Acts 4 verse 31, we read, after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God boldly. The early church prayed. The prayer meeting was foundational. In fact, you could say the church was born in the fires of Pentecost from the Pentecost Upper Room Prayer Meeting. There was a time when heads of states prayed, when congresses and parliaments prayed, People would gather outdoors, large numbers, to pray. People prayed in church. People prayed as a group. Families prayed around the dining room table every night. Not my family, I was brought up in a secular home, but it was wonderful coming from Rhodesia to South African. Everywhere I found, people would pray, and you'd go in Afrikaans homes, and at the end of the meal, they'd have bukkah fat. And they'd bring out the big Bible, and the oldest person in the family, maybe the opah, he read the Bible, and everyone would be there. The family, the guests, the domestics, they'd all come in for bukkah fat, for Bible reading and prayer at the end of the meal. There's a time when children were taught to pray kneeling by the bedside before they went to bed, and that was normal. People prayed on their own. For centuries, the prayer meeting was a central part of church life, one of the most important items on the church calendar. It was an indispensable part of the weekly program. People prayed at rallies, revivals, and yet today, very few Western churches even have a prayer meeting. You can point to some of the biggest churches in town, they barely have a prayer meeting. It was once a major emphasis of the church activities, but now it's been relegated to the sidelines and ignored by most members. Or it's been dispensed with altogether. Shockingly, not just during COVID times, but even when there's no crisis out there, prayer meetings have basically been slid off the church calendar. You can see some of the biggest churches in Cape Town, where they've got thousands of people attending the services, and if they get 12 people at the prayer meeting, it's a lot, and they barely get that much. In fact, I know some of the biggest churches in town, which don't even get six people at the weekly prayer meeting. The churches are empty for the prayer meetings, if they have one at all. Even more seriously, many prayer meetings today involve little prayer. I discovered that when I was invited to a bit here at some of the Dutch form churches where there's very little bit and it's not an hour, it's much less than an hour, and prayer is the smallest part of the program. There's all kinds of notices and this, that, and the other, but somehow they organize it that prayer is neglected even in a prayer meeting. Even in meetings set aside for prayer, they get other activities which crowd in and they leave very little time for the way I was taught to pray. When I was converted, I was told acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. Why is it that the prayer meeting has basically been dropped from the church calendar? And prayer meeting should include all four aspects. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. The average prayer meeting today, if there is a prayer meeting, is all about supplication. Shopping list, petition, give me this, give me that, I need this, we need this, that and the other. Lord, please give us whatever we need and so on. And normally to do with the church building fund when you get down to it. So I like to challenge people to structure your prayer according to adoration. When you come into God's presence, the first thing to do is to praise him for who he is, worship God for who he is, for his attributes, and to confess our sins before him, because it's not right to come to God and think that we're in a right stand, that we can walk up to the throne of grace. We have failed in different ways. We should confess it. We can only approach the king of kings in humility. And there should be thanksgiving. Who wants to give everything a person asks when they haven't even thanked you for the last gift you gave them, or several gifts in the case of God? So thanksgiving should be a major part of our prayers. If you think of a bird having two wings, if a bird only has one wing, he'll go in circles. And some of our prayers are like that. It's just give me, give me, give me, but there's no thanks. The most important one word a child needs to learn is please. The most important two words should be thank you. The most important three words children need to learn is I am sorry. And those three, just please, thank you, I am sorry, are almost absent from the average vocabulary these days, and it should be in every good prayer meeting. We can't approach God without confessing where we have failed him. And we need to thank him for what he has given us already before we dare ask for the next set of favors we want from the Lord. And then supplication should be the last, where we give petitions or requests, which is what most churches think prayer meetings are. When I was converted, 1977, 36 years ago, actually now it's now 47 years ago, my local church had a dynamic men's meeting and they had a dynamic prayer meeting and outreach evening every week. Every Tuesday was the men's meeting, the prayer meeting was Wednesdays, and the outreach on Thursday we were going door to door putting a, we were first being trained in EE and then we were putting a Gospel of John or first was Mark, in every home in Pines. And the prayer meeting, I think we had most of the people attended the prayer meeting. Almost all the men in the church of all ages attended the men's meeting. But television had been introduced into South Africa the previous year, the cursed satanic alter television. And the previous year, it just started to encroach. We were doing door-to-door evangelism, and I remember when the first door we, First time we came to a home where a TV was going on in the living room. And the first time, the person got up and they turned it off. And we sat down and discussed what we were sharing with him. And they brought tea and that sort of thing. Next time, I noticed how the TV was left on, just turned down a little. And the person's sitting there, and he's looking at you, and the whole time his eyes keep wandering away to the box. and then coming back to you. And then after a while, they didn't even turn it down. And you had to talk over this cursed, blasted, damned television. And after a while, people wouldn't even let you into their homes. Now, that's back when you could still walk up to the driveway and knock on the door. Before burglar bars, security gates, razor wire, high walls and fences, and a gate button that you've got to ask permission to even enter the driveway. But you saw television made it more and more difficult to do door-to-door evangelism. And then finally it became almost impossible because of the cursed damn television which destroyed this country. More than anything else, it changed South Africa from being a godly country. When I first came to South Africa from a secular home in Rhodesia, I was shocked how everyone went to church on Sundays. All the shops, everything was closed, cinemas and so on on Sundays. The people in South Africa took the Lord's Day seriously. and you could see how people were respectful of the gospel. Almost everyone on the streets would accept a gospel tract. Now you're lucky if someone accepts a gospel tract from you. They were so open. This country was a godly country. You'd be in the middle of nowhere and strangers would help you if you're stuck and so on. I hitchhiked around this country 148,000 kilometers. So I got to know the country well. There were times that I was stuck in a town overnight and it was pouring with rain. Do you know where I slept most of the time? Churches. Almost any church, try the handle, unlocked. Go inside, stretch out my sleeping bag on a pew or on the carpet and sleep in a church out of the rain. And no one around. No burglar bar security gates. motion sensors, nothing like that. Churches were open. You could always go in there during the day for a quiet place to pray. That's before churches start to have things being stolen off the altar. This country was a godly country. And then this cursed, blasted damn television came in and wrecked everything. You could just see this country at the time, they were mocking a minister of telecommunications, a minister Herzog, who was always depicted having a black funeral type suit and a tall, black hat on, it looked like a funeral director, and they were mocking him because he said, if we bring television into the country, it will undermine the morals, it will increase crime, it will increase social unrest, there will be tensions between the races, and all sorts of problems, and he was being mocked all the time, don't be ridiculous, how could television possibly do that? And well, it did. And here's dead rights. I think the worst thing to happen to this country in terms of social issues is the damn television. And when the television came in, suddenly riots never stopped. Before that, you'd have a riot in 1960, then you'd have another one in 1976. But after television came in, nonstop riots, violence, shoplifting, whatever, it just all exploded. Television ruined this country. It used to be, when I grew up, you could walk over to a friend's home, knock on the door, you need to walk up the driveway because there's no gates and fences, remember? Knock on the door and they'd let you in. Anytime, you wouldn't have to phone ahead. be offended if you were in the area and didn't pop in and visit them. Sundays were visiting family and friends. You couldn't do that today. The amount of things that changed, and I would say the prayer meeting was one of the problems. So the men's meeting was temporarily suspended, 40 years and counting, because it clashed with rich man, poor man. And then the weekly door-to-door outreach on Thursday was suspended because it clashed with the world at war. The prayer meeting became a special early Friday morning, 6.30 a.m. gathering for a few dedicated members, never more than six. And while it used to be the weekly activity of most of the members attending. So in the daily demands and time pressures, prayer and evangelism were expendable. Who needs a prayer meeting? Who needs a men's meeting? Who needs an evangelistic meeting? We can watch SATV. And you would have thought the church had few greater priorities than a relationship with God. a relationship to God in prayer and in reaching out in evangelism to our neighbors. So the church where I was converted had made such a priority of prayer and evangelism that they even reached someone like me from a totally secular family and won me to the Lord because they'd hired out the local cinema. And I would never have walked into a church if If you've been brought up in a church, I don't think you can understand how secular people would no more walk into a church, no matter how big the posters and banners inviting. Then you would go into the Kelvin Grove or some other social club that you're not a member of. Unthinkable, there was no way I would have ever walked into a church. The church had to come into my world, and the cinema was my kind of world. I was practically at home at the cinema. I walked into the cinema, and that's where I heard the gospel, because the church had found a neutral venue to reach the lost, and I was lost. And so if we're not gonna go out of our way, door to door, street evangelism, hiring out a cinema or something, we're not gonna reach a lot of these secular lost people. But then in one of the first church meetings I ever attended, the church member meetings, I discovered that while improving the church acoustics at the cost of 4,000 rand was voted in, but the