Well, it is very good if you are going to fall asleep—we can understand. The problem is whether it is you or me. It will happen to one of us. It is almost one o’clock in my time.
But in spite of that, my wife, my daughter, and I are very happy to be able to come just in time—just about in time—to say goodbye to you all. We had a difficult day yesterday coming over. It seems to me that things are really getting more and more difficult in the world, even the traffic and all the rest of it.
But the Lord was gracious, and we are happy that we finally made it. We have been looking forward to seeing you all here and having a short but, I am sure, precious time of fellowship together.
Before we share the Word of God together, I would like to say a few things, so to speak, off the record. I just returned from a prayer conference in Denmark, and what I am saying here is a request for you all to pray for something very important going on in our country.
Right now, we have a United Nations women’s conference in Copenhagen. This is one reason why I could not come at the beginning of the conference, because we felt it was so important that we had that prayer conference. That United Nations women’s conference has been turned into a propaganda event for the PLO against God’s people, Israel.
Monday afternoon, twenty-five Arab delegations walked out of the big convention hall in Copenhagen when the Israeli delegate spoke at the conference. Tuesday afternoon, I think forty delegations walked out when the Israeli delegate spoke. More than a thousand journalists are trying to disturb the whole conference and make it really an attack upon Israel.
Two days ago, three Palestinian guerrillas were caught in Sweden on the way to Copenhagen, with machine guns and hand grenades in their car. We learned afterwards that their aim was the aircrew of El Al at a Copenhagen hotel. Some Palestinians were already there, including Palestinian girls disguised as journalists. But by the grace of God, it was all discovered in time.
We have a tremendous burden in Denmark right now for this whole development. Denmark has played a historic role in favour of God’s people, Israel. I remember during the Second World War, King Christian X, the grandfather of our present queen, went on horseback through Copenhagen with a yellow star upon him.
On the twenty-fourth, next Thursday afternoon at two-thirty, we expect four to five hundred Danish Christians to walk silently out to the convention hall, all dressed in black and wearing the yellow star, to stand silently and pray and identify with the people of Israel.
I would ask your prayers for that manifestation of God’s people in our country. We feel it is very important, but it is happening right now.
Well, it is difficult for me to try to cover all that is upon my heart in two meetings. I would need at least five meetings—five meetings for love. I am sorry that Lyle had to take over one of my meetings, because really it is he who has a sabbatical year, not I.
But I will try the best I can. Let us ask the Lord to help us, and help me to express what is upon my heart for this evening and tomorrow morning. Shall we turn to the Lord in prayer?
Lord, we thank You and praise You for Your grace, for the very fact that we can be together as members of the same body. We praise You that You have been faithful, and I thank You and praise You for the blessings that You have bestowed upon this conference so far.
Thank You, Lord, for Your grace for us tonight, to speak as well as to hear. Lord, we want that time with You, and we want You to be glorified, and that everything You had in mind should come to its fulfilment.
Help us, Lord, right now to be in the Spirit and to be ministered to by Your Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I think that it is important for God’s people to prepare themselves for a time of crisis.
Somebody wrote an article in a Christian magazine at the beginning of this year and described the present world situation as follows: it is like a big petrol car running down a hillside, and the man inside is trying desperately to bring the car under control because he realizes that it could very well end up with a big explosion.
I think that the great world leaders and rulers who have been able to control world events are just like this man in the car now. They are not controlling the affairs of this world any longer, but the affairs of this world—the events of this world—are controlling them.
Of course, we all sense that we are coming into a period of great crisis, and as God’s people, we will naturally have our share of that. This is why I feel that we should prepare God’s people for crisis, and we should learn to look upon crisis in the way that the Lord looks upon crisis.
So I find in my heart an emphasis on what the Lord has named for me the blessings of crisis. It is a paradox, but it is very true. Some of the greatest blessings for God’s people are hidden in the crises that we are going through.
There is a Scripture in Deuteronomy 32:11:
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
That fluttereth over her young,
He spread abroad His wings, He took them,
He bare them on His pinions.
