated individual.

But if I made that 200 pounds a week, I figured my wife and I could live on about two or three pounds maybe at the most if inflation got bad. And then we could give all the rest to the Lord Jesus Christ.

What greater joy could there be? I believe a man can be a disciple and be in business. I believe that with all my heart. I believe a man can be a disciple and go down and work in a paper mill or work down in the railroad station.

It all depends on what he does with manpower when he gets it in the form of the currency. That's why Billy Graham said, Billy Graham said, the last thing a man will ever give us is money. That really shocked me when I saw that.

I said, well, that's not true. The last thing a man will give us is his heart. That's right. That's what money represents. His heart. Where your treasure is. What? Where your heart is also. And so if a man goes forward in a nice convention, a deeper life convention, yes Lord, not I but Christ, fine.

What did he give? He gave his hand. He raised his hand. But when he goes back to his bank account, realizing that everything's going to be more, he drains out his 10 ,000 quid that he's been saving for a rainy day, and he sends it off to Regents Beyond and says, his heart just about falls right out of him.

It's true. And so when people send us money, they're sending us their labor power, their manpower converted into currency. And it's the same way when you go out selling books. So you always have that double opportunity at the doorstep.

Maybe a soul will get saved through the book. That's a primary thing. That's the greatest thing. If we never got a quarter, never got a penny for the book, a soul got saved. Why? You came back and said, well, I haven't sold any books all week.

We had five or six souls come to Christ. Praise God. We never found that usually happening. We found most people that sold the books were also able to win the souls. And so we have that double opportunity.

At the same time, if you go to a doorstep, they buy some books, but they never get saved. They never come to Christ. Still, what did you get? You got some money. Represent your labor. You can take that money, invest it in tracts.

Maybe the tracts will bring someone to Jesus Christ. Or invest it in a national worker, and maybe he will lead a soul to Jesus Christ. So we always have this double, tremendous double opportunity when we go out on the doorstep.

Pent-making, plus evangelizing at the same time. Poor Apostle Paul, he had to sit down at times and make those tents. And he must have thought, man, I could be preaching right now. I could be moving out, be advanced.

I could be planning another trip. He had to make those tents. He had to make those tents. Then he had to go out and get to the guy in the market, and he had to make a deal with him to sell the tent. Well, we have a tent-making that at every moment we're doing it, we're getting the gospel out.

Every moment we're selling our tents, the gospel is going out. I tell you, it's terrific. If that doesn't excite you, I think there's something wrong with your blood pressure. The possibility of supporting ourselves, the possibility of supporting ourselves, supporting nationals, buying tracts, opening bookshops, advancing into China, rushing places we can't go, through sending literature through the post, and yet never losing a minute, always giving the gospel out.

All right, it's tremendous. You know, leading men in missions today, right to the top, I can name several missions right to the very top, they've changed their strategy in the light of this strategy that I'm just talking to you right now.