same meeting decided we can't increase the support of our missionaries that must stay at 100 rand a month. Now, of course, 100 rand is a lot more money then than it is now, but just the idea that obviously missions is not as important as music. That's an important thing to know for young converts. Also learned that it's much more important that your shoes don't get muddied in rainy weather because they're also approved at a later meeting, paving the parking lot because some of the ladies' shoes were getting muddy coming into church after driving in their air-conditioned cars because the parking lot was not yet a decent target. It was only gravel. And sometimes those getting mud on their shoes. So you start to learn what's important in the church. But then the first missionary to come past that church was Francis Grimm of Hospital Christian Fellowship. So I went to Francis, I joined his mission, enthusiastically wanting to join the first missionary I ever heard of, Hospital Christian Fellowship, and I discovered HGF was serious about prayer. Every day started with about an hour of prayer. Every day ended with prayer. And after lunch, there'd be about half an hour of prayer, and we worked our way through Operation World, and we prayed for every country in the world, They were very serious about prayer, and in one day, Francis Grimm said very solemnly, we will not end this prayer meeting until Peter has prayed. I was the youngest, the newest, the least, the young convert, and I'm surrounded by nursing sisters, doctors, and so on, and I'm just the youngest and least, and I'm very intimidated by these spiritual giants who can pray so much and so on. But I had to pray that day or everyone would have hated me. I mean, they didn't want this to carry on forever. I learned then they had days of prayer. We once had a day of prayer, and the day came to an end. And Francis Grimm announced, we'll go into a night of prayer. So we went from a day of prayer into a night of prayer. Not a prayer chain, one prayer meaning all the staff praying. Well, somewhere around 11 and 12 o'clock, most of the ladies excused themselves and disappeared off to bed. And there were just a few men carrying on past midnight. And by 4 in the morning, Francis Grimm and I were the only two awake. These other men lying out their comatose. I was just too scared of Francis Grimm. So I was still awake. And at a certain point, he prayed to their men. And he turned to me and says, well, Let's get some sleep. So we stepped over these other men lying on the ground, on the carpet, headed to bed. And then I thought, I wonder if we're going to have to be at the mission 8 o'clock in the morning. So 8 o'clock, I was on duty, and everyone else was there too. 8 o'clock, we start again the next day, hour of prayer beginning of the day. And that's how HEF was. It's a good discipline. We are commanded to pray. And there's a lot of things that we should pray for. And so that was a good experience. Because my next experience was South African Defense Force. Called up to the infantry and ambitiously said to me, make sure you make your stand for the Lord early. Don't act like these other people who pretend that they're scratching the back of their head when they should be giving thanks for the food. Plainly pray for your food. and then people will know that you're a Christian, and that's how you meet other Christians in the army, those who pray before their meal. So my first experience with a metal frakpan of my first meal, and I gave a good, solid, hearty prayer, and when I lift up my eyes, everyone's laughing. And then I saw why. My meat was gone. And so one of the pagans sitting around the table was laughing, saying, didn't Jesus say watch and pray? So I thought, you know, smart Alec, but after that I realized you dig your fork in to the main course, you put your arms around the table, then you pray. And you make sure that what you've given thanks for is still there when you finish. But it was a good thing to experience the discipline in the army, the fuss bait. But the thing that I had to do was make my stand for Christ early. So at the first chaplain service, I asked the chaplain if I could speak. And he let me. So I stood up and turned and faced 600 other men in brown uniforms with no hair and all been shaven off. It was terrifying. My heart was pounding. I didn't want to say anything. I knew I had to make my stand for Christ early. So I stood up and I said, I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart. I want to honor him during my next two years here. If anyone else feels the same, please see me afterwards. Let's start a Bible study and a prayer meeting. And from that, I had a few people come to me, and a couple of twins joined our prayer group, Joe and Alex Van Elkenroos. Very tall men, and you had to look up to them. And they and I were the first three of the prayer meeting. Well, within a few weeks, it had grown to five, six. We had eight by the end of first phase. something like 12 at the end of second phase, we grew to 24 at the end of third phase, and it was phenomenal. It was a wonderful experience to see this Bible study and prayer fellowship grow, and it did grow. Probably the best thing I ever did, the most decisive ministry ever made, was challenging those men to join me for Bible study and prayer fellowship. I think wherever we are, whether you're in school, college, and I started a Bible study and prayer fellowship at Baptist Theological Seminary when I went to study there and started missions, prayer meeting, and that was also very good. It's not difficult to start a Bible study and prayer fellowship. Meet in your home, meet in your school, meet in a classroom, something like that. In the army, the chaplains let us use the chapel for our venue for meeting. And in this environment, our Al-Balsin Prayer Fellowship starts to have real miracles happen. I mean, just a few funny examples of answers to prayer. One of the chaps who got converted, he was a big Afrikaans guy. It's funny how many Afrikaans men are really big and tall. Well, this guy walked into his bungalow and said, listen, I've given my heart to Jesus. No more swearing around here. So at one time, I was going to the bungalow, and I was walking past the windows, and I heard, I didn't hear what this person said, but the next thing he says, you know, sorry young, sorry, sorry, sorry, wham! And the next thing he said, crash, bang, and you know, five pounds over the hole, and this trommel's knocked over, and this guy's lying on the ground, and this new Christian, I think he must have had a different spirit about it, but he reckoned one way to witness for Christ was pulverize the guys who took the Lord's name in vain. Well, we tried to tell him it's better to pray about it, so the next time there was one of these sergeants who was swearing, and this young said to him, God's gonna judge you, you stiff-necked. And sure enough, this sergeant broke his neck on the obstacle course, and he's walking around with one of these, you know, neck braces, and even the pagans were laughing, saying, God's judged you, you stiff-necked. And I mean, the pagans were even laughing about it. Then there was another pagan, he took the Lord's name in vain, and he was rebuked. And next thing he swears again, lifts up his beer can, and a bee on the lip stings him on the tongue from the can. This guy was not able to swear at all for the next week or two. Then we had a whole lot of other intriguing things happen. I mean, amazing answers to prayer. So there's no doubt that the prayer meeting was powerful. And in the South African Defense Force, the old SADF, the day started with prayer parade. everyone would gather and the officer would give the command, let us read and pray. And at that command, you took your headdress off, whether it was beret, hat, helmet, whatever. And at the command, amen, you place your headdress back on. That was back when young men knew you don't wear your hat while you're praying. It's shocking to be in churches and see how many youngsters they keep their baseball caps on during prayer. I need a clap over the head. We really need to teach some discipline to folks again, but our Bible study and prayer fellowship grew on the border. Every base we went to, whether it was Inana, Itali, Ombalantu, there were Bible study prayer meetings, coffee bars, outreaches, and this was home for about 18 months. I think people would recognize the morning duty of sweeping the road. Infantry's job was to protect the engineers. The engineers' job was to sweep the road. Engineers would go and mine sweep, because the terrorists' favorite weapon was landmines. And our job was to protect the engineers. So that's the kind of thing that can ruin your day, Soviet landmine. They've got these horrible anti-personnel mines that blow your foot off. Then they've got these treble-decker anti-tank mines that could even take out an armored car. So buffalos. Vemberland is so flat that I don't think it varies 12 feet in the whole length of Vemberland. So there's no high hills or copies you can sit on like you could in Rhodesia. You had to build your platforms. And these were different towers, observation towers, machine gun towers, and of course barbed wire, sandbags, all these palm trees, makes us feel like home. And in these mortar pits and so on, we would be having prayer meetings. Our favourite flag. And this is what we had before cell phones. The mortar pits. Many are permanently gathered in mortar pits, which is quite a nice place to gather. And I just love this. I think this is in honour. Observation tower. You feel very, very vulnerable up there. So you've got to observe where the mortars are coming from for retaliation. And one of our people said, but what about the shrapnel? Oh, don't worry. It can't reach that high. Oh, yes, it can. But anyway, that's the kind of idiocy that they told us. Don't worry about being up there. You've got canvas to protect you. It makes you really feel very, very safe. But there were battles to fight, and by God's grace, South African Defense Force was super successful. You've heard of the Stalin organ. This is it, the communist 122 millimeter multiple rocket launchers. Well, we invented the Borta organ, the Valkyrie, 127 millimeter multiple rocket launcher, which was more effective and pulverized them, especially at the battles of Lomba River and Cuito Conoval. But these are just happy snaps to remind one who won the war. Even today, you can go to Angola and see these tanks and armored cars just littering the place, reminding us that the Soviets lost the Cold War in Angola. And there are Soviet books out there written by Russian veterans writing Angola, the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. Angola, we never saw it, not even in Afghanistan. And these are written by Soviet veterans, even Spetsnaz, who fought in Angola. And according to the Russians, they lost 800 men in Angola. The Russians lost. And you can only imagine the impact that can shoot a tank's turret off. That's what our 155 millimeter howitzers, our G5s, could do. All over Angola, you can now even Google Lomba River. And you can see from Google Earth pictures just masses of columns of Soviet tanks and armored cars all destroyed in Angola. They're not going anywhere, reminding us who won the Cold War in 1987, 1988, 1989 in Angola. Now, what can take a tank? high up in the air and smash it down its back. That's when a South African G5, 155 millimeter artillery piece hits a tank dead on. And this tank's in pieces. I mean, these are like 65 ton vehicles. Can you imagine the impacts of artillery on that sort of thing? And so all over Angola, South Africans beat the Soviets, beat the Cubans and Fapla