I was dreaming
I saw a huge map of Africa and then the next thing was Africa became washed in the precious
precious blood of Jesus. From south the north and west to east and
I heard a voice cry.
That voice was something extra ordinary I'm sure it was the voice of the Holy Spirit.
And he cried Africa shall be saved, was like a thunder.
I woke up. I said oh that was wonderful, the Holy Spirit
was in the bedroom.
I've read the anointing of the spirit of God. And then my German brain began to tick again.
I thought my ministry has no impact in this tiny
little country of Lesotho. And now I hear God say Africa shall be saved.
There's something wrong I must have eaten bad bananas last night
But I had that dream four consecutive nights. And after night number four I said to my wife,
honey I think God is trying to tell me something. The mission ward of the _______ to which I
belonged, came to investigate the whole situation. And I thought they were pleased that I was
doing so well, but then he took me aside and he
said, You cannot go on doing this. The printing press, all my evangelistic developments.
They wanted to stop and I was just to be a missionary like the other missionaries.
They didn't want anyone to fry an extra sausage.
You had to stick to the rules, be like everybody else.
And now I was pregnant, kind of pregnant with that vision of bringing the gospel of salvation
to the whole continent of Africa. So I was now somehow in a dead end road.
I didn't want to offend my German superiors but
I didn't want to offend God. And then I decided to go and hire a room in
a hotel.
Right there at the border of Lesotho. And I thought I'm going to pray here until
God has spoken to me.
I fell on my knees at the bed right there and I
said Lord for the sake of peace please allow me
to agree with my German brothers. And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and
I prayed. And then the Lord spoke words that made me
shake like a leaf in the wind. He said to me if you drop the vision I gave
you of a blood washed Africa, I have to drop you
and give it to someone else to bring it about.
I shook, physically, I shook like a leaf. I jumped up, I hadn't been longer than one
hour in that hotel room.
It was a very short fast. I paid my bill and jumped into the car.
I drove home and I said Anni, Anni, Anni. God had spoken, where's my typewriter?
I'm going to write a letter to ... and I'm going
to resign. Oh and she said can't you please sleep one
night over it? I said no, no, I can't.
I can't sleep any night because God said he's going to drop me if I drop that vision.
So I wrote my resignation and a peace, a deep peace came into my heart and I've never looked
back. Those very men who tried to prevent it later
on congratulated me for not having obeyed them.
So that is the blessed outcome.
So here's the principal that I want you to grasp tonight.
If you won't do what God's calling you to do
he'll find somebody else who will. But my friend if God has to pass you over
and if he has to find someone else, then the one
who's going to be the loser is you. A good example of this is Esau.
Esau was the first born son in his family. He should have been his father's heir.
He should have been the one to carry on the family name.
He should have been the one through whom God would fulfill that great promise that
he had made to Abraham.
But Genesis 25:34 says that Esau despised his
birthright. And so God passed over Esau.
Because Esau was so flippant with that birthright, you know what he did?
He gave it to Esau's younger brother Jacob. Jacob inherited the destiny that should have
been Esau's And Jacob ended up becoming one of Israel's
greatest patriarchs My friend if you're going to despise the gift
that God's put in your life, don't worry, God will
give it to someone else.
Eli is another good example of this. Eli was the high priest in Israel.
His family had been called and anointed by God to the very prestigious position of serving
in the high priestly office. First Samuel 2:12 says that Eli's two sons
had no regard for that calling on their lives. They desecrated the tabernacle with sexual
perversion. In fact they literally stole offerings that
people brought to the Lord.
They blasphemed the very name of the God they were supposed to be serving
They were spoiled brats who had a sense of entitlement.
They thought they were indispensible because their daddy was the high priest.
And they were born into a powerful privileged family.
But my friend God tore the priestly calling away
from them. He took it away from Eli's family and he gave
it to a little boy named Samuel who ended up
leading the nation in their stead.
My friend if you don't want to honor the calling that's on your life, don't worry.
God will find somebody else who will. Saul is another good example of this.
God chose Saul to be Israel's first king. But Saul disobeyed the lord, he hardened his
heart time and time again. Saul's children and grand children were supposed
to be the ones sitting on the throne. But because of Saul's rebellion God cut his
family off. And instead he anointed a young man named
David. And it was through David that ultimately the
Messiah was to be born.
My friend if you're not going to obey the call
and the will of God, don't worry, he'll look for
someone else who will. The purposes of God will not fail.
It's the one who chooses to disobey who is going to suffer.
God's plan will still come to pass even if he has
to raise someone else up to fulfill it. John the Baptist gave a sobering warning to
the Jewish leadership of his day.
He knew that since they were a part of God's chosen people, they had a sense of superiority
and indispensability. But in Matthew 3:9 John says don't suppose
that you can save yourselves, We have Abraham for our father;
for I say to you, from these stones God is able
to raise up children to Abraham. My friend God is able to raise up the next
world changer over night.
He can take someone from the gutter like Esther who was a nobody, and put her in the
palace and he needs nobody's permission to do it.
And Mordecai said Esther God's purposes will come to pass one way or another, with or
without you. But then his warning became even more severe.
Mordecai went on to say Esther if you keep silent
now relief and deliverance will arise from the Jews
from somewhere else. But then he said you and your father's house
will perish. My friend God's purposes are like a freight
train that cannot be stopped.
And the most dangerous place in the world to
stand is on the track in the way of those purposes.
So either get on the train or get out of the way
because God's purposes will prevail with or without you.
My friend we have been placed in this world for
a purpose and that purpose is to propel God's Kingdom forward.
And this is more than a preference or a privilege, it's a divine responsibility and a duty which
we will be held eternally accountable.
We talked about this in our very first lesson you
probably remember the illustration with the rocket ship.
Propelling God's Kingdom forward is not a side
issue. It's the reason you were saved.
It's reason that you were born. My friend you have come into the kingdom for
such a time as this.
God will not allow anyone to thwart him or his plans, no.
He puts people out of the way and puts people in the way.
But those who are willing to go that way. I felt God could, overnight, raise anyone,
anyone. Anyone else to do that job.
But I was so keen to go with Him and see nations shaken for Jesus.
Before we had the big tent which sat thirty four
thousand people, we had one that was sitting about
ten thousand people. And it was the so called ten thousand seater
and we moved around South Africa, southern Africa
at that time. And so I came to the ____ and while we
were in midst of our gospel crusade, I heard that a very famous African Evangelist was
just about fifty kilometers away.
I knew his name and I was thrilled that he was so
close. So the next day I drove all the way to that
other tent and it was not the man there I had expected.
Not that great African Evangelist but one of his
deputies, but we talked. And he said the big men of God in 1972 decided
to drop his crusade ministry on a large scale. I listened and listened and listened and suddenly
I remembered it was 1972 that God gave me the vision of a blood washed Africa.
That shook me to the core. In those days I had not even known that great
man, but the Lord unbeknown to me already put in
a replacement.
He has replacements and they are all top choices, they are all top choices.
They may be number two or number three, but when
God gets hold of a man or a woman, he enables them
to fulfill that task. And I humbly submit that that was the case
in my own life.
The moral of the story is if I were you, I would not
procrastinate and I would not just postpone it.
I would jump and I would do as God has told me
to do. It's in any case the highest calling possible
on earth.
It's the highest form of human living on earth. That's what it is.
And to have the honor to be called by God is more
than being the president of the mightiest nation on earth