Well, turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew—Matthew Chapter 24.
And as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man lead you astray.
For many shall come in My name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled; for these things must needs come to pass; but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places.
But all these things are the beginning of travail.
Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all the nations for My name’s sake.
And then shall many stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one another.
And many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead many astray.
And because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold.
But he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.
So we bow together in a word of prayer.
Father, we want to thank You this morning that we are gathered here in Your presence, and that we sense already that You have been receiving us. And now, Lord, we come to Your Word, and we just want to confess in Your presence that without You we can do nothing.
I can speak; we can hear. But, Lord, there will be nothing of real and eternal value out of this morning unless, Lord, You are our grace and power. You are our anointing.
Therefore, because, Lord, You have so graciously provided that anointing, we want by faith to appropriate it for the speaker and for the hearer alike.
Dear Lord, will You somehow write something on our hearts, and speak in such a way into our spirits that it will become flesh and blood, that it will become our very life, our very being?
Lord, we commit ourselves to You now, with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, there is no need to tell you that the theme of this conference has been “Thy kingdom come.” I am sure that you are all aware of that, and if you are not, I wonder what you have been doing the last few days.
Some Christians are unbelievable, the way they sleep with their eyes open—especially in meetings. It is an amazing sort of evolutionary process that has taken place amongst Christians in particular.
But I am sure that here in this conference you are well aware of the theme of our time, and I think most of you will know that my responsibility has been this gospel of the kingdom.
I want just to underline this one verse in Matthew Chapter 24:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.
I want to underline, first of all—because of time, I do not want to spend any more time in introduction—this word: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world.”
There is a command of the King: that you and I should preach the gospel in the whole world. It is an imperative command.
No one—no child of God, no Christian leader, no theologian—has any right to contradict that command of the Lord Jesus.
Almost one of the last things He said before He was taken up into the heavens was:
All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you:
and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
In other words, we have not an “if,” or a possibility, but a commission—a command—which was almost the very last thing that the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, to those who would be His followers, to His church, to His redeemed. We were to go into the whole world and preach this gospel.
Mark Chapter 16:15 puts it this way:
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.
I think that is an interesting word. Of course, in a sense it means, obviously, the inhabited earth, but it is interesting that the word is used. There is no getting out of this.
We are not to stay in North America. We are not to stay in Europe. We are not to stay in some nice little holy huddle somewhere, where things are a little more pleasant—except for the collisions we have with one another. We are to go out into the whole world with this gospel of the kingdom.
Now, there has been a teaching that has relegated this gospel of the kingdom to the millennium. It has made a division between the gospel of our Lord Jesus, the gospel of grace, and the gospel of the kingdom. It says that the gospel of the kingdom is only to be preached in the millennium.
I think—and I am not going to spend time on it—I think it is so ridiculous myself. Anyone who has any sense at all has only to compare the words of the Lord Jesus in one Gospel with the words of the Lord Jesus in another Gospel, and you will discover that what is in some called the gospel of the kingdom of God is called in others the gospel of the kingdom of heaven.
And, of course, we have the gospel of the Lord Jesus and this gospel of the kingdom.
Now, what I believe is very simple. It is this gospel of the kingship of God; this gospel concerning God’s King; this gospel concerning the abounding grace of God, by which He gives us an entrance into this kingdom and restores to us the possibility of coming to the throne of God by the grace of God alone.
This gospel of the glory of God, this gospel of our Lord Jesus—this gospel has been entrusted to those who are followers of the Lord Jesus, to be preached in the whole world.
We have no business to be disengaged from this commission. I want to put it in the strongest language: it is possible—it is a sin and a transgression—for the people of God not to be involved, practically and relevantly, in the preaching of the gospel of this kingdom in the whole world.
Now, I do not know sometimes what is wrong with us, but we are such finite people, and I have no doubt that the Lord understands that. For some strange reason, we are unable in our minds to contain more than one truth at a time.
Once we have this truth of gospel work, as we call it, we are not for anything to do with conferences or anything to do with the deepening of spiritual life. We are all concentrated on evangelistic crusades, evangelistic work, missionary work, getting out to the people, and everything else. We have no time for those, we feel, who just sit at home and study their Bibles and talk about deepening of spiritual life and maturity.
But likewise, those who see something of the church are often totally disengaged from gospel work, as if by seeing the purpose of God, as if by seeing the goal of God, this automatically disqualifies us. It automatically, as it were, exempts us from the work of the gospel.
My dear friend, there is no such thing. These two vital matters must go hand in hand.
The church has to be built, as our brother said last night, with living stones. Where do the living stones come from? Do we pinch them from other coops? I mean, where do they come from?