The eagle stirs up its nest. It pushes the little ones out of the nest—in fact, over the edge of the cliff. This is a word that deals with crisis; it describes crisis.
I am sure that from the viewpoint of the little ones in the nest, it must have been a terrible experience. I am sure that if they could think or speak, they would have a little conversation with one another and express great astonishment at what had happened to their parents.
They had been feeding them for so long and looking after them, so that they had become really fat and comfortable in the nest. They had so far had the feeling of love from their parents. But now it must have been a shocking experience.
Maybe the little ones would say, “What has happened to our parents? Have they gone mad? Do they not love us any longer? Are they going to kill us? What is this all about?”
It must have felt purely negative. This is always what crisis does in our lives: it is a purely negative thing, humanly speaking. But the parents have another point of view, because they may be excited over the whole thing. They know what is going on and what the whole idea is.
They are rejoicing because the little ones are learning to take care of themselves, stretch out their wings, and begin to grow up. This is only a small picture, but it can enable us to understand that we must have God’s point of view when we are coming into such a time of crisis.
We must understand that He is behind it and that He has something He wants to teach us. God’s people are going to grow much in the coming days. They are going to grow up, and the Lord is going to bring His church into fulfilment, into completion.
If we are going to come that far, we need the crises that are ahead of us.
First of all, it is wonderful to see that the eagle will not let the little ones hit the bottom. If there is any danger, if it is going too far, the eagle will be right there underneath, stretch forth its tremendous wings, catch the little ones, and take them up again. Then they start all over again with the process.
But it is wonderful to have this conviction: the Lord will never allow His people to meet anything too hard. It will be hard, but it will not be too hard. Because of His love, He will be behind us and underneath us, and He will take care of us in any and every possible situation that we have to go through in the future.
I remember that I read in one of the books on Brother Nee an interpretation of Hebrews 11:21 which brought such joy and fresh light into my own life in this matter of looking upon the crises that we are facing and experiencing already.
Hebrews 11:21 says:
By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph,
And worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
Jacob worshipped, dying, leaning upon the top of his staff. Was it because he was an old man? He was an old man; he was dying, so he was weak. Was that why he was leaning upon the top of his staff while worshipping? I do not think so.
He had been in need of that staff for a long period of his life, ever since, as a young man, he met the Lord in some tremendous crisis and was left as a handicapped person. He was no longer able to walk by himself in his own strength, but needed that staff to get along.
When Jacob came to the end of his life, he was a rich man. He had a wonderful family. He had experienced all the blessings he could experience from his God. But it was not the blessings he remembered. It was not the blessings he worshipped over. It was not his wonderful family or all his riches.
It was the most painful crisis in his entire life that caused him to worship God. It was a crisis that must have been very painful. Every time he took a step, he was reminded of that crisis and felt the pain in his body. He was not able to leap, jump, or walk normally as other people. He was a handicapped person.
But at the end of his life, he really grasped the blessing of that terrible crisis. He saw in God’s light that that painful event, that difficult period he went through, was the biggest blessing of his entire life.
I shall never forget what I experienced in Sweden recently. There is a brother travelling around the whole country of Sweden who has the most genuine healing ministry I have come across. Many people go to his meetings, and many are healed. But the man himself is totally blind.
It is an incredible sight to see that brother come in through the door with another brother who is always with him—guiding him to the hotel room, doing all the things he cannot do, bringing him into the meeting, putting him in the right seat, helping him with the microphone and everything. There he is, standing in total darkness and bringing healing to other people.
They asked him why he could not get healed himself. Many had prayed for him. Many had laid hands upon him that he should get his sight back. But he was still blind, and he said, “Do not pray for that. Do not take away the greatest blessing in my life.”
Well, it is a paradox, is it not? But it is true.
We have in Denmark a hymn writer—he has been with the Lord for many years now—but he is the most profound of all Danish Christian hymn writers. His hymns have such substance, such deep experience, and express the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ in a magnificent way.