Angolans. And this is what young men looked like in South Africa back in 1980s. And I don't know whether or not, I mean, some of these guys are acting all transgender and confused and they don't know if they're Arthur or Martha. And yet we had a gap year, we had a gap two years back in the 70s and 80s where Mommy sent in her boy and he came back as a man. And I think it's a great pity we don't have military service like that anymore. I don't know anywhere in the world where you can get an army like what the Southern Defense Force was in the 80s. But in the middle of it was our Bible study and prayer fellowship. And if that front line flag looks a little bit like the religion flag, that's purely intentional. We had coffee bars all over the border, and Frontline Fellowship managed to lead many people to the Lord on the border, and I bump into them all over the place. anywhere in the waterfront, take my grandsons out to some events, and somebody will suddenly shout, Peter Hammond, Six Eyes, South African Infantry, Grahamstown, and yeah, or, you know, Ondangwa, and the chapel, it'd be, you know, this is this crazy Christian fanatic I was telling you about, he tells to his wife or children, daughters, and, you know, these guys were absolutely insane, and they relating, so I've had people come up to me in churches like us at Logos Baptist a while ago, And a whole lot of people, about 12 people came up to me. Either you led me to the Lord, or you led my husband to the Lord, or you led my brother to the Lord, or things like this. Or remember your crazy guys and what you were doing. And well, I joined your Bible study and prayer fellowship. People coming along and meeting me, just strangers in the street, how they heard the gospel from us. We made an impact throughout the border areas, preaching every base multiple times over. It was kind of fun being in these machine gun towers. They'd sometimes let us fire the 20 mil anti-tank artillery pieces, and it was great fun. And this is, I think, where Anthony was trained. This is up in Tempe. Yeah, this is one para HQ and wonderful lecture halls. I must say that the best facilities anywhere in the SADF was at Tempe. And so we were able to travel. That's Colonel Breitmark right there. ministering amongst the troops in the field, even in the rain, camping out with them at night. That was home. It was the hospitality suite from the SADF. They gave us ration packs, sleeping bags, and that was it, and lent us an R4. Personally, I prefer the R1, but R4's a pretty good weapon, too. That's a director suite. And it was fun traveling with the guys. We traveled in the field with 101 battalion, 32 battalion, one para. I was doing lunar ops with the paras at one point and we were crossing an open sauna and suddenly a parachute flare goes up and illuminates the whole thing. We absolutely, in the middle of this field, the infantry were laughing from the edges and they were just so delighted they'd caught the paras out in the open. But it's a horrible feeling to be out in the open in an operational area and suddenly be illuminated. And nobody there was very impressed with this joke from the local infantry. But these things happened. This is the famous wooden chapel, Baibab Chapel. Colonel Jan Breitenbach was on our frontline team, traveling around the border with us, and we stopped for a happy snap in the Biobab Chapel. These were some of the bomb-proof shelters, covered in sand and sandbags, where people could gather if under artillery bombardment. So we started and planted Bible study and prayer fellowships throughout the SADF. preached and ministered with these soldiers. The SADF was actually riddled with Christians. There were Christians in every place. There were prayer meetings, there were Bible studies, there were evangelistic outreaches. Many of us were taking Bibles across the border in Sangola. That really was the launch of Frontline Fellowship. to go in and to be able to smuggle Bibles into a communist country. Some of these little Russian gospel booklets that you see in our display cabinets are from Slavic Gospel Association, these waterproof, laminated, heat-resistant, stitch-bound gospels. We've got Gospel of Luke, we've got Psalms. I once had thousands of those. We distributed them all over Angola, knowing that being Russian, the Russians would have to take them in and examine them because it's intelligence. It's something left behind by the SEDF and Russians would get to read these things. And those were designed by Slavic Gospel Association to distribute in soup that people would be able to get this compact little Bible that they could hide in their mouth, hide in their hands, rinse off under water. It would survive in heat like soup, could be rinsed off. And they were very tough. They're the last two we've got left. They used to have thousands. But that just reminds us of the persecution that went on in the Soviet Union, and Russians needed to have special kinds of bibles they could easily conceal. This is Salafika returning from shopping expeditions. You see the gas trucks and the 75 millimeter anti-tank guns. That's Salafika's affirmative shopping. Bring them back to Salafika after looting Angola. And that's what Angola looked like from the air. wrecked, destroyed, bombed out everything. And this is in Geneva. That church there was the office for Colonel Breitmark. He made it his headquarters for quite a while. And this is what liberation looks like. Funny how the communists can destroy anything they take. They can take a paradise and turn it into a rubble heap in minutes. Now, one of the biggest realities in the 80s was the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, communism. This is Bill Bathman and his team in, I think that's Bratislava in Czechoslovakia. And crossing a border. This is actually on my honeymoon, 1989. Lenore and I were following her dad. He was in the car ahead of us and I was trying to keep up. That's Bill Bathman's vehicle in front and the Austrian A. And Lenore took these pictures. while we're on our honeymoon smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain to East New York. Albania, the most atheist country in the world, they killed every last minister. They took every church. The last minister in Albania was towed behind a vehicle until he is in pieces. They shot many, those were the lucky ones, and Albania was so atheistic, so communist, there wasn't one church or one minister left alive. One man I met had five years in a labor camp, hard labor, forsaying, in a whisper, God bless you. And that was enough to get him in a labor camp for five years. So Albania was really bad. Romania, under Ceausescu, was insane. There's Bill Bethlen in front car, again, in order of taking these pictures. It would take about three hours to get to a border post, if you were lucky. We spent five hours at one border post and got evicted because they recognized Bill Bethlen. And everywhere in Romania would be emperor worship, Ceausescu, the dictator. They actually composed 8,000 hymns to the praise of Ceausescu. And kids had to sing the hymns of Ceausescu at the beginning of the day. You can't believe how bad the Iron Curtain was. And here are the kids marching on May Day, the 1st of May. Soviet flags. Can you see the Vietnamese flags, the Chinese flags, and the Soviet flags? There's the Chinese flags with the stars. Soviet flags of the Hammond Sickle, Vietnamese flags, just one big yellow star in red, and the UN flag behind. And notice, not just an idol of Lenin, but flags of not just communist countries, but flags of every country on Earth. India, they're not a communist country. You can see flags of countries like here, Denmark, Austria, Spain, West Germany, Norway, Chile. I think we can even see the Botswana flag behind him. And a big statue because, workers the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. We have a world to win. These are quotes from Karl Marx. They were a missionary religion. Communism had a plan to conquer the whole world. And the biggest competitor and persecutor of the church, This is also interesting when there's meant to have been a split between the Soviet Union and Red China, the so-called Sino-Soviet split. What a lie. On May Day, the Chinese flag, the North Korean flag, the Yugoslav flag. Yugoslavia was the head of the non-aligned states. But they were all one when it came to May Day. Notice the traffic jams behind the Iron Curtain. The one good thing about traveling in Eastern Europe under the dark days is there's no traffic jams because most people had no cars. Only the Communist Party had cars. This is the latest kind of vehicle that you might have there. And you'd see marriage ceremonies where everyone's walking. Can you imagine a marriage ceremony where everyone walks? There's no vehicles. And if there were vehicles, there wouldn't be petrol. Even for the funerals, people would be walking. And you look at the old cemeteries, you see a lot of crosses. But you looked at the new cemeteries, and you'd notice no crosses, because people were dying without Christ. I mean, that just gives you in one picture what communism was like. And then these so-called collective farms. What's a collective farm? Well, a farm that your grandfather might have owned is now a collective farm run by the Communist Party commissar, the Soviet, for your area. And you may be lucky enough to share one bathroom with four other families, and you've got just a few rooms in this apartment block that they now have for the collective farm. And forget the five-year plan, there's no tractors available on this farm. You know, you've got grandma power and that's about it. And then you've got concentration camps, because remember, communism is liberation and freedom. And if you don't think communism is utopia, then obviously you need re-education in a concentration camp. Even under Gorbachev's glasnost, there were 5 million people in the concentration camps in the Soviet Union. not counting the 50 million who had died there under Stalin and Lenin. But there were still 5 million people, including 1 million for religious offenses. So at least a million Christians in concentration camps in the Soviet Union in 1980s under Gorbachev, who's been credited to this day with the Glasnost, which opened up Eastern Europe to the gospel, which isn't true. He tried to save the Soviet Union. He tried his best to save communism, but he failed. And this is very distressing, the children wearing the red scarf. Please, mommy, can't I join the Communist Party? If I don't join the Communist Party, I can't get to high school. I don't want to be a street sweeper my whole life. I want to be a doctor or pharmacist or something, and I can't get to university unless I'm a member of the Communist Party. So these kids would be harassing their parents to no end to let them join the Commissol, the Communist Party. And you look at these red scarves, and I think of the words of Lord Jesus. Woe unto him who caused one of his little ones to stumble. Better for him if a millstone is tied around his neck, and he be cast in the depths of the sea, than it cause one of his little ones to stumble. Nobody under 18 allowed in church. Nobody under 18 allowed to be baptized. So Bill Bethlen, third from the left here, next to Nick Gorgitsa and Paul Negruta, six over. Lenora is just behind. She's one of the 70-odd being baptized in one baptism service in Eastern Europe. Because no baptism was allowed before you were 18, there'd be a lot afterwards. But the pressure on a person not to get baptized was huge. So just before Lenora gave her testimony, there was someone else who was baptized, and she gave a testimony that had everyone in tears. And Lenora found out later, she has five