Go to Pakistan?

31 Aug 2014

Dear Phyllis,

It is rainy season in Thailand. We have two seasons here – wet and dry. From November to March we will go for four months or more with only one or two rains. It is not uncommon to go100 days with zero. But from April or May on it rains every day. Unlike Japans tsuyu (rainy season) where we get a month or more and never see the sun, wet season isn't so bad, as we see a lot of sun in between thunder storms. But for the past three days we have seen precious little of the sun. If there is going to be any flooding it usually comes in September. Four years ago I was riding my bike in nearly two feet of water near the US Consulate, which is almost in the center of Chiang Mai. I was amazed; that motor was completely submerged in water, but none got in the intake, and that little Honda kept chugging along like a submarine.

Where I will be this September is an open question. I have mentioned Pastor Hanook from Pakistan to you before. He was here in Chiang Mai about a year ago, and I enjoyed some unusual fellowship with him. At that time he pleaded with me to come to Pakistan to work with him. I told him that Pakistan has been on my heart for many years, and I would be willing to go this afternoon, but I could only go if the Lord would send me. Since then he calls me about once a month from Pakistan asking when I am coming. My answer has always been the same. I say the Lord must do two things for me – give me themoney and a visa. Both of them appear to be impossible, but if the Lord would do that I would go. The Lord could give me the money to go but usually we don't have enough money to get to Bangkok, much less to Lahore or Islamabad.

The last I knew visas were nearly impossible. Four years ago I had a plane ticket to fly to Pakistan, and went to Bangkok to get a visa. They were very kind to me at the Pakistan embassy, but said the situation had changed since I was there the last time, and now it is extremely dangerous for foreigners to travel in Pakistan. They said the Taliban was salivating, looking for Americans that they could capture, and hold as a hostage. The Pakistani government refused to take responsibility for an incident like that. When he was here, Pastor Hanook said he would go to the embassy in Bangkok and talk to them to see if he could get a visa for me.

Last Sunday Pastor called me again asking the same question. My answer was the same, but this time he changed the scenario. He said he had recently called the embassy in Bangkok and it looked like he might be able to secure that visa for me. I said, “That is fine, but at the moment I am dead broke.” Then he threw me a real curve ball. He said, “That is no problem. I am 100% totally convinced you will be here in September. I will send you the ticket from here.” Oh my goodness, now what do I do? He talked like a man who had it already in his hand and it was just a matter of getting it in the mail. That is a scenario I have never been faced with in my life. I have had people send me plane tickets, and I have always gone, but this is a time when I am looking to the Lord for guidance and a man is acting self-fulfilling by sending me the ticket. I am not sure that counts as bona fide guidance. Or does it?

I pleaded, “Please don't do that”. There are two reasons why I would be extremely reluctant to accept that. One is that it colors the guidance picture, and it would be difficult for me to be assured that Jesus had actually sent me, or if it was just that Hanook wanted me there. The second is that Pastor Hanook is a very poor Pakistani pastor with only poor people in his church. He has no visible big donors. How he got money enough to come here last year is a mystery to me. He has a children's home for street children and said he had to sell his motor bike shortly before coming to Thailand to pay to feed his children. When he was here he told me that he still did not have a motor bike. If he can't feed the children in his children's home, I certainly don't want him to pay for a ticket to get me there. And even if I did go, it would be very uncomfortable for me to arrive in Pakistan with an empty pocket, and no visible hope for funds to live on, or a way to get back to Thailand. Oh it is awful that I think so poorly of Jesus. But He knows my heart that I am one of the weak ones with staggering unbelief. I struggle each month to believe He will pay the rent here. But if a ticket comes in the mail, what do I do? Do I say, “Lord Jesus, I can believe You can feed me in Thailand, but not in Pakistan.”? Needless to say I have prayed very much this past week, “Lord, if that is not Your will, please don't let him send me that ticket.”. That is one point of guidance. But if the Lord does let him send me the ticket, what do I do?

On another side of guidance, at the moment, apart from teaching at the kindergarten half an hour daily there is not one blessed thing I do all day long. This nursing home life is killing me. The Lord has taken nearly all my ministry from me and there is little reason for me to remain here.

Yes, I know. I am a married man. I have a wife. I can't leave her. But that is almost another reason to suggest that this is the Lord's time for me to go to Pakistan. I have written in a couple of resent letters that Pammy seems to have had a real encounter with the Lord. This amazing transformation seems to be holding. The Lord is giving her new songs almost daily and she sings all day. It sounds like an endless CD in the house. It is not that we don't have squalls, but they seem to be different. The other night the old Pammy was making a strong stag appearance. After half an hour of a heated discussion she stopped and said, “I'm sorry, but I am not an angel yet”. I laughed and replied, “That is the most spiritual thing you have said in an hour”. If she is about to do something out of line, frequently she will stop and say, “No, if I do something bad that will displease my Lord, and I don't want to lose my joy in the Lord.” Amazing. Pammy has never been so loving, and I have never heard so many “I love you”s in my life. In 20 years Rosemary never said that once. Pammy flat does not want me to leave her, but it is too dangerous to take her. If I do go, at first, it would only be for three months.

But there is one more factor that is a mega problem. Pammy has a strong call to serve the Lord in Thailand. She is all fired up with her new walk with the Lord and frequently says, “Now I am serving the Lord”. Tragically we do not have the same view of marriage. My view is that marriage is number one. Of course Jesus is #1 but marriage is a serious commitment. I believe a mans marriage is the proof and expression of his life and ministry. When Rosemary left, I said, “You can take my entire life, draw a line through it and write a ZERO over it. I am an incontestable failure. I strongly feel when a woman marries she gives up her life and is permanently called to be one with her husband in following and serving with him. Pammy does not see her working with me and helping me as a call or ministry. To her serving the Lord means passing out tracts, talking to everybody at the market, visiting homes, and one on one evangelism. If a person isn't doing that they aren't serving the Lord. When we had Annie she never saw that taking care of that little 3 year old girl as her ministry. Because of her serious neglect of Annie we lost her. A couple of times she got fired up about going to Mae Sai – the northern most town in Thailand next to Burma – and start there going south from village to village preaching the Gospel. She got together with a kook couple and they were going to do that. Fortunately that fell through, but then later she wanted us to go together to cover Thailand. I have been around too long, and seen too much of life to be impressed with that “call”.