The secret of this man was that he had a son who was mentally ill. He lived in the eighteenth century, this hymn writer, and he kept that son at home. It was very difficult to have him in his home, but he would not let him go. He loved that son.
All through his life, that son was present in the home. He had to help him, nurse him, care for him, and feed him. That man was the one who came to know in a very deep way the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ and express them so beautifully.
I wonder if dear Paul will not worship the Lord once for the thorn in his flesh that accomplished so much in his life, brought so much grace, and made it possible for God to let His power be fully and without hindrance accomplished in him and through him.
I believe that the people of God, as a whole, have a wrong idea about crisis. We have a desire to get rid of every pain, every problem, every difficulty. Many times, you have the feeling that the church of God is a place where we try to help people get rid of every unpleasant thing in their lives.
We have focused on this for centuries, I am afraid, and we have never grasped God’s point of view: that God is working something which can never be worked in any other way than by letting us go through crises in our lives, individually and together.
I often used to think, “Dear Lord, how are You going to get Your bride, Your church, into perfection? There is such a short time left, and we are so unholy. There is such a lack in our lives of being like You. How are You going to do it?”
I am sure this is what we are talking about tonight. This is the way God is going to purify and complete His people: through the crises that are ahead of us. That is why it is important that we understand them and see them clearly in God’s light.
Let me say one thing more about worshipping the Lord. I know I have been worshipping the Lord for every blessing I have received. But I found the other day that what caused the biggest and most fantastic worship in the Book of Revelation was another crisis—the biggest crisis that has ever been on earth.
When we come home and join all the saints in worshipping the Lord, we will be worshipping Him in a certain way. If you look in Revelation 5, you will see what causes this tremendous worship that is so wonderful and profound.
Revelation 5:6 says:
And I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures,
And in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain,
Having seven horns, and seven eyes,
Which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth.
Revelation 5:9 says:
Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof:
For Thou wast slain,
And didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.
Revelation 5:11-12 says:
And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne
And the living creatures and the elders;
And the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;
Saying with a great voice,
Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain
To receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might,
And honour, and glory, and blessing.
The Lamb that was slain. Why not the King in His splendour, in His majesty, in His beautiful robe, with His golden sceptre? But a Lamb that was slain, pointing back to the biggest crisis of all crises.
We will worship the Lord for that reason. We will magnify Him for that one reason: for that great crisis in His life that became the biggest blessing of all blessings.
When we look into the New Testament and study the church of the first generation, we see that they were used to crisis. We are not the only generation of God’s people that will have to face crisis. They went through a lot of tremendous crises.
When we look in Acts 4, we have the first crisis they ran into. The apostles were brought before the council and threatened with severe punishment if they would go on teaching in the name of Jesus.
Acts 4:1-4 says:
And as they spake unto the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them,
Being sore troubled because they taught the people, and proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.
And they laid hands on them, and put them in ward unto the morrow: for it was now eventide.
But many of them that heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand.
They were captured and put before the council, and we read in the story how they were threatened. This naturally led to a crisis. Do you not think so? If the leaders of the church are captured and threatened with severe punishment, it is a crisis, and it will lead God’s people into crisis.
Many church leaders in other parts of the world are experiencing this and have been experiencing it for many years. But in our part of the world, it is an unknown thing. I think we must prepare ourselves that we can come into that kind of crisis even where we are living.
What was the outcome of that crisis? What did the crisis lead to? Acts 4:23-24 says:
And being let go, they came to their own company,
And reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them.
And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord.
In other words, a crisis can lead to prayer. It very often does. If there is no other way God’s people can learn to pray, He has a way.
I have the feeling that it will be necessary for God to allow some very severe crises for His people in order to teach them corporate prayer. At least in the part of the world where I usually travel, in Scandinavia, I am amazed to see how few of the people in the church have really understood the necessity of corporate prayer.