Communist Party members in her family, male Communist Party members, her husband, her father, her brother, two uncles. That morning, her husband walked into the bedroom, put a knife to her throat and said, you get baptized today, I will kill you. She gives this testimony and she went ahead and she was baptized. That just shows you some of what baptism meant. In Eastern Europe, baptism meant that's the end. You now are repenting, not just a Christian, you're a repentant. That's an extremist, that's a threat to the Soviet order. You are now a counter-revolutionary. So baptism was the cutting point, that was the end. After that, the communists considered you as an inveterate enemy. And so imagine getting baptized in a situation like that, which is why Lenora chose to be baptized in Eastern Europe. She said, I want to be baptized where it means a lot, not like in America where it's just a bit of a fashion. And so Paul Negrute went back with this lady to her home to help her face her husband because he knew that she knew that he meant it. And her husband came to the Lord. He lost his Communist Party membership. He lost his home. He lost his job. They were derelict. They had to seek sanctuary in someone else's home. And every Christian home was overburdened, and they had too little space. Anyway, notice in church, the men sit on one side, the women sit on the other. So dividing line somewhere there. Lenore's bottom right. And you can see this is, this, by the way, can I point out to you is the midweek Bible study and prayer meeting. This is Second Baptist Church of Rodeo. This isn't the Sunday service. This is the midweek service. And I've got the story about this and I'll be handing me lines for Christ book. Now, in one of my first missions behind Iron Curtain to Eastern Europe, one of our persecuted brothers, the man translating for me, Dr. Paul Negrete, he said to me, it's easy to recognize false Christians and the people who are informers. And I said, well, tell me how. We struggle to know the difference between true and false Christians in the West. So he said, a real Christian loves God. A real Christian loves to study the Bible. A real Christian loves to pray. And a real Christian hates sin. Now, how simple is that? But I had to go behind my own curtain to learn that definition. I didn't hear that in any Western Bible college, that's for sure. Then the pastor added, we do not count our members by how many attend the Sunday morning service. We count our members by who attends a midweek Bible study and prayer fellowship. Well, by that standard, how many real Christians, how many true members do we have? Considering we've got churches of thousands that can't get 12 people to the prayer meeting. Well, when I came out of my national service, I went back to Hospital Christian Fellowship, and who was visiting there for devotions but Brother Andrew, the famous God smuggler. And he related to us how they just succeeded in smuggling a million Bibles to Red China in one night, what an operation, Project Pearl, they called it. And then he unveiled a new prayer meeting, it was a prayer project, it was called the Seven Year Jericho Prayer March. So based on what we read in the book of Joshua, where the children of Israel were told to march for seven days around the walls of Jericho, and on the seventh day to walk seven times around, and then to give a great shout of praise while God brought down the walls of Jerusalem, of Jericho. He said, we need to have a seven-year Jericho prayer march, prayer focus on bringing down the Iron Curtain and collapsing the Berlin Wall, opening up Eastern Europe to the gospel. He explained this has already started in Leipzig. The Leipzig prayer meeting was symbolized by the torch. And the people would gather with empty torches, and one would light the next, and then everyone would go home with lit candles, lit torches. And they'd switch off all lights in the home, which normally wasn't a problem, because there'd probably be a power failure anyway. And they'd put the candle in the... dining room window downstairs with the curtains open. Dark house, one candle. And this was a quiet protest saying, all the darkness of atheism and communism cannot put out one single candle. Light is more powerful than darkness. Truth is more powerful than error and lies. And the Leipzig prayer meeting was an Eastern European initiative, but now the West was going to join it. It's not that we started it. We joined the Seven Year Jericho Prayer March initiative launched by the believers in Eastern Europe. And it was a phenomenal prayer being prayed. I thought Brother Andrew was trying a bridge too far here. I mean, there are hundreds of millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. I'd seen the Iron Curtain. It wasn't coming down in our lifetime. I was sure, I was convinced in the 1980s, the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain would be up till Jesus came. But the prayer meetings continued. And to show the power of prayer, this started in 1982. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. The Iron Curtain collapsed. Eastern Europe was opened up to the gospel. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. It was phenomenal. And the most spectacular was in Romania, where they had the most oppressive government. Christmas revolution, 1989. Ceausescu regime faced resistance. And the army joined the people in fighting against the secret police. They cut out the communist symbols, the hammers and sickles from the middle of their flag. And the resistance tied white ribbons around their uniforms to show, we are part of the resistance. We're on the side of the people. And they were fighting against the communists. So you could see people giving flowers to the soldiers who resisted. The exercised flag with a, cut out the demonic Soviet symbols in the middle, and people singing, celebrating Christmas in the streets, the Christmas revolution in 1989 in Romania. This church had been confiscated by the communists in 1947. We came there in 1989 and The church retook this church, which had been turned to a factory. And you can still see the signs on the floor where they actually had machinery and so on. And we had a worship service. Today, this Araud Baptist Church is called Calvary Baptist Church, beautifully renovated. This is in Bulgaria. God is love in the front on the wood. And one faith, one Lord, one baptism written on the walls in Bulgaria. Even in Ethiopia, the idols came down, Addis Ababa. The idol of Lenin, 90-foot idol, that was toppled. And all over Eastern Europe, something in the region of 28,000 idols to Lenin and Karl Marx were taken down in 1989, 1990, 1991. Lenin going off to the scrappy. And just one example of the victory of the cross. You read in Daniel chapter two about the head of gold, the chest of silver, the stomach of bronze, the legs of iron, feet of iron and clay representing all the empires of the world. And a stone struck the monument and it's shattered into pieces. Well, this is the statue of Dzerzhinsky outside Lubyanka. The Lubyanka is the KGB headquarters in Moscow. Today, no more statue. The statue is gone. But in the middle of the square, there is a stone, not just any stone. It's a stone from Solovetsky Island, from the first concentration camp of the Soviet Union, which was made out of the old monastery in the White Sea. It's an arctic circle. It was a place where you could not escape. Six months day, six months night. And they put in there all the pastors of Russia in this isolated monastery, which was turned to concentration camp. And they shot 98,000 pastors, ministers, in Solovetsky Island. And that was under Lenin. That's even before Stalin. Well, a stone from Solovetsky Island was brought and put in the middle of the square where the statue to Zezensky once stood. And it says in the scripture in Luke, the stone which the builders rejected as worthless has become the chief cornerstone. If someone falls on that stone, he will be cut to pieces. But if that stone falls on someone, it will crush them to dust. The symbolism of Christ's victory over Satan is huge. The stone that shattered that statue and the wind blew the dust away. The stone grew to be the mountain that filled the whole earth. The victory of Christ over communism in Russia is phenomenal. And a lot of the story is told in my father-in-law Bill Bathman's book, Going Through Even If the Door Is Closed. This upper room hall is named the Bathman Memorial Hall in memory of this previous chairman of the board of Frontline. He spent 68 years as a missionary, mostly in Eastern Europe, mostly to Russians and people in the communist world. A hunger for God's word and a desire to pray are some of the first evidences of the new birth. I remember as a new Christian spending hours a day in prayer and Bible study. It was so natural. As a new Christian, it's so exciting to discover the Bible. I was brought up in a home where we never even read the Bible, ever. So there's no Bible reading or prayer in my home. And so at age 17, I had a lot of ground to catch up on. I didn't even know about Daniel in the lion's den. I had to learn all this from scratch. And the army, in the early years of this mission, we spent nights in prayer. We'd have our camps and courses and often have prayer chains through the nights, as well as God duty I might add. So people really didn't get a full night's sleep at any of our camps and courses. But it was exciting, praying for hours. And it was so natural, it was so thoroughly enjoyable. We poured out our hearts to God in prayer. Evangelism naturally flowed out of these times of incision. The more you pray, the more you want to evangelize. The more of God's word we studied, the more we wanted to pray. The more we prayed, the greater the compulsion to share God's word with those who are unsaved around us. And this is exactly what the early church experienced. As they labored in intensive, heartfelt prayer, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And then they went out and they proclaimed God's word boldly. This is a fruit of the spirit, boldness. We naturally hesitant residents, we are embarrassed to share God's word. But when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, it's natural to stand up and proclaim the gospel, as was done in the book of Acts. And the church is called to be a house of prayer for all nations. Intercession, evangelism, and missions should be an indispensable part of every congregation. I like the idea of churches having big wall maps, like we've got in our prayer room downstairs. Wall maps are reminding us of other countries. That's always helpful. The prophet Samuel described prayerlessness as a sin. In fact, the reformer John Knox prayed, give me Scotland or I die. And the Queen Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, she declared, I'm more afraid of the prayers of John Knox than of an army of 10,000. And you can be sure he was not praying some weak little prayer of Jabez. He was praying the Psalms. He was praying impractical prayers. He was praying God's judgment upon this wicked Mary Queen of Scots. Now, one place I found in the world today where you still find prayer meetings like this is Northern Ireland. Ian Paisley invited me to come and minister in Northern Ireland, and what an experience. He preaches in front of the city hall and the Queen Victoria statue every Friday at lunchtime. And here's an Anglo-Boer war monument in Belfast. Belfast, they're super proud that they made the Titanic. I wouldn't have been quite so quick to want to remind people that we built the ship that sank on its maiden voyage, but they are super proud. It was a great ship, and I don't blame their shipbuilding for