Where do these living stones come from? They are men saved by the grace of God in our midst. They are men who, by our life and our testimony together as God’s people, come to know the Lord through our witness, through our life together, through our being conformed to the image of God’s Son.
We have no business to ignore this commission of our risen and glorified King.
There are those who ignore it and feel that they have a right to ignore it because they are dwelling on what they feel to be more important matters—to do with the bride, to do with the city of God, to do with the end and goal of the Lord. So they feel that they are exempted. They can ignore this matter and leave it to others.
Now, I am not saying that all of us feel that the others are kindergarten, that they are sort of inferior. But there is a kind of atmosphere that goes, just because we are normal human beings, that once we have seen something more, we feel, “We will leave it to those who see something less.”
And so we leave the whole matter of the gospel to those we feel are children, really. They are superficial, you know—shallow. They do not really see this matter of the throne of God, of the bride of God, of the body of the Lord Jesus.
So we are leaders. We can ignore this commission because we must give ourselves to a far more important matter. My dear friend, we cannot ignore this matter, nor can we bypass it, as if by concentrating on something which is essential in the purpose of God we can leave something else just as essential and just as fundamental.
If we ignore, bypass, or nullify this commission of the King, it is disobedience. And disobedience brings a snare and a bondage upon any life. It brings a snare and a bondage on any fellowship of God’s people, any assembly of God’s people.
This command is quite clear. I have already, I hope, underlined that; I hardly need to do so again. It is to be preached in the whole world—not necessarily and only in our own homeland. It is the whole world.
Now, this does not mean that all of us can go to the whole world. We are not meant by this commission to become world travellers, flitting from place to place. That is not what the Lord means.
But we are to have a vision that is worldwide. It is not confined to a locality or to a nation, but it is a worldwide horizon. It is a worldwide vision.
We are to pray for those in the front line of the battle. We are to pray for the work of the Lord in these areas of the world where it is, as it were, pioneer work.
We are to pray that the Lord will help us not only to pray; sometimes we should give. Sometimes there are many other ways in which we can be involved in this.
Now, I want you to notice—and I underline this; I shall come back to it again in a moment—it is till the end of the age.
Our Lord gave a specific promise to those who fulfil this command:
And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
In other words, until this gospel of the kingdom has reached its goal, until it has been fulfilled in being preached in the whole world, the Lord gives us a specific promise that His presence will be with us.
That is, all His grace will be with us. All His power will be with us. All His wisdom will be with us. All His resources are available to us. The Lord has made a specific promise.
I hear this promise claimed by all kinds of people who have never moved out of their home. They have hardly even moved out of their seat to win another person for the Lord. But this promise is conditional.
We are to go and make disciples of all nations, and, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”
This is not to say that the Lord is not with you when you do not necessarily get involved in gospel work. But what I am saying is this: we have a specific promise that the Lord’s heart is so much in this matter that He promises to be personally with us in the person of the Holy Spirit.
He promises to be with us with all His grace, all His power, all His wisdom, all His gifts, and all His resources, until this commission is fulfilled.
I want you to notice that this is not some kind of simple gospel that is to be preached—just the gospel that proclaims that you are forgiven, that Jesus died. It is the gospel of the kingdom. That is the fullest description that we have for the gospel.
That includes not only the saving grace of God, but the purpose of the Lord and the end of the Lord.
Is it not a very interesting thing that our Lord, in the version in Matthew, says, “Go ye therefore”? Not, “Go ye therefore, and preach the gospel in the whole world.” No. Not, “Go ye therefore, and convert all nations.” No. Not, “Go ye therefore, and make members of the church.” No.
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit;
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.
In other words, there you have the whole meaning of the cross. You have the whole meaning of life abundant by the Spirit of God, in the meaning and testimony of baptism, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you.
This is no small gospel. This is no gospel just asking for some decision, for a hand to be put up, a little piece of paper to be signed.
I do not want to devalue or despise the many who have come to know the Lord in that very simple way. But, my dear friends, I have to tell you something.
I think this term “born again” has been bandied about, especially in the North American media, in such a way that it has devalued the whole concept of a new birth.
I fear very greatly that there are thousands upon thousands within evangelical churches, and even sometimes other fundamentalist groups, that are not truly born of God. They have entertained something without any making of their calling sure.
I could give examples of this, but then it would take me away from really what I want to say this morning.
We have an imperative command here, and it makes some of us feel very uncomfortable. We have no business not to obey.
But now I want to say just something else. Do you think our Lord is just interested in heads? All He wants is to get numbers into the kingdom? He wants some kind of vindication for Himself, as if that is all He is interested in?
My dear friend, why did the Lord Jesus say, “And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age,” unless His heart is in this matter? Unless there is something so on His heart in this matter that He wants to share it with us?
My dear friends, I know it is beyond our understanding. It is almost incredible to us.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.