The blessings have not taught us, have they? Can I be honest with you tonight? The blessings of the Lord in my life have unfortunately not taught me to be an intercessor. I should think that would be the most perfect way normally. When the Lord is showing us His grace and His blessings, we should respond to Him and obey His words.
But I must confess that I am not that kind of perfect Christian. It took a big personal crisis in my life to teach me to pray. Now, if that is the result of a crisis, I think we should be thankful for crisis.
Yes, I am just about to say that I think we should invite them—welcome them—because we need to learn to pray together. If there is no other way, and it does not seem that there is another way, then we can learn it when we are coming into crisis.
They began to pray with one accord. That is a wonderful result. That is a tremendous blessing, which has much more value than many of the other blessings that we have.
None of the charismatic blessings taught me to pray. The crisis has at least brought me into the need of beginning to bow my knees and pray.
The result of the corporate prayer was something wonderful. At the close of the prayer, Acts 4:31-32 says:
And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together;
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit,
And they spake the word of God with boldness.
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul:
And not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own;
But they had all things common.
I have thought a lot about this statement and how we should be able to come into such an expression of the body of Christ that we could get rid of all our privatism and individualism, which hinder us from becoming a people with one heart and one soul.
I am sure that the Lord is longing for that to come about in His church today. I am sure that one reason why we in the Western world have such a poor experience of that blessed and wonderful unification—melting together into one heart and one soul, living as a big family that can share everything we have—is that we have had a severe lack of crisis.
We could not get blessed into it, so to speak. God’s people in our part of the world would have become one soul and one heart if, for instance, charismatic blessings could have done it. But I think we need crisis to experience that kind of spiritual unification and real expression of the body of Christ amongst us.
That was the first crisis of the early church, and what fruit came out of it! The blessings of crisis are tremendous.
If we go on to the next one, we find it in Acts 6, because the Book of Acts is almost a report of crises, and only crises, in the early church.
Acts 6:1-4 says:
Now in these days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying,
There arose a murmuring of the Grecian Jews against the Hebrews,
Because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.
And the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said,
It is not fit that we should forsake the word of God, and serve tables.
Look ye out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men of good report,
Full of the Spirit and of wisdom,
Whom we may appoint over this business.
Here is another crisis: a crisis of disagreement in the church, of contention and strife between two different groups. I think we know something of that crisis in our different fellowships.
Whenever we have disagreement, or possibly parties, in our fellowship or church, we become shocked. We believe that God is leaving it all, and we wonder what will become of us. We try the best we can to avoid any disagreement, even to the degree of trying to conform one another and rule over one another.
I do not think we should be that afraid of such a crisis. Disagreement is unavoidable. Of course, the Lord wants us to be one people and to be in agreement with one another, but not as a theory and not as a doctrine.
If we are ever going to be a people that are united, we need crisis to do it for us. Here were two different groups beginning to quarrel with one another. But what did the crisis lead to? That is the interesting thing. What was the outcome of this crisis?
For a start, we can read in Acts 6:3, “Select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” I do not know whether the apostles had been too slow to understand that they should appoint other servants of the Lord and get them into ministry.
But I notice that we can very easily come into a situation in the church where we have the status quo. Nothing is happening. There is no development, and no one is coming out into ministry. If we are going to move on, I think we need a crisis sometimes to open our eyes to the great need for someone else to begin to minister and take up responsibility.
As we can see here, the immediate result of this crisis was seven men, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, beginning to minister. That is a wonderful result. If we can get that result, I think we should not be too afraid of crisis.
We should understand that if there is going to be any growth and development, we need crisis. An old servant of God used to say to me, “Johannes, where there is life, there is trouble.” That is very true. Where there is life, there is trouble, difficulties, and even sometimes disagreements.
God is trying to get us on the move and perhaps push someone into ministry. When we have settled down, we may have the apostles, perhaps, and be satisfied with the number of full-time servants of the Lord we have for the time being. But God wants us to go on. He wants development in the ministry.
I think we need a crisis sometimes to get on the move, growing and coming into ministry.