the sinking, but the irresponsible activities of the captain and the owner on board the ship. Anyway, this is where the Titanic sailed out of. They have a memorial to the men who gave up their lives for the women on board. You know, despite the close warfare affliction put into the movie Titanic despite the nonsense that they give the impression that women were kept behind cages because they were second, third class passengers, which has been thoroughly refuted. That's a lie. For every woman who drowned in the Titanic, eight men drowned. So the men, some of the richest men in the world gave up their seats on a lifeboat to give it to third class women and so on. So this business of people fighting for seats, it might have happened here and there, but generally speaking, overwhelmingly, some of the richest, most powerful men in the world stood back and gave their seats to third class passengers because they're women. Women and children first, that's the Birkenhead draw. And so remembering that, the Titanic Memorial. And this, by the way, is what police stations look like in Northern Ireland. Talk about apartheid. Never seen more radical apartheid than that in Northern Ireland, where they separate between the Catholics and the Protestants. This is what a police station looks like in a Catholic area, because they get firebombed, stoned, and all that all the time. Rocket launchers attacking them. This is what it looks like in Northern Ireland. Talk about separation. Those are the walls between Protestant and Catholic areas. And you can tell you're in a Catholic area. Statue of Mary. And the Protestant area is walled off like this, so high that you can't throw grenades and firebombs and petrol bombs over into the Protestant neighborhood next door. So this is what we saw in Northern Ireland. So this, by the way, is the fencing around the Supreme Court, or the High Court, I should say, in Northern Ireland. That's the High Court. Can you imagine? It makes Salafi look good. And that's also the High Court. And this is what they call a peace gate. It's a separation between a Catholic area and a Protestant area. So it's got to be high because they will throw grenades and firebombs over the walls and fences at their neighbors. You can see where you're in the Catholic area, the Crucifixes and Idols of Mary. And this is the Red Devil Bar in Falls Road, which is a famous haunt for the IRA terrorists. And you can see they're quite open. They go to the Red Devil Bar. They know who they're serving. You can tell that you're in a Catholic area. They're using Irish street names. They've taken down the English street names. And they've got some Irish Celtic terms. And they're saying that English people must go. They're also saying, now you're in a Protestant area. A Protestant parliament for Protestant people. No more. So this is a Catholic area, saying they're going to pull down the Protestant parliament. And you've got literally street signs warning of snipers. I mean, you've seen warnings of this and the other. Well, over there, it's like, watch out. This area, there's snipers. You're in a Catholic area. You can see the colors. You can see Jerry Adams, IRA terrorist. war art propaganda against the American president at that stage, and pro-Colombian terrorists and all sorts of others. And you can see the Catalinian Communist Party also being celebrated by the IRA. And the Columbia Three should be released, but they're just terrorists and drug dealers. But the IRA has a real revolutionary spirit of wanting to unite with all the other enemies. And you can see the pro-PLO, they've got the PLO flag up there. So this is just showing you the environment in which you need to have prayer meetings. And so plainly, Armand, IRA 100 years of unbroken continuity, Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin is the political arm of the IRA. This bank has been robbed more times than any other bank in the world, I think 11 bank robberies already. They kind of need to put a sign on, you know, last drops on this date. You know, you've got to wait so many times before the next one comes. And this McGuinness bar is famous for being an IRA bar. They kneecapped Irish girls and their Catholic girls for having dated a British soldier or something. And they drilled through the kneecaps or shoot the kneecaps. This hotel has been blown up 11 times, the most bombed hotel in the world. Europa Hotel in Belfast. This is a memorial to a whole bunch of IRA terrorists who were shot by the British SS as they infiltrated the border from Catholic Ireland into the Protestant Ireland. They were ambushed at this spot. And all over you see memorials reminding you of the war between Catholicism and Protestantism over in Ireland. They said it's the biggest outdoor art gallery in the world. You can see where people's allegiance are. They're very, very plain. Union Jack, they're unionists. You're now entering Loyalist Sandy Row. Sandy Row is a heartland of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, meaning Protestants. Plainly, the red hand of resistance, the Union Jack, you know that these are Protestants, and they're educating you about how America funds and supports IRA terrorists. And you can see where people stand, they're royalists, unionists or royalists. The most enthusiastic people supporting the royal family would be in Northern Ireland, Protestants of course. Remembering teaching history, on the 1st of July 1916, almost all the Protestant men of Belfast died in the first day of the Battle of the Somme. when 10 days of pulverizing the German positions of artillery failed to make a single impact. And the day came, they've got to go over the top, and they're looking through binoculars saying, but the barbed wire is still there. And the Germans have come out of their underground bunkers, and they put up signs saying, come on, Tommy, we're waiting for you. And they were told, but we've planned this. We've put in so much money into the artillery barrage, you've got to go. But we're going to be annihilated. You've got to go. And the men went over the top, and they lost a generation of men. All the women were wearing black for the next generation. It's just an entire community of men wiped out in one day, just like that Battle of the Somme. And this is the Protestant leader who fought for the right to stay within England. They fought the English for the right to stay within the United Kingdom, because Britain was giving the whole of Ireland over to IRA terrorists. And the Protestants had to fight Britain to stay within a Protestant majority country, because they knew they would be annihilated by the Catholic IRA if they did not. And the Protestant woman whose men went off to fight for the King in First World War, they had to fight to defend their farms from IRA terrorists. And so they've got memorials all over, very clear when they're Protestants. You can see a Protestant church, always a scripture on the outside. And they also teach people a whole lot of history about Catholic persecution. They're very clear if they're Protestant. And you can see Shankill Road is Protestant, Falls Road is Catholic. So this is the environment I come to, to minister there. And Ian Paisley was the first minister of Northern Ireland at the time. He ran the political party that resisted the Catholics, and Stormont's the Protestant Parliament for Northern Ireland. The Kaiser, Willem II, gave as a gift these chandeliers, which are real gold, which is in the Parliament of Northern Ireland, meaning Shankill Road, Stormont. And they've got memorials even for members of Parliament assassinated by the IRA. On street corners, you've got memorials for the people murdered by the Catholic IRA. The Ulster Constabulary, that's the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the local police. This is a memorial for the policemen who'd been murdered by the Irish terrorists. You can't imagine the amount of hate there is in that area and resentment. Show no mercy, expect none. And in this area, you've got this dynamic preacher, Ian Paisley, and he's a powerful gospel preacher. First time I heard him was at a Quasimodo mission. And I heard that Ian Paisley was a horrible, hate-mongering bigot and a terrible man, guilty for terrorism and all this. So when I saw Ian Paisley come onto the platform to preach at a minister's conference at Quasimodo, I thought, What's Uncle Ola doing? Doesn't he know this man's background? And within minutes, I realized I was wrong. Because as he opened the Bible, he started to preach. Turned to Sam 2. So we all turn to 2 Samuel. Why do the nations rage in a people's plot of vain thing? Oh, Psalm 2. Sam in Irish. And Ian Paisley preached such a powerful gospel message, I thought, no, this is a fine, dedicated Christian, one of the finest gospel preachers I've ever heard. He's obviously been slandered. And indeed he has. Ian Paisley is hated by the left, but he is a man who is devoted to serving the Lord and preaching gospel, a great evangelistic gospel preacher. He has so many death threats, he did not need to buy a car for the last half of his life, nor buy a litre of petrol. As the police provided him with an armoured car and police escort, he had as much security as the Queen of England, more than the British Prime Minister, because he was on every death list of every leftist, Marxist, Catholic terrorist group around there. So Ian Paisley, is famous for having made the strongest stand against the Pope. When the Pope John Paul II came to the European Parliament, Ian Paisley, who's a member of the European Parliament, he gave notice he was going to protest. And you can actually Google this and see his interruptions, where as Pope John Paul comes in, he stands up and says, John Paul, Antichrist, I denounce you with all your false doctrines. Up came somebody and ripped his post out of his hand. He pulled out another one out of his pocket. Antichrist, I refuse you as God's enemy with all your false doctrines. And he carried on. He pulled out 26 different posters each time they ripped it out of his hand. In the end, his arm was damaged in a sling from assault. And he is dragged out of the EU Parliament. But the media reports were nobody can remember what John Paul said, but everyone remembers what Ian Paisley said. And here's a cartoon in a local newspaper that I saw framed in Ian Paisley's office, where European Parliament, home of the Antichrist, it's no good your holiness, his breath keeps blowing out the flames. And there he is with heretic tied around him. And Ian Paisley, such a loud, bold voice, strong stand against the Antichrist Pope, and the EU Parliament hated him. On this bridge, there'd be clashes between the Catholics and Protestants, especially during the Orange Man marches. Whitfield Bible College, which he started, and Ian Paisley would preach in the streets. He asked me on Good Friday to preach outside the town hall during lunchtime movements. And they had such big PA systems that they could hear you a good quarter of a mile away, he said. And he said, Peter preached the gospel so these papists know the way of salvation. We preach the gospel boldly. He was banned from public street preaching for years, and they put him in jail and he just kept on preaching. Then he had to change the law to allow him to preach because they had emergency regulations and he couldn't do public preaching without getting permission. He said, I will not seek permission from this government to preach the gospel wherever I like. Ulster is a Protestant area. And so they had to literally change the law. And I think you can spot a few security policemen around who are tasked to protect Ian Paisley. They even had snipers positioned to protect him in case there