It sounds almost trite to say that God loves this world. It is very hard for me to think that the way the Lord loves me, He loves one of the millions and millions of Indian people. Do you understand what I am trying to say?
Well, let me put it another way. There are hundreds of millions of Indians in the Indian subcontinent, and every one of them is loved by God and known by God.
There are nearly a billion Chinese in mainland China, and every single one of them is loved by God and known by God.
Now, I say that blows my mind. I think, “Well, the Lord cannot do it. He has not got a computer big enough. He is not able, as it were, to store all the information about everyone—their life, their birth, their genetic history, their temperament, their personality, the way they were born, their feelings, their longings.”
But there is not one in this world who is not loved by God: the proud Jew, the terrorist, the British, the Germans, the Russians, the Marxists, the capitalists—there is no one of them.
You see, we cannot take it in. There is something in us that says, “Of course, the Lord knows me. I am special. I mean, I caught His eye.”
“Well, well, well, look at that. There is someone there who is very special. I must take an interest in him. I will take an interest in her. She has a real personality, a flair. She has caught My eye.”
You see, we have got this idea—this Islamic idea—of a distant God. Every now and again, impartial and impersonal as He is, His eye gets caught by a flash of colour or a little explosion somewhere in this human scene, and He looks down and says, “Give Me My telescope.”
Then He sort of fastens upon that person and studies them very carefully. He says, “Well, well, well, I think I will save that person. It is a very interesting person.”
This is an Islamic idea of God. It is not the God of revelation. It is not the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus.
It is beyond us to understand that God knows every human being, no matter what their colour, what their race, what their background, what their conditions. And the Lord Jesus gave Himself for every human being.
My dear friends, when the Lord Jesus, in the very last moments before He ascended, said, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations,” it was not that He was just saying, “Now look, I want you to do this because it is a duty as far as I am concerned. I want heaven to be filled with trophies. I want to be able to boast about this one and that one and the other.”
“I want all these kinds of people in heaven as a sort of glory for Me.” My dear friends, perish the thought.
The Lord Jesus loves this world. He loved it so much that He came into this world, was born in Bethlehem, and lived for thirty-three years, enduring the contradiction and gainsaying of sinners, that in the end He might offer Himself up on the cross for the world.
That He might save all those who believe, whoever they are, whatever they are.
Almost the last thing He said was, “Go. Go with this love that is in My heart, that can be in your heart. Go, and make disciples of all nations.”
Preach the love of God. Preach the grace of God. Preach the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. Let them not only come into the kingdom of God, but let them discover My heart. Let them discover My purpose. Let them know that I want them to come to My throne.
Oh, how we have failed in this matter.
I want you to remember just one other matter in connection with this. There was a prophet—the Hebrew prophet, a Jewish prophet. He was a faithful man, a good man. He knew his Bible. He knew the covenant that God made with our people. His name was Jonah.
Some day, probably in his quiet time, God said to him, “Go to Nineveh.”
And Jonah said, “Nineveh? You must have made a mistake, Lord. You meant Nazareth. No, no, no. Nineveh? Never, never, never!”
He did not wait to inquire any more. He fled from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and bought a ticket on a boat going in the opposite direction to Nineveh.
It is an amazing story. You know the story, do you not?
But the Lord understood His servant’s heart. This dear Jonah has become for me a picture of myself, and has become a picture of the people of God at any given time in history.
You see, the Assyrians were the cruelest of all people. They were hateful, filled with the most abominable idolatry. Their idols were monstrous. But far more terrible than even their monstrous idols was their way of murdering other races and nations.
They were the first to crucify—not by nailing to a cross, but by putting a person impaled on a stake.
Oh, Jonah, he was only interested in one thing. The Lord talked about judgment, but in Jonah’s heart he knew the Lord a little. So he felt, “No, I know the Lord. If I start talking about judgment, and those people show the slightest sign of repentance, He will forgive them.”
“And I am not interested in their being forgiven. I am only interested in their being liquidated.”
Now, my dear friends, we laugh, but it comes very near to us. When you have suffered, as some of us have, from other nations and other peoples, that is exactly how sometimes we feel.
We are not interested in their being saved. We are interested in the judgment of God falling on them.
Jonah got this ticket on this cargo merchant ship going in the opposite direction to Nineveh, and God arranged a storm.
The storm got more and more furious. All the sailors and the captain called upon their idols, and nothing happened. Finally someone said, “There is a man here. He seems to know his own God, and I think he might be the problem.”
The captain went to him and said, “Do you know anything about this storm?”
Jonah said, “Yes. It is the God of Israel.”
The captain said, “Well, what have you done?”
Jonah said, “The only way you can get rid of this storm is to throw me overboard.” At least he was honest—a good deal more honest than some of us.