With Pastor Kichikun moving this month to a new location, Pammy is very excited about our renting the other half of this duplex and start our own church. I am all for starting an evening meeting that would not run in competition with Kichikun, and we don't need to rent another building to do that. I am committed to stay faithful to Kichikun but Pammy wants to pull out. I view her ideas (vision) as unrealistic. To me that would be as successful as her coffee shop that lasted three days.

I can't help but agree with her that it is difficult to say that I am serving the Lord when basically I am not doing a thing. I would like the Lord to open something up for me, and Pammy just wants to go out and do something. But language is a horrendous barrier and I have never had the temperament to just go and do it. I wonder if it wouldn't be the best thing for her if the Lord would send me to Pakistan and give her her freedom to go full time dendo (evangelism).

Another subject. I read Samuel Rutherford every day. I find his love for Jesus like something I have not seen or read in any other place. But for someone who is not fully steeped in the Scripture and a lover of Song of Solomon, most of what he says would be an unintelligible code. Song of Sol. Speaks more of fragrance than any other place in the Scripture. Samuel Rutherford speaks much of the fragrance of Christs garments and His breath. I can understand the garments. That is a factor of environment. We smell like our environment. But I asked the Lord, “What does Your breath smell like?” Jesus has yet to allow me to inhale and smell it, but He did share with me something I thought was interesting. Basically our breath is the product of what we eat. You eat a lot of garlic and your breath will smell like garlic. Years ago the stench in Korea was suffocating, and most of that was because of their kimchi. Like several other things the Lord taught me this through the negative.

When I was in high school, I had a blind date with a girl one night. We went out with some mutual friends. I can't remember a thing of what she looked like, but I can never forget the her foul breath. That was the most rancid odor I had ever smelled in my life. We were sitting in the back seat of the car. She was trying to be friendly, but I had the window open with my head hanging outside trying to breathe. It was so bad that at one point during the evening a fly got in the car. He came to the back seat; took one whiff of that wretched stench, and flew out the window like a shot. I felt like burning my clothes after I got home. Needless to say I never saw her again. She was probably a nice girl but there was something she ate that was not aromatic.

The reason Christ breath smells so sweet is because of His diet. Jesus does not eat anything rancid. In the dietary regulations in Leviticus, the Jews were forbidden to eat creepy things, things that die of themselves (diseased), and things torn by beast (Lev. 11:29; 17:15; 22:8). That is very good advice. Unfortunately many of us feed on really creepy things. And much of our diets is garbage that is diseased or torn by beasts. Or in other words we feed on carrion, or just plain dead flesh. The vast majority of entertainment on TV and Internet is carrion. You feed on that stuff, small wonder you have bad breath. But all that Jesus feeds on is clean fresh and healthy. You don't have to be with a person very long before you know what they have been feeding on. What we put in our hearts is what will come out of our mouth (Mt. 15:18). If we don't want a bad stench coming out of our mouth, best we not put that stuff in our heart.

Rutherford walked so close to the Lord that he longed to smell the breath coming from Christ's nose. Why not? John could smell it (Jn. 13:23). Everything that came from Jesus' mouth and nose was clean and fragrant. How is it possible to be that close to Jesus? I believe one basic requirement is time. Perhaps if we spent more time with Him we might smell more like Him. Lord help me to make this real.

Prayerfully, bill

JD's Story

24 August 2014

Dear Phyllis,

In the absence of any major developments this past week, let me reach into the archives and pull out another chapter from the past.

For people in the states, it is difficult for them to appreciate the nature of ethnic minorities. As close as you can come is to imagine driving from Spain to Norway in Europe. To get there you would have to pass through France Belgium, Holland, Germany Denmark, Sweden, and finally arriving in Norway. To go through each of those countries you would be confronted with a totally different languages, customs, and people. That is a little bit like dealing with ethnic minorities, except there are no international boundaries with these people. And unlike the political boundaries in Europe, we find them mixing, to varying degrees, in the countries where they live. One example of this is, that we regularly see people from at least six or seven different minorities here in Chiang Mai. In a country like Thailand the language is homogenized by all children going to Thai schools. But even here in Chiang Mai we do meet elderly people who cannot speak Thai. Within their own group these people always speak their own language.

The Jarais are a strongly Christian group basically located in Vietnam, but they do spill over into Cambodia. Around 2004 there was serious persecution of the Jarais in Vietnam. Hundreds were arrested and some killed. In the face of this serious persecution hundreds of Jarai fled across the fenceless border into Cambodia. New Life League had done an unusual printing of 18,000 Jarai Bibles and sent them here to Mark. With the arrival of these new Bibles, Mark and I, and another brother, loaded up to take as many as we could carry to Cambodia.

We had no problem getting them into Cambodia crossing through Poi Pet. From there we took a taxi the remaining 300 km to Phnom Penh. But when we got to Phnom Penh we ran into the first obstacle. The Christian and Missionary Alliance is easily the dominant denomination in Cambodia, so we naturally went straight to their field chairman to tell him that we had Bibles for the Jarai. He was not happy to see us. The Jarai issue had become an extremely touchy hot potato in Cambodia. Everyone was walking on eggs. David told us that the police had been to his door in Phnom Penh the week before asking if he had any refugees hiding in his house. The police were everywhere looking for Jarai refugees. In the northeast province of Ratanakiri, which was the area where the Jarais had fled, the Vietnam government was posting a bounty reward for any returned dead or alive, and the police were hunting them like animals. With no other recourse, we gave all the Bibles we had to the CMA and asked them to distribute them later as they had opportunity.

After had made that transfer, DJ Cowley, the leading missionary in Ratanakiri, heard we were in Phnom Penh, and called us saying the situations was desperate, and please get there as soon as possible. With this request, we reclaimed as many as we could take on an airplane and flew from Phnom Penh to Ratanakiri.