were any counter snipers from the IRA. So up on those roofs, there'd be British Special Branch tasked to protect him. So Ian Paisley won the battle against the British government. And here we're preaching with these megaphones that are extremely powerful. To know where man stands. This is Ian Paisley's church. We preach Christ crucified. How straightforward is that? And this, by the way, is a midweek service. I was not on this occasion there for a Sunday service. This is a midweek service, Bible study and prayer meeting, Ian Paisley's Marches Memorial Church in downtown Belfast in Ulster. And you can see also the quality of the clothing people are wearing, the open Bible. You can see where they stand. And Ian Paisley, this is a youth meeting. This one Sunday I was there, he had me preach in four churches on Sunday. And I ended up at 9 o'clock at this youth rally. This is a youth rally in Northern Ireland, in Belfast. And notice all the men, ties and jackets, and all the women wearing hats and dresses. That's a youth group. This is 2005, by the way. This isn't 18-something. And there was no gimmicks. There was no bands. There was no special music. The people sang hymns. They sang psalms. The Bible was read, testimonies were given, and there was prayer. And this carried on till past midnight. I, by the way, had to step over people to get even up into the pulpit, because there were people sitting on all the stairs, even leading up the pulpit. There was no space in this church. Now, that's a youth group. And this is a group of people listening to Ian Paisley preaching in front of the City Hall in the Queen Victoria Monument. A quarter of a million people, more people than live in Belfast, gathered for this one particular rally. And this is his church synod meeting. He planted 100 Presbyterian churches in Northern Ireland. Because the state Presbyterian Church is very apostate, so he's got the Free Presbyterian Church of Northern Ireland, and they've even got congregations in England now. I think this is their 50th anniversary. So a very remarkable man, and their prayer meetings were vibrant. Charles Spurgeon said that when he was preaching in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, there would be a prayer meeting going in the basement. And once a person said, what's the secret of your power? And he said, let me take you into the engine room. He took him downstairs. Underneath, in the basement of Metropolitan Tabernacle, there's a group of ladies praying. He said, this is the engine that drives this ministry. Charles Spurgeon was once asked, what is more important than prayer? Pray or praise? And the response of Charles Bridger was, what's more important, breathing in or breathing out? Goes together. The biggest church in the world at that time, Metropolitan Tabernacle, the first of the megachurches, it was not built on publicity, it was built on prayer. And Charles Bridger said, true prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a verbal performance. It is a spiritual commerce with the creator of heaven and earth. Prayer is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honor of a Christian. The Bible places great emphasis on prayer. 1 Thessalonians 5, 19 says, be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. We're commanded to pray continually, that's part of God's will. Look to the Lord and his strength, seek his face always. You will seek me and you will find me when you search me with all your heart. If somebody says, what's God's number? Tell them Jeremiah 29, 13. You will seek me and you will find me when you search me with all your heart. Jeremiah 17, 10. Search me, O God, and know my thoughts, I pray. See if there be some wicked way in me. Cleanse me from every sin and set me free. Matthew 26, 41, our Lord said, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And that is just so true. If we are not willing to watch and pray, we will fall and fail. The disciples, like Peter, said, Lord, I will never betray you. I will never deny you. Even if I must go to prison with you or die for you, I will never deny you. but he didn't watch and pray. His spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak, and he failed the next day. Luke 18 verse one, our Lord Jesus told his disciples, they should always pray and not give up. You're either praying or you've given up. And his testimony was of a wicked judge who didn't fear man, nor fear God. He didn't care about man or fear God. But because of the persistent prayers and pressure of this widow, He saw that just was done, and the Lord encouraged us to give pressure to the politicians and prayer to God. Prayer and pressure together can even make the wicked do what is right ultimately. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Ask, seek, knock. We need to be persistent. Isaiah 43 verse 22, yet you have not called upon me, you have not worried yourself for me. The Lord expects us to call upon him and he expects us to worry ourselves sometimes for good cause. Isaiah 64 verse seven rebukes him saying, no one calls upon your name or strives to lay hold of you. Just think of Jacob laying hold of the angel and wrestling the angel all night. This is what prayer should sometimes be. There needs to be a wrestling, needs to be energy. It shouldn't just be, you know, giving a shopping list to God. Sometimes prayer is spiritual warfare, it's a wrestling. All their kings fall and none of them calls on me. Just think how much goes on in the world. Things are going wrong all over, politically, socially. Well, how many churches are praying? How many houses of prayer for nations are there? Will the evil doers never learn who do not call on God? Psalm 53 verse four. Jeremiah 10 verse 21. The shepherds are senseless. They do not inquire of the Lord. So they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered. Talk about flocks being scattered. During the COVID cult lockdown lunacy, churches closed down all over the world, like two million congregations. And yet, when churches regathered again, 40% of membership was lost. Across the board, an average of 40% less church attends since the COVID cult. And that is senseless. and when the flock's being scattered, there's something wrong. Those who turn back from following the Lord and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of him. It is a wicked thing to not seek the Lord. Daniel 9 verse 13, we read, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the Lord our God by turning from our sins or giving attention to your truth. By the way, this is a prayer meeting we hold at the gates of Parliament every beginning of February on the anniversary of the legalization of abortion in this country. We march to Parliament, march for life, and we have a national day of prayer and repentance at the gates of Parliament, as scripture requires you to. Scripture says if innocent blood is shed and you can't, for whatever reason, bring the murderer to justice, the elders of the city are to gather at the city gates and to declare before the Lord that we had no part in this. Otherwise, you share the guilt. The whole community shares the guilt of the innocent blood. And so in honor of that, we gather at the gates of Parliament and we have a vicarious time of national repentance for the national sin of abortion. And here's a prayer meeting outside the abortory in Bree Street. Glad to say that one's closed down now. But we had many years of prayer and protest, sidewalk counseling outside the abortory in Bree Street, Mary Stokes Abortion Clinic. Prayerlessness is a sin. To reverse this disastrous trend, we need to give attention to word of God. We need to study the scriptures. We need to pray the Psalms. If you don't know how to pray, open up the Psalms, the middle book of the Bible, the biggest book of the Bible. The Psalms are a prayer book. Pray the Psalms. Make the Psalms your prayer. Put your name in it. Put your friends' names in it, your country's name in it. Pray the Psalms. The Psalms teach us how to pray. Martin Luther said, if you want to kickstart your devotional life or your prayer life, turn to the Psalms. and we need to turn from our sins and seek the Lord. 2 Chronicles 7, 14. Two times seven equals 14. There are two parts of Chronicles. There's our part and there's God's part. There's seven points. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, I will forgive their sin and I will heal their land. So three things God promises to do, four things he requires us to do. If we want God to heal our land, He needs to forgive our sin and hear our prayers. And he says he will do that if we humble ourselves, pray, seek his face, and turn from our wicked ways. Four plus three equals seven. So two chronicles, seven, 14. Two parts, and there are four things we've got to do, the three things God promised to do. Two times seven equals 14. So this is an easy verse to remember, and it's so important. And Ephesians 6 verse 18 says, the last part of our spiritual warfare for the honor of God is prayer. And pray in the spirits on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Be alert. Always keep on praying for all the saints. If you are too busy to pray, then you're busier than God wants you to be. There's nothing beyond the reach of prayer except that which is outside of the will of God. John 15 verse seven is one of the most important verses in prayer. If you abide in me, and if my words abide in you, then you can ask whatever you wish, and it shall be given to you. The key thing is abiding in Christ. Andrew Murray wrote a whole book on it. Abiding in Christ, we need to, how do we abide in Christ? We remain in him in prayer and word. And the more God's word is stored up within us, the more faith is built up within us. Faith comes with hearing, hearing from the word of God. Our church should be a house of prayer for all nations. And we're living in insane times. NATO and the United States under Biden is trying their utmost to start the Third World War. The idiocy, the provocations, the insane behaviors, shooting American missiles into Russia, for goodness sake, what do they think that's going to do? We've got almost a war between Red China and Free China in Taiwan. We've got Iran picking a fight in the Middle East. And you could see that spiral out of control so easily. We've got three major wars ongoing right now in the world. And there are churches that don't know what to pray for. For goodness sakes, how about praying for peace? How about praying for some sanity? And there's a lot to thank God for that he's been merciful to at least vote out this terrible government in the United States that has caused so much havoc in the world. But they're not out of power yet. It's a ridiculous thing in America. A government can lose the elections, but they don't need to vacate the next day. They get a couple of months to shred and incinerate the documents of cover up all their crimes or whatever they've been busy with. I don't know why the Americans give them two and a half months off the election to still stay in power, to, in this case, try and pick a world war while they're about it, to go out leaving ashes behind them. We're commanded to be a house of prayer for nations and then to go into all the world and preach the gospel. There's a field that is ripe unto harvest. The harvest is large, the workers are few. There's so much we need to do to minister in the field, but it all starts in prayer. Prayer is not an alternative to obedience. Prayer is the foundation, it's the first step. Now, what I've given here is part of our Power of Prayer Handbook book. There's very few of these copies left, but we've got more details of how this works in practice in Behind Enemy Lines book. And they are also available in the bookshop downstairs and as e-books. I think it's so important that we use our social media context to promote good books that can be printed or downloaded as e-books anywhere in the world. If you visit our www.frontlinemissionsa.org website, we have more on this, and the audio and video of this will be uploaded this very next week. But if you check in Christian Liberty Books websites and catalog, you can get a lot of these good resources. Please help yourself to the literature on the table. Our latest Gospel Defense League on the Olympics blasphemy is printed and available for you to hand to others. If you know any Rhodesians, Rosarian magazine is available, which I've got to edit. By the way, that's Livingston Island right there in Victoria Falls. We crawled to the edge and let down his rope with a measured weight to measure the falls. Our Salton Heart Radio program is on every Monday night at nine. A new one is uploaded, Salton Heart Radio. Please pray for the upcoming youth conference at Kwasi Bansi. From the 10th to the 16th of December, they'll have the next youth conference. The theme is Jesus, the light of the world. And I would recommend, if you know any young people, to encourage them to go and participate in this, but please pray for it. We've got planned on the 16th of December, that's Monday, the 16th of December, the Day of the Covenant, Day of the Covenant Braai, which will include swimming, games, archery, air rifles, a service and presentation later on. This is a special day in South African history and an example of how God answers prayer and the battle doesn't go to the strongest, the battle goes to those who have trusted God. Next year, we will start the year with the Biblical Worldview Summit and a Great Commission course launched here. Learn more on our website, but these are crash courses in Biblical Worldview and in missions, which include all kinds of evangelistic practical materials, including Muslim evangelism, Way of the Master, evangelism explosion, and a lot more. So are there any questions, any comments on the power of the prayer meeting? Obviously, we can't have a presentation like this and not end in prayer, but before we go to prayer, any questions, comments, complaints, observations? Thank you. It's true what you said. You see it almost as a new world we've trained for three years on study. I'm not sure what that means. Is it just another? Satan has discouraged and distracted people for sure. It is spiritual warfare. And you have to understand why Satan would do everything to try and keep the church from what harms his kingdom the most. Why we would want to be away from the prayer meeting. I've seen in my own life, prayer opened up Mozambique and Angola to the gospel, which were closed. Prayer brought South Sudan free from North Sudan. And it's prayer that broke the power of the Soviet Union and Communist Party to open up the whole of Eastern Europe and Russia to the gospel. So I've seen so many major answers to prayer in my life that I would have never thought were possible. I mean, at the time, all these things looked like an impossible dream. But if that's happened, maybe we can start to focus our next seven-year Jericho Prayer March on the Middle East and the strongholds of Islam. There's many things that we could focus on, but why is it that so many have just given up the fight? As Jesus said, we should always pray and not give up. So somewhere along the line, there's been a giving up, or people would still be praying and the prayer meeting would be more full. I mean, just try it. Call for a prayer meeting. The turnouts are normally dismal. We managed to march thousands to Parliament when religious freedom was at risk. But when baby's lives are at risk, very few turn up. And then some people say, you know, I don't know if I should march. I don't feel called to it. I think we should just pray about it. Good, we're having a prayer meeting next week outside the gates of Parliament. Do you want to join us for that? No, they don't feel called to pray either. They must pray about whether they should do what the Bible tells them to do, which is pray. And the amount of people who don't think that you need to obey God or do what the Bible tells you to, but they have a super spiritual excuse, I'll pray about it. Which is a nice software of saying no. Yes, I think it's actually, it's a dangerous thing. We so often take the Lord's name in vainly by saying, I'll pray about it, when we don't mean to and don't. So when we promise to pray for someone, we must do it as soon as possible. In fact, even better, pray for the person there and then. And I think when we have any meeting like this with the gathered Christians, if anyone needs prayer, wants prayer on any matter, don't leave without requesting it, because It's not enough to say, well, I'll pray about it later. Let's pray about it now. It's better to do it while it's in our mind and we've got the opportunity and we're next to the brothers. There's power in a group where two or three agree on a matter. It's a promise. So where two or three are gathered together, the Lord is there. Let's what we bind will be bound, what we loose will be loosed. I'm actually out free today because I know people prayed when I was locked up. I know Anthony certainly out because people prayed for him. I mean, that test me is clear. The fact that I'm alive and well and healthy today is also a result of prayer. Almost two years ago, 28th of February in 2022, I had a stroke. And that night, Anthony came around to the Vincent Pilate Hospital with his Bible and with some oil. He anointed me with oil. He read James 5 and said he's going to pray the prayer of faith, prayed for me, and I was healed. I went in with a stroke. They gave me this CAT scan. I'd had a serious stroke. In fact, I said to the doctors, is this a minor stroke? He said, there's no such thing. All strokes are serious. And one of the first things he said to the doctors, I've got a conference I've got to speak at next week, Tuesday, in Zuland. And he said, you're going nowhere. You've had a stroke. Well, the next week, Tuesday, I was there at that conference. God healed me from the prayer of faith. And I know that that works. So I think Anthony gave a few testimonies at supper of people being healed and answered the prayer. James 5 is real. There's power in prayer. We should not deny ourselves the power of God's grace through prayer or deny other people. How many other people have suffered because we have not prayed? You can't expect a victory if you don't turn out to battle. You can have the best team, but if you're not on the field at the time of the match, you lose. We've got a great team, we've got great weapons, but they need to be used. Any other comments, observations? John, when last did you do a show on prayer? Yes, please. Well, praying without ceasing doesn't mean you're in a prayer meeting on your knees the whole time. It's, you know, you're walking on Lord, help me. Lord, thank you. Lord, protect me. Lord, bless so and so. You're just ongoing thought and prayer, and you're like having a daily conversation, like you're walking down the road with the Lord, and you're having a conversation with him. Prayer doesn't always have to be formal, eyes closed, hands together. In fact, the Old Testament priests used to pray eyes open, looking up with their arms raised. I think praying on your knees is a good posture as well. I like that too, and that's helpful to focus us too and have an active submission. But there's nothing wrong with praying as we've done sometimes, standing on top of Table Mountain, looking out over Cape Town and praying for the place, eyes open, just admiring all that God's made. We can pray in many postures and many ways. There's a place for formal prayer. There's a place for corporate prayer, like when the whole church prays together. But there's a place for just conversational praying without ceasing. You don't always have to give an amen and conclude your prayer. You're having an ongoing conversation, Lord. You're so wrestled with, you're gripped, you're so burdened. This person who's lost, this person who's in trouble, this person who's backslidden, this situation, our financial problem, this health issue, the political issue, like, you know, God save America. Lord, expose the wicked who are trying to steal this election. May you shine your lights into darkness. May you refute and frustrate and confound the wicked. Just all day you're praying that God would do a miracle so that these people who stole the previous election won't steal this one too. So there's ongoing conversation that's just going on there. And I remember during this lockdown lunacy, just, Lord Jesus, intervene, help protect us from whatever disease is out there, but help us to fulfill a great commission not to stop the work of the gospel because of these pandemics and the fears and all the propaganda that's out there. There's just conversation through the day. So I think you can have a praying without ceasing, and you know, you're waking up and you're quoting scripture, sort of jump out of bed. This is the day the Lord has made. We will be glad and rejoice in it. Through our God, we shall do valiantly. It is he who treads down enemies. And you're just quoting scripture throughout the day, singing hymns, remembering some of the words of this, interceding for this person, quoting Psalms. I think that's just, it's powerful. And I might say in the army, on the border, it was often like that. And a lot of times, you're running or route marching, and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And Lord, give me strength. And you're praying, and you're praying for these people, and you're interceding over and over. And thanks be to God, he gives us the victory. And on and on, you're quoting Psalms and Scripture, and it's like an ongoing relationship with the Lord all day long. No reason why a prayer meeting can't last all day. Anthony, what would you add? You know, she's working in her house all day. She's constantly saying to the Lord, my child, please heal her. You know, she's doing the washing. She's praying about the child. It's constantly on her heart. You know, throughout the whole day, she's praying constantly. And that's a prayer without ceasing. And you're praying with power and with love and with your full heart. And it has effectiveness of God on it. Yes, and I mean, sometimes I think we've got to do that, like for Zimbabwe. We've gotten used to Zimbabwe just getting worse and worse, but to pray for the people there to be liberated, to be freed, to be fed, I mean, the situation is so ghastly, and to lift them up now. In missions, we are exposed to so much that's going on. We know more than we have time to pray for, but regularly bring up what's going on. I heard somebody say, every time we get to a stoplight, a traffic light, pray for someone or something or some country. instead of just staring at the red light and revving your engine which doesn't help. You've been called to stop, you've got to stop. Use the time to pray. And I've also been told the other thing that instead of just thanking God for the food, which is already important, but think of praying for a different missionary or a different country or a different ministry each mealtime, or a different person. You can think what's important in your circles. We need more time to pray, and so insert an extra prayer at a mealtime, for example. When you're giving thanks for food or refreshment or starting a journey, and you're praying for protection on the road, why not just pray for some other person or country or situation that you know of as well? So there's ways we can extend it. Frank? Well, praying is your artillery pieces that you've got, like your 105mm P5 that is precise, precise. Yeah. Dual collision. Yeah. I miss the days when we had our mailing list, when the post office actually worked. Yes, we'd be sitting at the boardroom table, folding envelopes, and you know, you see this auntie that you remember from this place, and you're praying for that person, and Trier Buffaloes, Trier Mooses, Trier Buffaloes, Cascade Fountain, or wherever it is, and this chap in Ding Dong East End, and Outer Mongolia, and Bongo Bongo. And we were praying for people in countries as we're doing the mailing list, and it's fun. I mean, now, I suppose, as we're packing packages to go to different areas, we're praying for this, across a bunch of youth conferences, we're sending these boxes off here, and these people involved in outreach to Muslims in Burkhart. So it's nice when you're handling things that you think of those countries, those ministries, those people, and prayers going along with your work. Yes, you're packaging and sorting out. Even you're driving down the road and you see this church, you see that mosque, you see things that prompt you for prayer, even as you're driving down the road or walking or running as the case may be, cycling. But there's opportunities throughout. If we just are in constant contact with God, which means we need a vibrant devotional life. We've got to start off our day making right with God, making sure we don't have sins, angers, griefs, worries, fears, those things need to be laid at the foot of the cross and hand over to God so that we can have an uninterrupted conversation with the Lord during the day. It's no good if I'm in a wrong relationship with God and I haven't made right with him, asking for things. I mean, the Lord said that his ear's not heavy that he cannot hear, nor his arm short that he cannot reach. or saved, but your sins have separated you from your God. That's what? Azar 59? So plainly, we've got to get rid of whatever's in the way first. But then if we've started off with a good devotional base for the day, we can have an ongoing conversation throughout the day. And it's wonderful and exhilarating, but I don't think I've ever had a better ongoing prayer time than in the army, partly because I didn't have any other responsibilities. You're just there to obey orders and keep fit and stay alive and alert, just simple in army, less problems in some ways. But I would also say in hospitals, another good time, another real time revival for me has been in prison. Because again, you've got no, Your only power now is in prayer. You're completely vulnerable, helpless at the hands of these wicked people, and therefore, again, that seems another good time for prayer. So prayer, I think, flourishes in times of hardship. When you're sick, when you're in hospital, when you're imprisoned, when you're in trouble, this is which focuses our thoughts and our prayers better. In some ways, comfort and complacency is our worst enemy. Crisis is not necessarily so bad. Yes, Sean, more? Yes, so sometimes God revives our spiritual life by putting us in a hot place. So, hospital Christian fellowship, they said when you're in hospital, God's got your attention, and at last you look in the right direction. Another slogan of HGF was, more people pass through the hospitals of the world than through its churches, which is why they focus on hospital ministry, which is very good. When I went to the military, I looked around and thought, here's a mission field. And I think many of our workplaces, we can look around, this is a mission field. And look at all the people God's brought into my contact. But if we want to achieve a great thing, we've got to start in prayer. I mean, people said ministry in Mozambique in the 80s was impossible. Communist country, closed country, atheist country, and so on. But today, Mozambique's open for the gospel. And prayer was the first step, and then action. And how many times have we seen that? The amount of people who I never thought could possibly be saved, and they're saved now, but it took prayer and action. If we're willing to put feet to our faith, you start with prayer, but you don't end there. It's a launching pad, it's the first step. Any other comments or questions? Now, when they had the 7th of October hideous terrorist attacks last year, I was seeking the Lord for wisdom on this, and the vision I got back is evangelizing terrorists. Don't send in the Marines, send in the missionaries. don't respond with bombing, how about Bibles? How about bombarding them in prayer? That we needed to focus on evangelizing terrorists, winning revolutionaries for Christ, redeeming revolutionaries, Muslims for the Messiah. These visions all came to mind that we need to, the best thing we can do to counterattack is with evangelism and prayer. So when we were fighting communists in Angola, the vision came, well, when did Salaf give us in missionaries to Russia or to Cuba or even to Angola? And we can undermine them. They're coming to us with bombs, hatred. We can go to them with Bibles and with the love of Christ. And we can undermine them. There are people who used to be terrorists who today are evangelists. And so we need to think of what more we can do to undermine the enemy by taking the gospel to these radicals. And opposition is sometimes much better than apathy. Think of Saul of Tarsus who became Paul the missionary. He was an enemy of the gospel. but go turn them into an asset for the gospel. I can think of Nabasinghe Musa in Zimbabwe. He was a terrorist for Zampu, and he was sent to blow up an evangelist tent, assassinate the evangelist. But the evangelist preacher, well, this leader in the Zampu terrorist group was converted. He didn't give the order. And afterwards, his men came to him confused why he didn't give the order to attack. And he told him to leave, and he'd get back to him later. He went to the evangelist, gave his life to Christ. Now, Pastor Musa ended up in prison. Mugabe locked him up. But when I met him, he was in Frankfurt working for International Society of Human Rights. And we went to a hotel buffet set up. We were walking there, and I said, don't you want any meat? And he said, no, it reminds me of when I used to eat people. So I was having supper with an ex-cannibal. I mean, it makes you sober up pretty quick. But he got converted, he became a real evangelist. And there are people like that. I once helped produce a video called Islam Rising, some of you might have seen it, with a Muslim terrorist. He had been a PLO terrorist, very hardcore, radical, anti-Jew, anti-Israel murderer, involved in all kinds of things. But he got converted, and here he was sharing the gospel on this video, Islam Rising, explaining Islam to us and how to win Muslims to Christ. I think that's a much better thing. You know, David was a conqueror. He defeated Goliath, which is phenomenal. But Jesus is more than a conqueror. He took the persecuted church's soul and turned them into the missionary of the church, the Apostle Paul. So we're called to be more than conquerors. To kill the enemy is a good achievement, but to convert the enemy is even better. Now he's not your enemy. Now he's a co-worker with you, and we can take down more enemies. How much harm do we do to the enemy when we turn his soldiers into ours? So that's just one of the visions, but that takes a lot of spiritual warfare. That's serious prayer. Some of these people are demon-possessed now, but they will be spirit-filled evangelists one day. That's not going to be done easily. We need more church prayer meetings mobilised. Well, meditating and prayer, yes, that's like soaking it maybe all day, that you're having this ongoing conversation like a mother who's got a sick child. While she does all the other work, she's still praying. But there's formal prayer. There's corporate prayer where we can even pray together, maybe the Lord's Prayer or something like that, where everyone can say an amen, too. Spiritual warfare is often praying in practice songs, praying, Lord, break the arm of the wicked and evil man, break the teeth and the mouths of the Lord. May the wicked fall into the trap they dug for others. May they condemn themselves with their own words, may you cause the enemies to fight against themselves. And we pray. prayers that you get in the scriptures and psalms, we're praying imprecatory prayers. We're praying for God to intervene and bring justice to defeat the enemy. In spiritual warfare, you need everything, the belt of truth, the sword, the spirit, the shield of faith, helmet of salvation, feet ready to share the gospel of Christ. We need the whole armor of God. and all kinds of prayers to defeat some spiritual warfare. This person may be demon-possessed. This person may be deceived. What is the problem? We need strategy. We need to listen to God and know how to tackle that particular person. You know, you start doing street preaching, and people interrupt you. They harass you. They kick the box out from under you that you're standing on. try to unplug the speaker that you've got set up there, the PA system. And it's amazing how many demon possessed people suddenly start to interrupt meetings, maybe even lying around and rolling on the ground. We found that in the field in particular, where people start manifesting demons in the middle of a church service. And you need to know how to respond. And there were times in the scripture, like in Book of Acts, Paul would command the demon to come out, or to be silent. And there are times that we've just got to intervene, take control. Because they will try and disrupt us. The moment you're doing serious spiritual work, you're trying to lead someone to Christ, and there's someone else that's coming that's just wanting to interrupt. I don't know if the people always know that they're being used by the Lord. They're not necessarily demon-possessed, but some people might just have given a toehold to Satan, but they get maneuvered to interrupt and to harass and get in the way Anthony and I had a situation a while ago where we were counseling a couple and they had a very good chance of coming to the Lord and some other Christian just decided to start cutting in the whole thing and undermining the whole evening and derailed it. We were so close to making real progress with this family and a Christian feeling sorry for the person who's being brought under conviction of sin and who were plainly under conviction of sin suddenly derails the whole thing just so the person doesn't feel bad. But sometimes you have to feel bad. I mean, all of us need to go through repentance if we want to get to heaven. And so somebody, where does the scripture say that the compassions of the wicked are cruel? So I think sometimes you get this way, I'm feeling sorry for the person and hear this pastor's sermons making this poor person cry and I want to comfort them and I want to stop this and be nice to them. But is that going to help them? Maybe it was good for them that they were coming under conviction of sin. And now you interfere with the work of God. So that's also spiritual warfare. Sometimes you've got to silence some Christians, even, who've got good intentions. But they've somewhere been prompted to do the work of Satan to undermine bringing people to Christ. Has anyone else found that, that you try and do spiritual work and you suddenly get interruptions? I mean, is that accidental? It's not a part of it. It means neither is it directly. And sometimes when you're about to do the most important spiritual work, it's like, how many interruptions can be brought in? Now is that not Satan somehow manipulating the chessboard to just checkmate you or whatever?