But the Lord had not only prepared a storm; He prepared a fish. When Jonah was thrown overboard, he was swallowed by the fish. I believe that. I have seen enough miracles in my life to believe that God could easily produce a fish. No problem.
But then we have one of the most amazing things in the whole of the Old Testament—in fact, the whole of the Bible, really. We have a prayer meeting inside a fish’s stomach.
There are some amazing prayer meetings at different times: prayer meetings in dungeons, prayer meetings amongst lions, prayer meetings in fiery furnaces. But never anywhere have we ever heard of a prayer meeting inside a fish’s stomach.
But here is another very amazing thing. Jonah remembered the word of the Lord to King Solomon:
If You will turn toward the place where I have caused My name to dwell, and confess your sins, then will I hear, and I will forgive, and I will bring you back.
How Jonah knew which way Jerusalem was in the fish’s belly, I do not know. He must have said, “Now, Lord, I may be facing the wrong direction, but please take it that I am facing Jerusalem.”
He prayed, “Lord, hear this. I have sinned against You.” And the Lord gave the poor fish a stomach ache, and it coughed out Jonah on the sand.
The Lord said, “Jonah, are you ready to go to Nineveh?” And Jonah said, “Yes.”
Jonah now said, “Well, Lord, I am not going to ask any more. I am not going to ask what You are going to do, or anything. I am going to go to Nineveh, and I am going to preach this gospel of judgment to Nineveh in such a way that my whole heart and being is going to be in it.”
And he did. Then the most amazing thing happened. Jonah had never seen anything like this in all his years in Israel.
He had preached the judgment of God. He had preached the anger of God. He preached the covenant of God, and never had the Israelites, at any point, repented.
But in Nineveh, from the royal family down, the whole city—the aristocracy, the nobility, the people of the city—all fasted and repented. They even put sackcloth and ashes on the cows and the horses.
And the Lord said, “I cannot do this. I am going to forgive them.”
Then Jonah was so upset. “Lord,” he said, “You have sent me all this way and gone to all this trouble. I want to see these people judged. They are wicked people.”
You know the whole story, do you not? You know how Jonah went out in a terrible depression that many of us get when we find our theological concepts are not right.
Suddenly we discover that this whole theology we have had for years is not quite right, and we go into a deep, deep depression. He went out, and he sulked.
Then a gourd grew up. And this awful east wind—if you know anything about east wind—I suspect that Jonah suffered from it. Many of us, including myself, get a certain type of headache when this hamsin, or this sharav, this wind from the east, blows strongly. Jonah was no exception.
Then this gourd grew up and went right over him and sheltered him. The greenness of it and the pleasantness of it delighted him. Then a little worm got into the root, and suddenly it died.
Jonah was so upset. “Lord, Lord! You are perfectly capable of killing that little worm. Why did You let that worm get into this gourd?”
Then the Lord said, “Jonah, you are so concerned about that gourd that came up in one day and died in a day, and you are not even the least bit bothered about this whole nation.”
“How could I judge this nation with all these little toddlers that cannot tell their left hand from their right, when their elders have repented? And what about the domestic animals?”
I suggest to you that that was the biggest shock Jonah ever had: the Lord knew the little toddlers in Nineveh. He actually knew all about them.
It was a terrible shock to Jonah. He thought the Lord only had time for His covenant people. He only knew the toddlers who belonged to the children of His covenant people.
He knew that the Lord had said things about how to treat your donkey, your ass, and your camel. It was all within the Word of God. But that was for the covenant people.
He never thought that the Lord knew the domestic animals in a wicked city like Nineveh that had nothing whatsoever to do with the promised land.
Now, my dear friends, this is you and me so often. When we begin to see the deeper things, when we begin to see something of the purpose of God, then somehow or other we become exclusive very often, and we shut out from our minds this whole world that is suffering beyond us.
As if God is only interested in us and our meetings. As if we are the only recipients of His love. As if He never loved anyone else.
As far as we are concerned, the sooner the Lord comes and damns the world, the better. Let it be judged. Let it be destroyed. Let it all go, as long as we are saved.
But, my dear friend, this gospel of the kingdom is to be preached in the whole world because God loves this world.
He loves it so much that He gave His only begotten Son for it. The Lord Jesus came into this world because He loved this world.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
My dear friends, when we begin to understand this, a whole lot of things fall into place.
But I have to watch time, because we are pressed for it. I want to move to another point. I want you to look at this phrase: “for a testimony unto all nations.” I think that is very interesting.
This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all nations.
This preaching is more than words. It is more than the definition of truth. It is more than the outlining of truth or doctrine. It is a testimony.