Landing was my first surprise. That was the only time in my life that I had been on a commercial airliner and landed on a grass strip. We would have gone in overland except it was rainy season and the road in there was totally impassable. The only way in was by air. JD met us at the airport and was overjoyed to see us arrive with Bibles. It was Sunday morning, and we were in time for church. It was a real privilege to meet with JD and a room full of Cambodian believers worshiping Jesus. They told us we looked like angels who had just drifted down from a cloud bringing desperately needed Bibles. JD told us that a group of Jarais had been at his door five days previously asking if he had any Bibles. He told them that they were too early. But that afternoon he sent a runner out to a more remote village to tell the Jarais there that Bibles had arrived.

In the Bible logistic ministry, it is extremely dangerous for the native believers to have direct contact with the donkeys (Bible couriers). In 95% of the cases, what is done is simply to carry the Bibles to half way houses, who later handle the distribution. It is an unusual experience to be able to hand a Bible directly to the people for whom they are intended. But that evening some Jarai believers showed up at JD's door again to carry some back to the jungles. This was only the second time since Sapa that I had been able to speak with the receiving believers.

That is the Jarai, Ratanakiri story

But the story of JD Crowley is the best part. JD was a very young boy when I knew his dad, Dale Crowley, in Japan. JD was born and raised in Japan. He knew my dear friend, Ron Blough, and was a classmate of some of his children at Bob Jones University. I was utterly amazed to able to sit in a missionary home in one of the most remote areas of Cambodia and talk about Ron Blough stories. What a small world!

The Jarai refugees were living like animals unprotected in the jungles of Ratanakiri. Occasionally some of them would venture to nearby villages asking for food and shelter. Many of the Cambodian natives, and all the missionaries in Phnom Penh, were fearful of helping them. JD got summed by the deputy prime minister (the #2 man in Cambodia) to appear in his office in Phnom Penh. He handed JD a statement and wanted him to sign that he would never give assistance to any of these refugees. JD read the document and then looked the #2 man in Cambodia straight in the eyes saying; “Sir, the God I serve, and the Bible I read, tells me that I am never to refuse assistance to any person who shows up at my door asking for help.“ And then he went on, “And I believe, sir, that  is also the teaching of Buddhism.” The mans eyes went down and he reluctantly admitted that that was what his religion taught. Then JD went for his throat. He asked, “Are you going to pursue a policy that is in opposition to the public statement of your king?” The Hanoi sympathetic Cambodian government was cooperating with the Vietnamese in persecuting the Jarai, but King Sihanouk had publicly stated that the humanitarian thing would be to help them. When JD told me that story I was stomping my feet on the floor shouting, “Go for him! Pin him!” JD replied, “I would have liked to, but I had pushed the limit. I nearly got deported for what I said, and had I gone further, I don't know what would have happened to me.” But JD won the day. He walked out of the mans office clearly the victor. He refused to compromise, and backed off the #2 man in the Cambodian government.

JD Crowley was very high profile in Ratanakiri. He told me that the governor of Ratanakiri asked to see him one day. The governor was baring his heart to JD and asking for advice. JD suggested that perhaps the reason they were having so much trouble in Ratanakiri was because there weren't enough missionaries. Then in an utterly astonishing gesture, the governor earnestly pleaded, “Then please get more missionaries.” Can you believe that?

Ratanakiri is an area that very few people will ever visit. It is a small province tucked in the corner just south of Laos and east of Vietnam. The only road in is a torturous dirt road that is impassable in the rainy season. I later took another team in there overland with more Bibles, and can testify that that road is no Kansas interstate. The city (?) of Ratanakiri is the capital of the province but looks more like a small Colorado town. This had been the exile hiding place for Pol Pot, and had been the headquarters for the Khmer Rouge from 1966 to 1975. It had also been a major stop on the Ho Chi Ming Trail. I asked JD, “Where was the Ho Chi Ming Trail around here?” He replied, “The main street in town.” It was one of the very few places along the Ho Chi Ming Trail where a stop was at an established town. Guns were no longer traveling through there. It was not the center of the most brutal communist movement in history. But God had one of His great generals there, a very ordinary MK boy from Japan, JD Crowley, establishing the Kingdom of God in one of the most remote areas in SEA.

As for current personal news, three months ago I aged 40 years in two weeks. To date I have regained about 70% of my strength, but I seem to be hovering in that area. Some days are better and some days worse. I am back riding a motor bike with no problem, but I have lost 20 ks of my speed. They say you know you are getting older when keeping the speed limit is no problem. Previously it was hard to keep it under 80 kph, but now I am very comfortable at 60. One major problem is lack of work. Four months ago I gave away my shop. I have always had a shop and a large number of projects. But now with an empty space where my shop was, it is like someone took the strings off my violin. There is just nothing to do every day. This life is killing me, and it is not good for my physical health.

This morning at 10:00 o'clock Pammy shocked me with the question, “Do you know that you are speaking this morning?” No, I didn't. I haven't been asked to speak for several months and hadn't the faintest inkling that I was up for this morning. My first reaction was, “Let someone else do it”. But then the Scripture came to my heart,”Sanctify the Lord God in your heart and be ready always to give answer to every man who asks you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). I guess that did it. But what to say? I was anything but in a preaching mood. Ten minutes later Gen. 22 – Abraham offering up Isaac – came to my mind. That is the clearest Gospel message in the OT. That scene depicted more of what happened on the Cross than any other passage in the Bible.

But the message was so real in my heart that I pleaded with the Lord to let someone else preach. I went to church 15 minutes late, and while everyone else was standing singing, I was seated with my head down towards my knees weeping. When the singing was over, Kichikun asked me if I could speak. Reluctantly, I stood up with his wife, Ying, who is the interpreter. For some time I stood there behind the pulpit unable to utter a word. I apologized for being so emotional but the message was so real to me that I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to be able to talk.

