[Passage]
[Hebrews 2: 4]
“God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.』
[Introduction]
Dear brothers and sisters, and guests, Let us give all thanks and glory to God the Father who has been with us up until this day, the 33rdAnniversary of Manmin Central Church! I give thanks to the guests who have come to celebrate together with us. I welcome you all. I give thanks to all the members and viewers who are attending the service on the Internet and TV.May God who has been with this church until now, be with you too, in the name of the Lord I pray. After the service are the celebrating events, and I give thanks to all the performers and staff.
Dear brothers and sisters and guests,
God had a dream. His dream was about wrapping up human cultivation. Habakkuk, the prophet, saw the vision of God’s dream coming true and recorded as follows:Habakkuk 2:14 says, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”
God chose a servant at the end and had him establish a church. God gave that church a duty to spread the gospel to all peoples and He Himself gave them their name. It is “Manmin” Central Church of today. Here Manmin means “all peoples and all nations”. In this message, let me talk about how God has been fulfilling the vision of world evangelism through Manmin Central Church for the last 33 years.
[Main]
Dear brothers and sisters, and guests,
1 Timothy 2:4 says, “[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”God wants the same thing all the time. He wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth and take hold of the better heavenly places by force.
Because our Lord also knew the heart of God very well, He advised as follows when He was in ascension. Acts 1:8 says, “…but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
So, in order to become a witness of the Lord through the power of the Holy Spirit, I also harbored the dream that God had given me since when I was preparing to open a church. It was not just to minister a big church but to spread the gospel all over the world and bring countless souls to salvation. This dream began to come true right from the opening of the church.
We had 9 adults and 4 children in the opening service on July 25, 1982, but within 77 days, in the establishing service on October 10, there were more than 100 members. Since then, with the blasting works of the Holy Spirit, this church just kept on growing. As a result, in just about 10 years after the opening of the church, it was selected as one of the 50 biggest churches in the world, by Christian World magazine of the United States.
In the 80’s our church experienced revival within the church. And in the 90’s we actively took part in the events of the church associations. This was the first phase of our church. The second phase was the10 years beginning in the year 2000. We had many overseas crusades. I just obeyed wherever God told me to go in obedience. However, even though people asked me to come so much, I didn’t go if God didn’t tell me to go.
The first crusade was in Uganda. The news about this crusade was broadcast in God’s providence to the whole world by CNN. Uganda had many AIDS patients, and many of them were healed during the crusade. In the same year, we had a crusade in Nagoya, Japan, and many deaf-and-mute people were healed. We had another crusade in Pakistan, an Islamic state, and we overcame the disturbance of the Muslims against the crusade. The greater the hindrance, the greater was the glory given to God.
We had crusades in Kenya, the Philippines in 2001, and in Honduras in 2002. Then, we set the record of the most in attendance and biggest in sizeduring the crusade held in India, a predominantly Hindu country. In Dubai in 2003, even under close surveillance of the government, we preached that Jesus is the Christ and confirmed the message with the power of the Holy Spirit. And in St. Petersburg in Russia, we had the crusade as a part of the official events of the 300th anniversary of the city.
In 2004, we had crusades in Germany in Europe and in Peru in South America.In 2005, we sowed the seeds of faith in China looking forward to countless fruits in the future. In 2006, we held a crusade in DR Congo, with the help and support of the president and the government. Same year, we had a crusade in New York City, too. God showed His love to them. It was a chance for them to recover their faith as a nation established by the Puritans.
I focused on Israel for three years, from 2007 through 2009.I travelled all around Israel testifying through the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Messiah. For the 10 years in the second phase, we spread the gospel all around the world without a rest, and it seemed like it was coming to an end.
But God told us to have a crusade in Estonia in 2010. This crusade was meant to be the preparation for the third phase. God let us face the power of the anti-Christ for a moment, which we will again have to face. The power of the anti-Christ was already in the politics, economy, society, and culture, and even in Christians.
We have to fight a spiritual battle at the end against this power. This is what we will have to accomplish in the third phase. So, God let us prepare ourselves once again from 2010.God led us to have human resources that are the spiritual warriors; the material resources of the financial blessing; and the spiritual resources as in the power of re-creation.
So, how did God prepare spiritual warriors? From 2010, God let the church members thoroughly repent of their past sins and start all over. As a shepherd, I prostrated before the Father God for the forgiveness of their sins. Among the sins the church members confessed were sins that couldn’t be forgiven according to the justice of God. So, like Moses, I clung to God putting up my life as a ransom.
As a result, God gave them forgiveness, and since then the church members had very rapid growth of faith. This flow of spirit continued for the last 5 years until now, and the faith of members grew up to reach the levels of’Rock of Faith’, ‘Spirit’, and ‘Whole Spirit’. This year, God promised that many more fruits will come forth by Christmas this year. Such men of spirit and men of whole spirit will help me with the ministry when I will work in full-scale in the third phase.
Along with human resources, what we must have is the financial resources. In this world, money is power. In order for us to stand against the power of the anti-Christ, we will be in great need of money, too. God already answered me on this matter, and He will reveal it when everything is in the right condition.
Lastly, what we need the most, the spiritual resources, namely the power of re-creation is going toward the completion, too.Countless works of power were manifested in the overseas crusades in the second phase, and they were only a part of God’s power. Once the power of re-creation is completed, we will go out to the whole world and reveal God’s glory again. We will reap the fruits that can’t be compared with those we had in the second phase in Europe, Africa, Israel, China, and even in the Middle East.
The same goes for South Korea, too. As we cover the nation with the holiness gospel that is confirmed by the power of re-creation, a great repentance and revival will take place. And to bear the fruit in this third phase, I had to pay the price according to the justice for the last 5 years. God required my sacrifice in order to fulfill the justice to save countless souls at the end time.
The apostle Paul also said in Colossians 1:24, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”Like Paul, I went through spiritual training that was almost impossible to pass as a man, and I took up such great pain that a man can’t bear. But I spent those days with joy and gratitude for the dream of saving countless souls around the world and giving them to the Father. As a result, my whole body is filled with evidence and traces of my love for the souls.
[Conclusion]
Dear brothers and sisters, and guests,
The time is very near. As for publishing, more than 100 books were published in Korean since the opening of the church. These books have been translated into 75 languages and are going out to the whole world. Among them, one of my sermonseries, Message of the Cross was published in 57 languages, and my testimonial memoir My Life My Faith was published in 35 languages. These two books are on the List of literary works by number of translations on Wikipedia.
GCN TV opened on October 10, 2005, and in just 10 years, it’s grown up as a world-wide Christian broadcaster covering more than 170 countries around the world. They are broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days week through 4,200 collaborating stations that have satellite, cable TV, public airing, and Internet equipment. With the broadcasting and publishing, the preparations to open up the third phase are coming to an end.
The day is very near when the dream of Habakkuk will be fulfilled, as the world ‘will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea’.As in Hebrews 2:4, today’s reading passage, God will testify with us, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.
I hope all of you will play key roles in this glorious ministry. I hope some of you will shine the light as a powerful apostle, as prayer warriors, or as serving others in your respective areas. I pray in the name of the Lord that in so doing, you will bear countless fruits in the third phase and give God great joy. I ask the guests to encourage us and pray for us, too.