Now, what is a testimony? A testimony has to be firsthand. It cannot be second-, third-, or fourth-hand. You can only give a testimony, you can only be a witness, if you have seen something yourself, if you were involved in some way directly.
You were personally involved in an accident or in something that happened. Then you can be a witness. Then you can give a testimony. You have to be alive to give a testimony. It has to be firsthand.
Now, what does this mean? Listen carefully. I think it means the preaching and the presence of the kingship of God—not just the preaching, but the presence.
In other words, “Lo, I am with you all the way to the end of the age.” It is not just a question of preaching, of outlining truth, of putting over theology, even though it may be sound doctrine and absolutely correct truth.
The presence of the King Himself has to be there, so that with the preaching of the gospel there is not only a declaration of the kingship of God, but a manifestation of the kingship of God.
Put it another way: the preaching of this gospel of the kingdom is to be authenticated by the presence of the King. Do you hear that?
You see, so very often we have got an idea that evangelism is just simply preaching some kind of message. There should be a manifestation of the presence of the Lord, a showing forth, if you like, of the presence of the King.
Now, I do not care how that manifestation takes place. I am going to say something more about it in a moment. But I do care that there are miracles.
What I mean is this: as long as there are lives torn out of the power of darkness, delivered from demonic bondage, and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son; as long as there are alcoholics who no longer want another drop of drink and can even come into the presence of it and have no desire for it.
As long as there are broken lives made whole—these are the miracles and the signs that are the most essential thing of all.
Wherever the gospel is preached, we do not expect one hundred percent success, as if everyone who hears it is going to believe. It is to be preached for a testimony unto all nations.
Our job is to declare the kingship of God. Our job is to present the grace of God. It is the work of our risen Lord, by the Spirit of God, to save those who believe.
Now, my dear friend, I want to take this one step further. I do hope you will forgive me, those of you who hold strong views on this matter, but I want to take it one step further.
You see, in my estimation, there is a teaching that has crippled this whole matter—the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom. That teaching is that we should not ever expect to see the Lord work to authenticate the preaching of the gospel.
We have to preach the gospel; people are to be converted. We run it like a North American sales business, with all the psychological pressure, all the salesmanship, and all the paraphernalia that goes with it.
My dear friends, I thank God that there are signs and wonders that follow the preaching of God’s Word. I personally do not believe they went out with the canon of the New Testament. I never have, and never will.
Maybe it is because I am Jewish, but I just cannot accept it. When I look at church history, I find that wherever this gospel of the kingdom has been preached, whole societies have been turned upside down. Nations have been permanently—or at least for a long time, for centuries and centuries—influenced by the preaching of that gospel.
The criminals got saved. The hopeless social outcasts got saved.
Oh, I could stop and tell you story after story from the early Reformation, from the Huguenots. I could tell you stories from the early Quakers, when they turned the whole British society inside out and upside down.
When two-thirds of the Quaker preachers were in prison at one time, do you know what they did? So many of the inmates of the prisons got saved that they became Bible schools, and those prisons became the Bible seminaries for Quaker preachers.
When they were released, they came out in their thousands to preach the gospel. My dear friends, you have no idea what has happened all the way through church history: the early Methodists, the early Brethren, the early Pentecostals. Wherever you go, you find the same thing.
My dear friends, you have an authentication of this preaching of the gospel of the kingdom.
Mark puts it this way, in Mark Chapter 16:
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.
And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in My name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues;
they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
I do not believe these are just things the Lord gave as marvellous examples. I know there are some groups who, in their meetings, have snakes and pick them up. Can you believe it? What is the point of it?
There have been cases in the Appalachian Mountains where people have drunk poison and died. They have missed the point of this.
What is the Lord saying? He is saying this: when the gospel is preached, there is an impact of the presence of the King. That is what the matter is.
You can take poison and tempt the Lord. It is not that you see a snake and say, “Now, I am going to pick it up in the name of the Lord.” I mean, that is stupid.
The fact of the matter is this: when you are put into a situation where you can trust the Lord, He will be with you, because He said, “Lo, I am with you to the end.”
My dear friend, I could spend a lot of time on this matter. I could talk about the Apostle Paul and how, again and again, he says, “My preaching was not just in wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of the power of God.”
Authentication.
I think the most wonderful thing is in Acts Chapter 1:1. I know most of you have seen this little phrase pointed out to you:
The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.
Now, this is Luke again. He wrote, by the Spirit of God, Acts. He had also written the Gospel of Luke. Now he tells us the most amazing thing.
Here is Jesus at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and here are one hundred and twenty members of His body, filled with the resurrection life and power of the Lord Jesus through the person of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, the whole thing begins again.
All that Jesus had done, the early church does. There are miracles, there are signs, there are marvellous things happening. Now, do not get me wrong.