But at last I pulled myself together enough to get started. At first I had everyone read John 3:16 four times. Then I told them to close their eyes and recite it. I said if they didn't get anything else out of the service this morning I wanted them to walk out with that verse in their hearts. Then I had Ying read Gen. 22:1-14. I said, to the natural man this story has got to be disgusting; God asking a man to offer his son as a burnt offering. But if the Holy Spirit explains this to you, it is the most beautiful passage in the Bible. When we got to the verse where Isaac asked, “Where is the lamb?”' I said that was a question in the heart of every Jew for 2000 years until John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God” (Jn. 1:29, 36). And I said that scene was reenacted 2000 years later when the real Lamb of God went up that same hill with the wood on his back; except the first time, God spared Abraham's son, but He did not save His own Son. When I finished, I was weeping so hard I simply apologized, and went straight home. I hurt all over that that message could be preached, and people be indifferent. I gave it my best shot, but to talk about such a subject, my most eloquent expressions seem only like putting mud in tea.

Father, You have got to honor Your Son and give Him the reward for His sufferings in Thailand and Japan.” Amen

                                                                              bill

Pammy's Revival

17 August 2014

Dear Phyllis,

I really don't know what to say today. It is not due to the absence of events but I am not sure how to handle them. Unlike the traditional good-news-bad-news scenario, let me start with the bad news first.

Two years ago a close friend asked me if I would be willing to work with him in establishing a training school for minority boys to equip them for getting good paying jobs as high skilled workers. The original concept was very broad based with training in several areas. The simplest was wood working and I was asked to be the instructor to train boys how to be good carpenters and cabinet men. We had good facilities and bought some basic equipment. My friend was also in contact with an NGO whose basic purpose was identical to what he had in mind. It looked ideal. The NGOs had contacts with minority groups and we had the basics for a school. But it didn't work out that way. We started out with three boys, and I was given a list of projects of various things that customers ordered. I wasn't thrilled with the requests, but was able to produce an acceptable product. But there was very little instruction involved. All these projects were first-time jobs for me, and I had to think my way through a maze to figure out how to make them. That wasn't teaching anyone the ABCs of wood working. Most of the time was simply giving the boys sand paper to sand down projects. Not surprisingly all of them quit. But then a new feature was added. They introduced me to a former Lisu (minority) pastor who was out of a job and available to work with the school. John was pure gold. I liked him very much right from the beginning. He had very little background in wood working but had the basic gift and spirit to pick it up fast. I taught him the basics, and he did very well with them. After one or two projects he was qualified to do what he had been taught very well. He spoke adequate English, so we actually became fast friends. The NGOs provided two more boys as students. These were good lads and one especially had great promise. But the continued assignments of odd first time – for me – difficult projects resulted in a lot of sanding. A month ago both boys said sayonara (goodbye) to go get a paying job. True, it was supposed to be a school, but basically we were using them to do a lot of grunt work free while selling the projects at a slight profit. 

Editor's Note:  The boys were being paid 7,000 baht a month each.  I am not sure if Bill was aware of this or not.  Minimum Wage in Thailand is 300 baht a day or about 6,000 baht a month.  The boys were being paid more then minimum wage and they were being trained.   If the boys were doing grunt work as Bill states, then Bill and John are responsible because it was their responsibility to train them.       Gary

We had to make some money to cover overhead and John's salary. About that time my friend told me that they were rethinking the school project; whether or not to try to get more boys or quit. But there were several orders so John and I wound up making some fairly high quality desks and cabinets. Friday afternoon my friend told me that they were “closing the school for keeps effective today”. I asked John if he knew anything abut it. No. At 3:00 Friday afternoon one of the men from the NGO showed up to talk to John. He handed him his two week pay envelope of $135 and told him in an hour the project was finished and he was out of a job.

Editor's Note:  John was given not 2 weeks pay as Bill indicates, but 2 months pay.  This is common practice in Thailand.    Gary

That ain't the way it is supposed to work. Needless to say John wasn't too happy to be given one hour notice and be put out on the street with a wife and family to feed. He told me, “That is not the way Christians are supposed to treat each other.” I don't know how John felt, but I thought it a little out of character with the Bible as the NGO brother left this man out of work with nothing but $135 in his hand when he went out to get in his fancy Toyota and drive off. The NGO brother probably puts as much in his gas tank each month, as they expect this Lisu brother to live on with his family. I can identify with John as I face the same scenario. And I don't drive a fancy car. I can't see how we are going to pay the rent next month and I ride a beat up motor bike. I was working for free at the school and Pammy isn't disappointed as I frequently had to dig in my pocket to pay for some tools and supplies we needed. Facing a financial stone wall is nothing new for me. I have lived this way for 56 years and the Lord has always provided. But this is hard on John.

Editor's Note:  Bill was asked not to purchase supplies but to ask for supples from the NGO.  Bill ignored these guidelines and puchased supplies without permission.  The NGO reimbursed Bill for legitimate supplies and denied reimbursement when Bill purchased things the NGO thought were not needed.  The NGO reserved the right to purchase supplies and this was made clear to Bill on several occasions.    Gary

That's the bad news.

The good news is that something weird has happened in my home. Pammy has gone bonkers for Jesus. About three weeks ago I came home one evening and asked, “Did you have a good day today?” She replied, “No it wasn't good. It was EXCELLENT!!!” Well that was good news, but I didn't know what to make of it. She said, “I spent the whole day with Jesus and He is so wonderful.” She was just gushing with the wonderful things she had gotten from the Bible that day. It certainly was one unusual day. But it didn't quit. Day after day it was the same burning testimony. For two years she only came home at night to sleep. Now she would scarcely go out of the house to buy basic food. She was loathed to quit her time with the Lord. I didn't know what to call it. What she was coming up with was good, but I was still highly skeptical.

Then she would scarcely come out of her room all day. She said Jesus was giving her songs. Again I was skeptical, but was genuinely surprised that several of these songs were amazing good. The words and melody were terrific. Some of it were really high quality melodies.

Xiamin is certainly the greatest hymnologist of the 20th century, and arguably the greatest hymnologist since Charles Wesley and Issac Watts. She has written well over 1,000 Chinese hymns known as the Canaan Hymns. I can't listen to these hymns without copious tears. If you want to listen to something that will really tear you up, check out The Canaan Hymns (English version) on YouTube.

Xiamin was born a simple peasant girl in Hunan, China. She never got past middle school and was saved as a teenager. There was absolutely nothing special about her at all. She was just an uneducated peasant girl that you probably wouldn't even be too happy is she came to your church. But shortly after she was saved songs started coming to her heart – words and melody. She started humming some of these songs with friends, and they asked, “Where did you learn that?” She replied, “I didn't. This is just something that the Holy Spirit put in my heart”. Soon she got together with someone who could write notes and began to put some of these hymns on paper. They began to spread. It wasn't long before they were being sung in all Chinese churches world wide. These songs have been the wings for the revival in China.

They are so absolutely distinctive. They are totally Chinese. There is nothing in the western world like them. We have our praise songs and Hill songs but these are radically different. Only China could produce something like this. As I have listened to these hymns, I begged God, “Lord, please do something like this for Thailand.” I don't know whether or not that is possible. These songs have been born out of poverty, suffering, and pain; and yet unspeakable love and joy in the Holy Spirit. Xiamin has been in jail and for sometime had to hide to keep from arrest. It would be impossible for something like this to be born in a hip-hop culture with the, “Oh, I'm so happy, I love Jesus”; shallow western church life. Thailand isn't as bad as the US, but there is virtually no persecution here, and the Thai church knows little of suffering. Also there is an almost unprecedented revival going on in China, and with such an out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, it is not surprising that the Lord would also provide the hymns that go with it. That certainly was the case with Wesley and Watts.

I am not suggesting that Pammy will be the Xiamin of Thailand but some of her songs sound so unusual that I can only speculate that they well might be of the Lord. Some of the melodies are something like I have never heard. They certainly are not western, and they almost sound a little like the Chinese melodies. There is a rather distinctive Oriental flavor to them. She has filled a note book with these songs in the past two weeks. Much of these songs are pure Scripture. She was trying to sing some Bible verses to m the other day and I said, “It doesn't fit. You are trying to sing five and six syllables on one note.” I don't know how she got around it, but she tells me that some are straight from the Thai Bible but they seem to fit nicely with the melody.

I don't know how to explain this strange phenomenon. I have called it revival. Amazingly, she keeps saying, “I am a new person. I will never go back to being that bad person that I was before.” That is great, if it is real. No one can stay up forever. Sooner or later they will come down. But she has been amazingly consistent or the past three weeks. Her cravings to go outside, and excessive money spending characteristics have almost totally disappeared. She rarely goes out of the house. The other night things started going sideways in the kitchen. I saw all the signs of another real scrap coming on. I said, “Look, before I get mad and make you mad, lets back off and allow the Lord to settle us down.” That didn't help much. Dishes started getting slammed around the kitchen pretty hard. I was going to tell her, “It looks like the new person didn't stay very long, and the old person is back”. But God gave me grace to keep my mouth shut. I expected the worst, but was genuinely surprised that after half an hour the sun came out again, and the new person was visible. That really was amazing.

The other day she was out for several hours and came home saying, “Well, I led another lady to Christ this afternoon.” For whatever other weakness she may have, I must say she is one of the most aggressive soul winners I have ever met. How many are really saved the Lord alone knows, but she prays with more people to accept Christ than anyone I have ever met in Thailand, and very few in the world.

I am grateful for what it appears the Lord has done for her, but I am also well aware that when people become super-spiritual there can be serious danger. I know from painful personal experience, and from observing many others, that one of the most dangerous aspects of a close walk with the Lord is the possibility of becoming spiritual intoxicated. By that I mean, a person can lose their good senses. A person can easily feel that the Lord has taken them to an enchanted land beyond the restraints of the natural world. In 1956 we had a serious hyper-spiritual movement in Japan that started with a push towards the charismatic movement. There was a great hunger for the Lord and revival. Forty some good missionaries started waiting on the Lord for a Holy Spirit out-pouring on Japan. They became so intense that they left their mission stations and went to the city of Toyama on the west coast of Japan. They said, “When the Holy Spirit comes He will do more in one month than has been accomplished in the previous 100 years”. That could be possible. But in their hyper-spiritual state they got so close to the Lord that He was talking directly to them to the point that they didn't need their Bibles anymore. The Toyama movement became the worst spiritual shipwreck in post-war Japan.. One dear TEAM brother, Bill Loutz, survived and became a hard-head conservative.

I hope Pammy doesn't go too far down that road. At the moment she has a deep craving for the Word of God. When a person gets to that point where the Lord is talking so clearly to them they are wide open for delusion. The bottom line of spiritual guidance is the Lord telling us what to do, but when a person goes too far in that direction we find the devil using that frequency also. Over the years I have seen numerous times when good men of God have said, “God told me...” and then do some of the most unbiblical, off-the-wall, things imaginable. Many (most) spiritual disaster begin with “God told me”.

I don't know what John is going to do. God will have to tell him. For that matter God will have to tell Bill also. And I trust He will keep His hand on Pammy.

Prayerfully, bill

The End Times

10 August 2014,

Dear Phyllis,

There is much to say today – in both ways. On the physical front I am up to around 60% military power. Each week I am gaining by 10%. I certainly am vastly improved from what I was a month ago when I was next door to paralysis. Monday I went back to work in Sankapeng and felt great. It felt so good to be back working again that at one point I nearly forgot I had a problem. I could use a jig saw, router, and nail gun, but Friday I reached out my hand to pull a skill saw and couldn't do it. But praise the Lord for improvement.

On the other side, last week was the first time ever that I seriously considered taking down the flag, folding it under my arm, and return to the states for keeps. I wrote my niece a letter raising the question if the time hadn't come to call it a day in the Orient, and close shop like everybody else. Well over 90% of my friends that I worked with 30 and 40 years ago have long since pulled up stakes and gone home. Is this my time to join them?

I was looking to the Lord to give me some sense of guidance through my niece. If there is one person on this planet that loves me, it wold be my niece, Pam Gill. I was somewhat hoping for a letter like, “Oh praise the Lord! We have been praying the Lord might lead you in that direction.” But instead I got the reverse response where she virtually said, “No way. Stay where you are.” I really didn't appreciate that letter, but perhaps that was the guidance I was asking the Lord to provide. I replied to Pam's letter by saying, “The negatives are still very much in place. My heart is 50-50. On the surface it looks like the Lord has dried up Thailand for me and there really isn't much reason to stay.”

For virtually all my entire life the Lord's means of guidance for me has been to dry up the place where I am at that moment, making it almost impossible to stay. This was true with the Air Force, Karuizawa, Ikoma, Sasebo, and NLL. It wasn't that there were many clambering for my talents, begging me to move up the ladder, but it was a matter of being pushed off the stepping stone that I was standing on then.

In 1981 there was a famous aircraft accident with a bird taking off from Dulles in Washington. The aircraft got about 300 feet in the air when it hit flame-out and crashed in the Potomac River. There were many survivors. It was unusually cold in Washington at that time, and there was ice on the Potomac. I saw a famous news clip on Japanese TV where there was a lady about 15 feet from the shore in the water. There was a chopper directly over head dropping a horse collar for her to hang on to so they could pull her to the shore. She was nearly gone, and lost her grip two or three times, and then she just gave up and sank. There were at least 100 men standing there watching. When she gave up the last time and started under, something me screamed, “JUMP!!!” There were 99 men there, some of whom were probably praying, but realizing that they had a wife and children, and God didn't want them to do any thing foolish like jumping in cold water. There was one man who was not of that frame of mind. He dove in, grabbed the lady with one hand and the horse collar with the other and within seconds they both were out of the water.

I never forgot that scene. To this day it still brings tears to my eyes. In 1998 I heard of a place in Vietnam where there were five churches using one Bible. I asked, “Why doesn't somebody do something?” But everybody was busy. They had to make a living. They had to pay for the new car. They had to pay for the new 36 inch TV set. There was something inside of me exploding. I said, “Alright, if you won't go, I will.” And I got on a plane to go one way to Vietnam. I have told you that story many times. I told you last week how the Lord privileged me to do something that exceeded my highest dreams for the next 15 years. But that day has passed. The last time I was in northern Laos, I was talking to a missionary there who told me, “We have all the Bibles we need.”

Today my heart burns for Muslims. I long to go to Pakistan to preach to the Pakistani or the Pashtuns, or to go to west China to reach the Uyghurs. But it looks like God has clipped my wings. I have told Pastor Hanook in Pakistan I would join him this afternoon if the Lord would give me the money and a visa. But now with my physical disability I wonder if I'm not just a spent old man who ought to call it quits and go home. Of course I pray for Thailand. I pray for Japan. But both countries have plenty of churches. We have more churches in Mae Jo, where I live, than in Greenville SC. Both countries have had a Gospel witness for 150 years and yet there has been no significant moving of the Spirit like there was in Korea or China today.. The Bible tell us that the day will come when all nations will belong to the Lord, but I long to see the flag of Jesus flying over Japan and Thailand today. It is highly doubtful that I will have anything to do with that flag raising. Now I am considering taking my flag down.

My morning meetings with Jesus continue to be superb. There are many things the Lord is showing me day by day. I have told you that I spend enormous amount of time in Revelation. I know that book so well now that I can close my eyes and tell you what is in every chapter. I know the contents very well. But I am further from being dogmatic about interpretation than I have ever been; other than one or two things seem perfectly clear. One is that I see no way that book is linear. That is, it does not follow 1, 2, 3.

I am convinced that it comes in a configuration with which we are not familiar now on this earth. If we had been born, raised, and lived in a two dimensional earth there is no way we could understand a three dimensional environment. That is, in a two dimensional earth, a dot has no dimension. But in a three dimensional environment a dot can be a line which has a dimension. I am convinced that spiritual things are more difficult for the natural man to understand than if we lived in a two dimensional earth. But if we can accept that the Lord is trying to tell us things that the natural man cannot understand, that makes it possible for the Holy Spirit to show us things that may not make sense.

For one thing I am beginning to look at the Seven Seal, the Seven Trumpets, and the Seven Vials of the wrath of God in new light. If we look at the Six Seal in chapter 6, and the last Vial in the end of chapter 16, we see that these are basically the same event. Therefor, I see the Seventh Seal as an explanation how the end comes. I see that the first Four Horses in Chapter 6, are exactly the same four judgment that the Lord has always used in dealing with humanity; the beast, war, famine, pestilence (Ez. 14:15-21). It may well be that these are not sequential but things the Lord has been using to speak to humanity for 2000 years.

I think it is highly significant that the Seven Trumpets and the Seven Vials are basically the same thing, but with a greater intensity. They are the environment (vegetation), the ocean, the rivers, the atmosphere, the pit (devils kingdom), and the Euphrates. As in the Seventh Seal, I see the Seventh Trumpet as an explanation on what bring us to the end. I see the Euphrates as the preparation for Armageddon.

In a general way I have seen a similarity with the conquest of Jericho in Josh. 6 and Revelation, but yesterday morning the Lord showed me how they are almost identical. Israel marched around the city blowing the trumpets seven times But on the seventh day they blew it seven times. That is exactly what revelation teaches. Then with the last blast there was the shout. This is exactly what we see in Rev. 19:1-6. Then the walls came down. That is Rev. 18.

As residents of this earth, we have a tendency to read Revelation looking more at the revelations of the signs than the revelation of Jesus (Rev. 1:1). Everyone says, “Look out, here comes war, here comes natural disasters, here comes the anti-Christ,” But that is not the way heaven looks at Revelation. Before any major catastrophic event on earth we see first the scene in heaven (Rev. chapters 4,5; 7, 10,12, 14, 15, 19). If Armageddon and the fall of Jericho are the same thing, don't you think we should have a different attitude as we hear the trumpets? To me, it seems that I can hear the trumpets sounding so loud now only the deaf can't hear them.

I am not as strong a literalist as I was in my early years. I believe that much of the Bible is figurative language, and we need the Holy Spirit to explain to us what it means. Obviously when Jesus spoke to the Jews of His day about eating His flesh and drinking His Blood He wasn't referring to cannibalism. I'm not sure what the Scripture is teaching us about marking the 144,000 in Revelations 7. That might be literal, but I also see that 12 is the infallibly number of God's people, and 144,000 is 12X12. God's promise to Abraham was multiplication. We see in Heb. 6:14 when God made His covenant with Abraham, He promised, “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee”. Whatever 144,000 thousand means I see it as the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham to multiply his seed, And that may be us (Gal. 3:7,29).

It I highly significant that everybody in Revelation gets mark. They either bear God's mark, or the mark of the beast on their forehead (Rev. 7:3; 13:16). This is exactly the same thing that we saw in Ez. 9:4 before the destruction Jerusalem. The mark in Ezekiel and the mark on the servants of God in Rev . 7:3 seems to be more of a spiritual mark rather than a literal one. Whatever it means, I do believe the mark of the beast will probably be visible. But to me I feel that it is significant that God's mark, as well as the devils, is on the forehead. If we look for a figurative meaning, the forehead may well mean a persons mind set. Certainly this is clearly the most distinctive mark of Christians today. You can usually tell right now who is saved and who isn't by their mind set. lf a person says they are saved but they never speak of Jesus, and all they talk about is the world, I highly suspect they don't belong to the Lord.

I was deeply impressed with the concern that the Lord obliviously has for His own people, when He directed the angels not to hurt anything until His people were marked (Rev. 7:3). This also is in keeping with Ez. 9:4. But I also noticed that in Rev. 14:1, before the fireworks start of the wrath of God poured out, that we see the same 144,000 that we saw in Rev. 7.:3 stand with the Lamb in heaven. This also mentions forehead. For those who hold to the bug-out rapture doctrine this could mean that they got raptured out, but I strongly feel that they got there by being killed like everybody else. In His teaching on the end time, Jesus warned that His people would be hated by all men, and some would get killed, but then He added “Not a hair of your head shall perish” (Lk. 21:16-18). Obviously when He promised not a hair would perish, He was not exempting martyrdom. He also said that we are counted as sheep for the slaughter (Rom. 8:36). If that isn't happening today where we are seeing hundreds of thousand of Christian being killed in Africa and the Middle East, I don't know what it is. We are witnessing slaughter house genocide in many places today and I believe it must intensify. We haven't seen the real show with the anti-Christ yet. But for those who are being beheaded, the next stop is sitting on thrones (Rev. 20:4). I am sure they all will have a full head of hair. Things can only get worse. This may well cost us our blood. Praise God if it does, but nothing can harm us as we stand for Jesus.

Ganbarimasho (Let's give it our best shot),

                                                                                                           bill

Smuggling Bibles

3 August 2014

Dear Phyllis,

Before I get onto the body of today's letter. Allow me to get my physical condition out of the way first. Last Wednesday I had my second and last visit to the doctor. He seemed pleased and everything is progressing nicely except he told me that it will take six months for a complete recovery. Last week I said I was at about 40% normal power. This week I am up to 50%, but there is a lot of 50% that isn't there yet. Life has been little different from what it would be like in a nursing home. I do go to school on my motor bike to teach the children every morning for 30 minutes, but the rest of the day is spent either sleeping or sitting in my chase lounge chair on the balcony looking at Fox News or You Tube. This is killing me. But there is much I can do today that was impossible a week ago.

Now today's letter. As I have said many times, I wonder if there has ever been anyone more privileged to live as varied life as me. But, unquestionably, the greatest privilege is what the Lord has allowed me to do for the past 16 years here in Thailand. I can't imagine any ministry that is more packed with all the elements than there is in the ministry of Bible logistics. There is a great deal of faith in trusting the Lord to make seeing eyes blind (2 Kng. 6:18), and make the iron swim up stream (2 Kng. 6:6). Without the Lord's help this ministry would be impossible. And yet there is a measure of professionalism involved. There are highly trained, intelligent, people in communist countries whose job it is to see that illegal Bibles do not get in. Amateurs are extremely dangerous. You have to know what to do and what not to do. There certainly is a significant portion of daring, plus adventure that few people ever experience. It takes all of it.

One of the most exciting run I was ever on was the Xieng Kuang run in 2000. Six months before then the Lord had opened up the greatest artery for supplying Bibles to northern Laos through my losing my backpack on a bus in the middle of nowhere in northern Laos. I told you that story. But then we set out to make the first run through that channel. We had about a dozen boys from a Bible school in the states, and Mark and myself. I was the only one who knew that route, and the first jolt was when I got pulled out of line at immigration in the Chiang Mai airport for an irregular passport. My passport had been stolen two years before then and it was not unusual to raise a question going through immigration. But this one was panic time. Fortunately everything was cleared up and I took my seat beside a breathless Mark.

In Bible run it is imperative that you do all your home work first, and lay everything out before you leave. But we had not been able to do that, and were going out blind hoping we could make contact with our man in Xieng Kuang . Without that everything would be impossible. That was a terrific risk.

Customs going into Laos was not difficult and we had no problems carrying our load of Bibles into Vientiane. We took a tour bus to Luang Prabang and then hired two vans to take us to Xieng Kuang. It was a grueling two day ride until we got within 30 km of our destination. The road was a sea of mud. Our drivers flat refused to venture through that mud that obviously was impossible for a van. We did see large trucks wading through it. Finally in desperation we asked the drivers if they would negotiate with a truck driver to take us the rest of the way. There was a large flat bed steel truck that agreed to do so. So for the last 30 km we sat on the back of this truck on steel girders. We were exhausted but grateful to get checked in at a guest house.

The next problem was I had a hard time finding the tour office where our man, Sang, worked. Phonsavan is a very small town. This was my second time there, and I couldn't find the office. But towards the evening of the second day I spotted a shack down a side street that looked like it. We stopped there, and sure enough, that was where Sang worked. But his boss told us that he was up in the mountains planting rice for three weeks. BIG PROBLEM!!! We had to act like tourist, so we hired a tour guide to take us around the Plain of Jars the next day,.

That was very interesting, and well worth while, but as the afternoon wore on it was obvious that we were up against a stone wall. I said to Mark, “We have got to stick our necks out a long ways, or we are dead.” Up until then it was a common story that all tour guides were communist spy agents and extremely dangerous to tell them anything. We violated all the rules by telling our guide who we were and what we had come for. That was an ultra no-no, but it was that or nothing. I asked our guide if he would take us to the church in the Hmong village so we could deliver our load of Bibles. It doesn't get much dumber than that. Our guide was a terrific fellow, but what we were asking him was virtual suicide.

He did take us to the Hmong village, but going to the church was just too risky. So he took us to a man he knew who was a marginal Christian. That guy was a character and about 40% saved. He knew enough about the Gospel to use all the vocabulary and showed us letters he had from other Christians, but he was not about to stick his neck out to help us complete our mission. NO WAY!! We asked if he would contact the pastor for us. NO! Could we leave our Bible at his house? NOOOO!!!! We spent a fruitless hour talking to him and there was no way he was going to endanger himself. And, of course, our guide had already gone well past the line in taking us to his house.

What happened in the next five minutes was one of the weirdest miracles of my life. We were about to leave when the Lord impressed upon my heart that perhaps we could have a word of prayer. When we suggested that, the most dramatic transformation I had ever seen happened. Up until then our 40% saved Christian had been adamant. Suddenly he became desperate for us to pray for him. His wife was going to have a baby in two weeks, and he was desperate for the Lord's blessing on his home. When we finished praying we had a fanatical Christian on our hands. Yes, he would help us, but could we please come back the next morning to have breakfast with him?

That night, we had no idea what was going to happen, but obviously the Lord had opened something up. The next morning we decided to have our team eat at a restaurant, and Mark and I would go to our friends house for breakfast. While we were sitting in the restaurant as our boys were eating, in walks Sang. Our friend had driven all night to get him from the mountains so he could help us with the transfer. Man howdy, you talk about a miracle!

Sang said he would get the tour van from the office to take us to the airport for our flight that morning. And we could leave our bags in the van. Perfect! Our flight to Vientiane was at 10:00 AM and it was now 8:00. Sang took Mark and I to our friends house for breakfast and said he would be back in an hour with the boys and our bags full of Bibles. I can't remember much about the food as my mind was totally upon Sang getting back with the boys and getting us to the airport on time.

As 9:00 o'clock came, and no Sang, we began to get worried. Mark said he would take a taxi into town to see what was wrong, and be back as soon as possible. At 9:30 I went out to stand beside the road to wait for Sang and the boys. 10:00 o'clock came and I was almost out of my mind. Then, praise God, Sang showed up. There had been a problem. Sang could not get the van from the office, but he wisely went to a back up plan to ask a Christian with a truck to take us to the airport. You should have seen 14 of us with a 1000 lbs of Bibles loaded in the back of that Toyota pickup truck.

It was 10:20 when we pulled in at the airport, but the Lord was wonderful in providing fog so the incoming flight could not land, making our flight two hours late.

What a tremendous relief to realize the unbelievable miracles the Lord had provided to make this run a brilliant success, and getting out of Phonsavan on time. But the excitement wasn't over yet. I thought our Christian driver would simply drop us off at the airport, and go on with the Bibles. But no such luck. For some totally inexplicable reason, he decided to stay to see us off. Unbelievable!!! But the biggest concern was, I had never seen so many soldiers in one spot in my life. It seemed that there as a military maneuver and every Lao soldier in northern Laos was in that airport. And I couldn't imagine a more dangerous scenario. It was obvious that this pickup was loaded with 14 stuffed backpacks. Of course, someone would come out from the airport to carry them inside. I have never seen a pickup truck sitting in a small airport loaded with obvious bags begging for an explanation for we didn't take them with us.

But that was only half the problem. Our 40% saved Christian, ever since the prayer, had become a howling Pentecostal. We forgot his real name, but he was walking around the airport like he was at a Pentecostal camp meeting shouting “hallelujah”. From that time on we just called him Hal. All the adrenaline we had experienced up until then was just the warm up for the last 30 minutes. Here we were, 14 tourist, with no backpacks, but obviously our backpacks were left in the truck sitting outside in the parking lot. One soldier would have been enough to get my heart in my mouth, but there must have been 20 or 30 soldiers milling around in that airport, and our Pentecostal friend was waking around waving his arms shouting “hallelujah”. Would someone please stop the world and let me off?

But an eternity passed. Eventually we boarded our Lao Air flight to Vientiane. My heart never stopped pounding until the wheels were in the air, and it was obvious that an indescribable miracle had happened in a successful delivery of a huge consignment of precious Bibles desperately needed for northern Laos.

It had been a year before then, that I had seen the pastor in northern Vietnam lying on the ground weeping because the Lord had sent him desperately needed Bibles. There had been a significant moving of the Holy Spirit among the Hmong people. Tens of thousands had been saved, but there was no way that they had access to God's Word except by radio. Now were at a place about 400 km south of there in one of the most difficult places in SEA with a large supply of the Word of God. This would be our main artery for the next several years in supplying that section of the world.

When we got back to Chiang Mai three days later it all seemed like a dream. What we had experienced was totally unorthodox, but clearly led of the Lord in providing the connections that would have been humanly impossible. This was not the way that Bible runs were supposed to be handled, but what we were unable to do the Lord had miraculously done for us.

Much has changed since then. The situation is China, Vietnam, and Laos has eased somewhat. There are still some teams doing Bible runs but not like before. Last year was the last one I was on, and that will probably be it for this life. But as I look back over the years, what the Lord has privileged me to do here in Thailand is something for which eternity will be too short to adequately thank Him.

May God bless you in following Jesus this coming week,

                                                                                             bill