But there was another wonderful result of this crisis. Acts 6:7 says:
And the word of God increased;
And the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly;
And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
There was a great increase in the number of disciples. Sometimes we have the feeling that if that is going to happen, we need an evangelistic campaign, a good evangelist, and some good old evangelistic outreach meetings. Then we can have an increase of disciples.
But perhaps a crisis is more efficient. Oh, the blessings of crisis, brothers and sisters, when we see the Lord in it, open up, and humble ourselves.
Acts 8:1 describes another crisis coming out of the one we have just been considering:
And Saul was consenting unto his death.
And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church which was in Jerusalem;
And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.
That is very surprising, is it not? The whole church is scattered. Can you imagine? It was quite a large church in Jerusalem. Can you imagine coming to your church on Sunday morning and finding only the elders left, while all the rest have suddenly gone? The whole church is gone. Well, that is a crisis, is it not?
That must have been a tremendous blow. It is unbelievable. Maybe they said to one another, “Well, that is it. We came that far, and now it is all over. Thank you. Goodbye.”
If you use your imagination, you will agree that it must have been tremendous to experience that the whole church was suddenly scattered, just like that.
But when we look at the outcome of this crisis, Acts 8:4 says:
They therefore that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.
We know that the Word of God was proclaimed in the whole country. Aha, I am beginning to see something that I never learned in the manual for evangelistic work. I never saw one point entitled, “Evangelization by persecution.”
Did you see that in your manual or book of instruction? I went to Bible school once; I never heard about this: evangelization by persecution.
But I believe that if we are going to evangelize our country—at least where I come from—God has to do something very, very strong. He must give us a severe crisis.
We settle down in our small different denominations, churches, and fellowships, having a nice time, praying for a soul to get saved, having the annual Easter campaign, calling an evangelist to prepare the ground, and getting one or two saved. But we will never reach the country in that way.
Through the crisis here, the Word of God was spread all over the country.
We move on to Acts 12, and I had better make that the last example, because otherwise we have to go through the whole book. This is a book of crisis.
Acts 12:1-3 says:
Now about that time Herod the king put forth his hands to afflict certain of the church.
And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.
And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.
And those were the days of unleavened bread.
That was another crisis, was it not? James was murdered, and Peter was arrested, no doubt with the same purpose in view—that he also should be put to death.
Imagine some of our church leaders, or some of God’s servants, being put to death. Certainly that would cause a great crisis in the church and the fellowship in our cities and places.
But we read in Acts 12:5:
Peter therefore was kept in the prison:
But prayer was made earnestly of the church unto God for him.
I see a link here. Peter was kept in prison, and prayer was being made fervently by the church. I see God’s hand keeping Peter in prison in order to teach the church to pray fervently—fervently, not just the ordinary stuff.
Our prayers are often merely intellectual prayers. As a Danish class says, “Since heaven is not listening to them, why should we?” We need to learn to pray with our hearts, to call upon God, to cry to God, and to pray fervently.
But I wonder whether we have any reason to do it unless somehow we realize or experience a crisis in the land or in our needs.
There was an old Catholic monk who, at the end of his life, said to the Lord, “I thank You, Lord, for all the blessings You have bestowed upon me. But, Lord, I thank You all the more for the crises that You allowed in my life. The crises taught me to run into Your bosom.”
That is true. Crisis will teach us to pray as nothing else can. I am sure that we are facing severe crisis as the people of God, and I am sure that God has a plan with that. He wants us to learn to pray fervently with our hearts.
This was a result of what happened. Of course, it was also a great testimony when Peter was released from prison. That is true. But I think the joy was even greater when he discovered that the church had begun to pray fervently.
What a result! What a fruit! What a blessing! Thank God for crisis that can really get us on our faces and teach us to cry, pray fervently, and pray on—even sometimes, as in this case, praying after the answer is knocking on the door.
We need that kind of crisis that can really stir us up and keep us going, praying fervently.
But Acts 12:24 also says:
But the word of God grew and multiplied.
Whatever happened, you name the crisis, you take any of the crises in the first church, and everywhere it says that the number of disciples increased, the Word of God grew, the Word of God multiplied, and the church prayed.
I do not think there would have been much of Acts without crisis, do you?
Of course, all these crises that we are facing, and the victories that the Lord will bring us into through these crises, have their background in the one great crisis of the cross in Jesus Christ, where the greatest crisis was turned into the greatest victory of all victories.
Romans 8:28. We know all these things in our minds, but I am sure that the Lord wants this to become living experience in our lives individually, as well as for the church.
Romans 8:28 says:
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good,
Even to them that are called according to His purpose.
But the word know here is not intellectual knowledge; it is life experience. We know from experience that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him.
Romans 8:31-32 says:
What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,
How shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all—how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Because of that crisis, and the victory through that crisis, all other crises are being turned into victories for His people, for those who love Him.
But how on earth can we really experience that God is for us if nobody is against us? Have you thought about that? It is all right to say, “God is for us,” but hopefully there is someone against us also, so that we can experience it really as a reality. Do you understand?
Romans 8:33 says:
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?
It is God that justifieth.
It is wonderful to know that God is the One who justifies by the precious blood. But tell me, how will you really get some experience of the efficiency and power of the blood of Jesus Christ if there is no charge against you?
It is when charges are coming against us that we know the efficiency of the blood of Jesus, and that God is the One who justifies us.
Romans 8:34 says:
Who is he that shall condemn?
It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead,
Who is at the right hand of God,
Who also maketh intercession for us.
How can I experience the power of His resurrection life if there is no one condemning me now and then? Do we understand? Do we understand the purpose of crisis? It is to bring us into real experience of the Lord Jesus Christ and His victory upon the cross.
There is no other way. You can have teaching; you can have one message after another about the blood of Jesus Christ and the resurrection life, but it is never going to mean a thing to you before you are out there where the enemy has brought some charges against you and you feel condemnation trying to get a hold upon you.
Then, when you are in the crisis, you are about to receive the blessing—to experience the victory in His tremendous crisis on the cross. You will experience that nobody can be against us when God is for us, and that He who did not spare His own Son has freely given us all things.
All crises, all problems—not only all the gifts of the Spirit, all the blessings, healing, joy, and peace, but also all the crises, all the problems, all the enemies, and all the circumstances—He has freely given them unto us.
I do believe that one day the devil will be sorry that he murdered the Son of God. Sometimes I think we should never underestimate the power of the enemy, but on the other hand, we should never overestimate him.
I do believe there is a lack of wisdom in the enemy. He cannot understand this kind of thing. How can there be victory through dying? He never understood that.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:6-8:
We speak wisdom, however, among them that are fullgrown:
Yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nought:
But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery,
Even the wisdom that hath been hidden,
Which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory:
Which none of the rulers of this world knoweth:
For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
The rulers of this age, and behind them the prince of this world, never understood the wisdom of God. If he had understood it, he would never have crucified the Lord of glory. He would never have invented that tremendous crisis in history if he had known the wisdom of God.
He would never have invented martyrdom in the church.
I was reading church history the other day about Bishop Polycarp, who was martyred by death in the year 155. He dreamt one night that his pillow was burning, and immediately he understood that he was going to be burned alive.
On Easter Saturday, he was brought to be burned alive. While he was standing there, they were going to tie him, as they used to tie those who were burned in order to prevent them from running away when the flames began to work on them.
But Polycarp said, “The One who has kept me steadfast until this day will keep me even in this hour. There is no need for you to bind my hands or my feet.”
He stood there and was burned to death, singing songs of glory. But the interesting thing that really did something in my heart was the final phrase in that church history: from that day on, the number of Christians increased much.
Is that not incredible? From that day on, due to the death of Bishop Polycarp in the year 155, the number of Christians increased much. Who can understand that such a crisis in church history, where the bishop himself was taken away, could produce that result?
All the blessings of crisis! What God can do in a crisis with His people when we really understand it and have His point of view in whatever we are in now, or whatever we are going to go through in the future.
It is a hard future. There are signs of great disturbance, difficulties, problems, and crisis ahead of us. But God will use it all to fulfil His work with His church and to complete it, leading her into completion.
We ought to have a completely different attitude in our hearts. I can never forget one of the dear old sisters who prayed for many, many years in Denmark, Anna Mikkelsen, who passed away three weeks ago to be with the Lord.
I used to call upon her and ask for her prayers when there was trouble in the work. When there is trouble in the world, you know how to find those who are praying, do you not?
Whenever I picked up the telephone and called her because there was some problem, she always started to respond in this way: “Praise the Lord, Johannes. Now there is an opportunity.”
In the beginning, I could not understand it. I thought, “Could she not express herself a little more compassionately? Here am I standing, and the whole thing is falling apart. Now I have problems, and I am phoning to get some help, and she is always saying, ‘Praise the Lord. Now there is an opportunity.’”
She always said that. So when I spoke at her funeral, I began by saying, “Now there is an opportunity. Praise the Lord.” An opportunity for someone else to get into her ministry.
I was amazed to see the number of young people who showed up at the prayer meeting. I had struggled with that church to get the young people to the prayer meeting; they would not show up. It was the usual thirty-five old ladies in the prayer meeting. Thank God for those.
But now young people are coming to the prayer meeting. I am amazed. A crisis produced something. Thank God, there is an opportunity. I will never forget it.
Oh, brothers and sisters, we must get to know the Lord in a deeper way. We must open our hearts, and we must, like Jacob, begin to worship the Lord—not for our gifts, not for our various blessings, but worship Him for our difficulties, for our problems, and for our crises.
May the Lord really help us. I was amazed to read a statistic the other day. In Burma, which as I understand it is a country where Christianity is totally forbidden by law, the Baptists had their seventy-fifth anniversary.
On that day, in a country where Christianity is forbidden, they baptized in one day 6,124 new converts. They used one hundred men to do the job because they had to be quick before it was discovered. Praise the Lord.
I have not heard about that in our part of the world—anything of that size, 6,125 newly saved persons.
In Siberia, in 1979, more than one million people had been saved. That devastated place has seen far more than we have experienced in all of Scandinavia and all of Europe.
In 1979, the number of confessing Christians grew by twenty thousand in Europe. I nearly laughed when I saw that a Lutheran priest living close to my home wrote in the local paper that he had one hundred people attending his worship service every Sunday.
Well, it is all right. God bless him. But we are losing and losing in our part of the world. In other places, where Christianity is forbidden by law, the church of God is growing. The numbers of disciples are increasing.
What is the problem? Have we not got the same Holy Spirit? Have we not got the same Bible? Yes, we have got that, but we have not got the same crisis.
Oh, may the Lord really teach us to use the crises we have now, worship God in them, thank God for them, see God in them, grow, and learn from them.
Then, when bigger crises are coming, we will really experience that the church of God will grow both in quality and quantity.
Thank God for all our problems. Let us start right away, brothers and sisters. Let us understand that for too long we have been all too much occupied with getting released from everything and anything that was hurtful and unpleasant, and have failed to see what God is doing and wants to do in our lives.
Lord, we praise You. We praise You that You are so big and so great that You could triumph in all these terrible things that came against You.
That You can bring about more than victory through all the hardships, difficulties, and trials that Your people are going through. Lord, we have tasted victory, but we must say that we have never really experienced being more than victors.
Lord, our lives are so shallow. Our experiences are weak. But Lord, we ask You to give us grace that we may worship You in the midst of all the difficulties that we are now passing through.
Will You please, Lord, prepare Your people for the time ahead of us. Equip us and teach us, Lord, for the time ahead of us, that we shall not be taken by surprise, but that we shall be a people well prepared and know the Lord.
In Jesus’ name, amen.