There are Jameses who get beheaded, and Peters who have angels come to them, unlock every gate, and take them out. We never understand the sovereignty of the Lord in this matter.
But the fact of the matter is this: as we read through the Book of Acts, we discover that the body is the actual body of the Lord Jesus. The Head is still working through His body on earth—turning the world upside down, confronting them with the kingship of God, confronting them with the kingdom of God, confronting them with the power of God, confronting them with the truth of God.
This is this gospel, my dear friend.
Where has this idea come from, that gospel preaching is in an evangelistic meeting where we simply preach a simple gospel?
Now, please do not get me wrong on this thing. I thank God for the gospel wherever it is preached. I thank God for the way the Lord uses people.
I think of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who, when he was a boy, went into a little chapel in a little village somewhere in Essex, in East Anglia, and heard a man who could hardly speak the Queen’s English. He preached the simplest gospel.
Spurgeon said, “I could count every mistake he made.” Then the power of God fell on Spurgeon, and the great Haddon Spurgeon was saved.
I would not despise some dear brother preaching simply out of his heart by the power of God. But where has this idea come from that gospel work is somehow confined to an evangelistic meeting? Where does it come from? Surely we need to get out.
Well, I have to watch this time. There is another phrase in this verse I want just to underline: “Then shall the end come.”
Now, I want you to note that:
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.
In other words, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom for a testimony to all nations is operative to the very end.
We have no business to say that we will not be able to do it, or that we should not bother about it because now we are in the very last days. Right through to the end, this gospel of the kingdom is to be preached.
It is to be fulfilled in the midst of enormous upheaval and turmoil, in the midst of much persecution, tribulation, and affliction—antagonism from the society around us. This gospel of the kingdom has to be preached as a testimony unto all nations.
Where are we in this age? Of course, if we look at Matthew Chapter 24, we have a whole lot of signs that our Lord gave us about kingdom rising against kingdom, nation against nation, famines, earthquakes, plague diseases, and persecution.
We have to say—and I am not going to go into this fully; I just want to touch on it—we have to say that this last century has seen two world wars and a whole generation or two that has lived in nothing but the rumour of war.
It has only been literally in the last year that the thing has begun to relax a little, and that is only another stage in the fulfilment of God’s prophetic Word.
The fact of the matter is, we have never seen wars like we have seen in this century. We have never seen such turmoil. We have never seen such upheaval.
With it there have been earthquakes, and more to come. There have been famines, and many more to come. The reason being that ecologically we have damaged the earth probably beyond redemption until the Lord Jesus returns to put it right.
Big diseases? Well, we are seeing the beginning of such things. Persecution? Has there been any century in the whole history of the church and of Israel when more people have become martyrs for the name of our Lord Jesus than in this last century?
In the midst of it, the fig tree—they are back in its own soil. The judged, withered fig tree, the fig tree that disappeared altogether from its soil, is suddenly back in its soil, very lively.
They have tried to kill that fig tree again and again in the last forty years, and have done nothing but make it more virile and more powerful.
Dear friend, what can we say? We think of the words of the Lord:
Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
I am not going into politics on it. I just say these are the words of the Lord, whatever we think about the politics, whatever we feel about the Middle East situation.
The fact of the matter is, you have had a Jewish nation there for the first time in a thousand years. That fig tree is back in its soil, and Jerusalem is no longer trodden down by non-Jews. These are the words.
Where are we in this age? We must be near to the coming of the kingdom. We have to be.
If we look now at our present situation, suddenly we discover, to our amazement, that something happens in the Marxist world which is altogether unbelievable.
It happens in Poland. It goes from Poland to Hungary, from Hungary to Bulgaria, from Bulgaria to East Germany, from East Germany to Czechoslovakia, and from Czechoslovakia to Romania. It is unbelievable.
Suddenly, a whole area of the world that has been in the most iron-like bondage is released. They are having open-air meetings in Warsaw, open-air meetings in Budapest. People have been allowed to meet together freely. They can have Bible studies, prayer meetings, circulate literature, print Bibles.
It is the most unbelievable thing that has happened. A man who knows the Lord has come to the presidency of the Czechoslovak people. Another man, at least a committed, observant Catholic, has become prime minister of another one of those countries.
How is it that a person like me did not even know it? I did not know it was here last year. Would it not have been lovely if I could have said, “You know what? In a few months this is going to happen.”
You would have said, “Rubbish.” Then it would have happened, and I would not even have had to say to you, “There you are.” I would have kept quiet, and you would have come to me and said, “You know, you said that last year. That was remarkable.”
But I was as blind as anybody else in this matter.
Think of the Kremlin. Who would ever have thought that the Kremlin would allow a Christian service to be televised to the whole of the Soviet Union on Orthodox Christmas Eve? It is unbelievable.
I am not saying that the whole thing is wonderful. Of course not. There are still Marxists in charge of the Kremlin. But what is happening? Something unbelievable is happening.
We are on the threshold of a one-world leadership and a one-world government, because the whole West has now got to do something about shoring up these nations, and even the Soviet Union, lest they revert to a far worse totalitarianism.
We are very near to it. We do not want it. Many of the nations of the West, including the United States, do not want it. But I believe there will be a voluntary surrender of sovereignty on the part of many, many nations in the interests of world peace and world prosperity.
We are so near to it, dear friend. I think of Germany. I think of the European Common Market.
In the most unbelievable way, when I was first saved, an old Swedish aunt said to me, “The Holy Roman Empire will be revived like the Holy Roman Empire.”
I was interested in this because I had some relatives who were connected with aristocratic families in Habsburg. I said, “You must tell me more.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “it is going to be right across here, and, of course, it is going to take in this and take in this.” This was in 1944.
My dear friends, it is amazing what is happening in Europe, especially if Hungary comes into this, and Czechoslovakia, as it must, and East Germany, and probably part of Yugoslavia, possibly even part of Poland.
Then we have a most amazing thing: the growth of a block of nations in Europe that is destined to be the most powerful, the most wealthy, and the most influential factor in world history for the last part.
Now, my dear friends, let me just put it another way. I do not want to get too much into this. I want to go to one last point and finish.
My point is very simply this: if you have ears to hear this, you do not have to accept it.
In the beginning of the late thirties, there were two nations in this world governed by a pagan, a demonic pagan principality. One was Germany, and the other was Japan.
Both of them endlessly spoke of a new world order. They talked and talked until they were blue in the face about this new world order that they were going to bring to the world.
The Nazis were going to bring it to the whole of Europe in the great Reich that was going to last a thousand years and stretch from the Atlantic to the Urals. The Japanese thought the whole of Asia—China, Manchuria, all of Southeast Asia—was going to come into this great empire of Japan under the sun god.
They tried to do it by military means, and they failed.
It is interesting that these two nations have become the great economic miracles of the post-World War period.
Now, suddenly, we discover, with the decline of America—which I think is almost irreversible—Germany is going to reunite, not over years, but almost within weeks, by July the first, with a common currency and a common administration.
There is no doubt at all that Germany will be the greatest and most influential single factor in the European Common Market.
Is it not interesting? When Eastern Europe called upon the United States to help, and she felt unable to fully help as she wanted to, the United States called upon Germany to do something. Germany said, “We cannot do anything because we are trying to shore up East Germany.”
So Germany called on Japan, and the Prime Minister of Japan came straight to Bonn. He gave an unbelievable speech, which I think will mark, in days to come, one of the new turning points of world history. He said, “We are on the brink of a new world order.”
Dear friends, do not be afraid. This is most exciting. This means that you and I are just where Revelation Chapter 13 is. We, you and I, are actually here in Matthew Chapter 24.
Now listen to this. Here is the positive thing: we have a commission to preach the gospel of the kingdom in the whole world as a testimony unto all nations.
We do not know how long we have, but I have no doubt that there is a harvest to be reaped. You and I need to be involved in it.
So I must finish. Out of this comes an unavoidable challenge, and the challenge is this: How much are you, and how much am I, involved in this gospel of the kingdom being preached in the whole world?
As one gets older, one reflects more. If I had my time all over again, I would put a much greater emphasis on supporting those dear servants of God in the far-flung parts.
It has been my privilege to travel in many places—tropical rain forests, deserts. I have sometimes had to go alone to my room because I was so moved by seeing some of the faithful servants of God.
I could keep you here for an hour talking about different ones by name—those who have given their lives, the tribes who have suffered unbelievably, who have lived on a shoestring, who have hardly been known here in the West, hardly prayed for, let alone supported.
If I had my time over again, with my understanding—the little I have—of the church, the little I have of the purpose of God, the little I have of the absolute necessity of being together and related together, I would put myself unreservedly behind these people.
I remember on one occasion when an old lady approached me. She was dressed in a certain way and had a certain look about her, because she was not used to the West. She stood away from me with bowed head.
I said to her, “Do you want to say something?” “Yes,” she said.
I said, “Where are you from? You are from Indonesia?” “Indonesia?” she said. “I am not from Indonesia. I am from Nagaland.”
I said, “Do you know where Nagaland is?” She said, “Well, I do.” I told her exactly where it was, and a big smile came across her face.
Then she said to me, “Dear brother, I want to tell you that we pray for you in all our assemblies. Eighty-five percent of the Naga people have come to know the Lord Jesus. We pray for you everywhere. If you could come to us sometime.”
Thank God for whoever it was who first took the gospel.
On another occasion, a person approached me in yet another place. I did not know who they were, but they were obviously one of the tribes.
I said, “Where do you come from?” “I come from on the Burmese border,” he said. “What are you?” I asked. He said, “Lisu.”
“You have no idea how we Lisu people love Israel, how we pray for Israel. We believe that the purpose of God for the Lord Jesus is somehow related to what God is doing in that nation.”
“Yes,” I said. Do you know, I remembered Dr. Isobel Kuhn, of the Lisu. I remembered the great prayer battle, how they agonised in prayer for those Lisu people. Finally, God saved the first family.
It is amazing what has happened to the Lisu. Three-quarters of them have come to know the Lord Jesus.
My dear friends, I could keep you, but I must finish. The fact of the matter is, it is to me—oh, the challenge, the challenge. I think to myself, “Where have I been? What have I been doing?”
When I was first saved, I believed at the time the Lord was calling me to China. Therefore, my studies were in that line. I was accepted by a certain mission and put on their books.
I remember that in my studies at university I had to study about Mongolia, Tibet, Korea, and a number of peoples. I became more and more burdened. I was young.
I remember one day I went to my room and said to the Lord, “Lord, I wish I had ten lives, because I would give one to Tibet, and one to Mongolia, and one to Manchuria, and one to Korea.”
Then my health failed. Then China went communist. It seemed I could not get to where the Lord called me. Why did He put this burden in my heart?
Some years ago, when I was going to bed, I was by then involved in the work, but deeply burdened. As I was going to bed, I heard a voice behind me say, “Return to your own people.”
I thought to myself, “Who are my own people?” They were not the English. I thought to myself, “Who?” Then I went to bed. How gracious the Lord was; He did not bother me.
Three or three-and-a-half months later, I was going to bed again. Exactly the same thing: a voice behind me said, “Return to your own people.”
This time I thought for a moment, “Oh, a Mahotian sister, thank You, sir.” Oh, she will get a reward.
I remember so clearly. This time I went to bed and lay there, and I thought, “I know this is the Lord. But how can I tear myself away from this work that I have been involved in for all these years? I cannot just walk out on them. I do not know how it will happen.”
Gracious the Lord is. He never bothered me. He let another few months come. The next time I was going to bed, the same thing happened. I heard this voice behind me: “Return to your own people.”
Now this time I said, “Yes, I know, Lord. I know whom You mean. I have known it from the beginning. I did not want to face it.”
Then I said, “Now, Lord, do not be angry. Do not be angry with me. I am old enough now not to need signs or confirmations. I know You speak.”
“Lord, You know nobody is going to understand me. Because I am a person who will go through agony. Lord, do not be angry. You give me a home in Jerusalem, and I will know that You are in it.”
Well, the Lord Himself did that. The most unbelievable things happened. I went back to my own people.
Miraculously, I was given citizenship, and then a quite honoured place, with much contact with many people in very powerful positions.
Then suddenly, instead of being trapped in the British Isles and Europe, suddenly I began to travel. Then I began to find things.
When I have been in Borneo, when I have been in Thailand, when I have been in Indonesia, when I have been in many of these places to see what God is doing, my heart has become more and more burdened.
Oh, how I wish—how I wish with all my heart—that we would have a heart for the world.
I first saw those people in the Philippines in the garbage dumps. I never thought, in such circumstances, of people made in the image of God, loved by God, and nobody caring.
But Filipinos have become maids all over the world, and nobody cares.
My dear friend, do not hide in His eternal purpose. Do not hide in the truth concerning the body of our Lord Jesus, or in the heart of God.
Remember, we have a commission. We cannot just go out; the love of God has to be shed abroad in our hearts. That will bring us to a place where perhaps we shall come to an involvement with this preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in the whole world for a testimony.
From every tribe, from every tongue, from every kindred, from every nation, there will come treasure for the city of God.
May the Lord put this on your heart. May you never again be able to relegate the gospel. May the Lord burn it into your spirit, as I pray He burns it into mine, and give us a heart that is like His.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we lift up our hearts to You. Forgive us, Lord, that so often we do not have any time at all for the world and its nations.
Lord, will You do something in our hearts? Lord, will You bring us face to face with this commission of Yours: to preach the gospel to the whole creation?
Help us, Lord. Help us to start where You would have us start. Open up those hearts of ours, Lord.
In the way that You changed Jonah, so that he could tell the story against himself, so, Lord, deal with our hearts.
That we may have a heart of love and a heart of compassion, a heart whose horizon is the whole world.
Lord, that passion that You have, give us into our spirits—that travail that You have, that out of every tongue, and kindred, and people, and nation, there shall come treasure for Your city.
You are calling out a people. Lord, will You help us to be practically and relevantly involved?
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus.