My first memory of the Rev. Billy Graham was etched into my brain when I was a 6-year-old boy living in Alabama. My father took me to a Graham crusade that was held in a football stadium in Montgomery. As a youngster I usually fidgeted and kicked the pews during altar calls in church–especially if we sang more than four stanzas of “Just as I Am.” But Graham captured my full attention when he called sinners to the stage that day.

There was something almost magical about the way people were drawn to the altar. They came from every section of the arena as soon as the evangelist began his appeal. With a Bible in one hand and his other arm outstretched, Graham gave the invitation in his irresistible North Carolina drawl: “Come to Jesus today, my friend. He loves you. He died on the cross for you.”

While we sang a hymn about how Jesus “softly and tenderly” calls us home, people seated even in the highest rows made their way down the steps to the grassy field below. This wasn’t manipulation or theatrics. It was the simple, unadulterated gospel–clear enough for a first-grader to understand, yet compelling enough to win the hearts of teenage prodigals and hardened old men with walking canes.

What is amazing to me is that Graham’s message hasn’t changed during the 60 years he’s been in ministry. Even after he began airing his crusades on television and writing daily columns for newspapers, he didn’t modify the conditions of repentance. Though he became friends with American presidents, he didn’t
compromise his morals, sell out to special interests or cash in on his celebrity.

And when an increasingly secular culture began selling the idea that all religions are the same, Graham held his Bible in the air–maintaining that salvation comes only through Jesus. He isn’t ashamed to say that name publicly, yet he doesn’t come off like a mean-spirited zealot. Even political liberals and anti-God activists consider him a gentleman.

He has stayed faithful–to God, to his wife of 61 years and to the gospel
message. While countless preachers have caved in to the pressures of greed, lust and pride, Graham has held tightly to the truth and become an anchor for us all.

People often wonder who will replace Graham when he dies. I don’t think that is the right question. What I am wondering is whether we will model his faithfulness to a new generation.

When I survey the modern evangelical movement–especially those of us who call ourselves charismatics and Pentecostals–I see many boats tossing in the waves but few anchors to prevent shipwreck. Graham’s solid biblical faithfulness seems to have been replaced with a lightweight version.

A few years ago, Oklahoma pastor Carlton Pearson began teaching that people don’t need to repent or say a sinner’s prayer to become Christians. His exotic “inclusionist” theology states that everybody is already saved–because Jesus died for everybody. His teachings got him labeled a heretic last year by one prominent board of Pentecostal leaders. Yet on Pentecost Sunday this year, Pearson was in the pulpit at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, a prominent church in Atlanta pastored by Earl Paulk.

Pearson’s “everybody’s saved” doctrine isn’t new; it’s been known as universalism for centuries. If it were true, we wouldn’t need Graham or any other evangelist to call sinners to tear-stained altars. We wouldn’t sing about Jesus calling wayward souls to repentance. We would just throw out the Bible and start from scratch.

I hope this installment of the universalist heresy doesn’t spread too far. But what really concerns me is how many preachers are rewriting Scripture and whitewashing their sin after engaging in adultery and multiple divorces. Biblical standards that Graham helped us preserve are now up for grabs.

Marriage used to be viewed as a solemn oath sealed at a holy altar. I wonder how it is viewed in a “Spirit-filled” church where the 50-something pastor has already divorced two wives and is preparing to marry the young woman who used to date his son. How will faithfulness be defined in a church where an adulterous charismatic minister actually teaches that it is morally acceptable for a married man to have two sex partners? (These scenarios are not fictitious.)

Is there a link between universalism and the lowering of sexual standards? Absolutely. When sin infects church leadership, the bar is lowered. Before long, someone steps up to the pulpit and begins teaching that old-fashioned conversion
is passé. It’s a convenient way to justify bad behavior.

If this trend isn’t challenged, it won’t be long before heresy of the worst kind invades the church. When it does, the question will not be about who is taking Billy Graham’s place. The real question will be: Do we have enough integrity left to raise a standard against the darkness?

When the next wave of the Spirit hits, let’s pray that it will crash into all denominations.

Five years ago I had a vivid dream in which I found myself inside the Vatican. This was odd, since I have never been a Roman Catholic and have never traveled to Italy. Even more unusual was what I saw when I peered out the window: A giant wave was headed in my direction.

The tsunami dwarfed the entire city of Rome. I lost my footing when the wave crashed into the building. Immediately the floor began to move and I realized the room was tilting.

Although no water was coming through the arched windows, the building began turning on its side. I held on tightly to a marble column while furniture, books, statues and light fixtures crashed around me. The gradual movement did not cease until I was standing on the ceiling. The whole building had been turned upside down!

When I walked out of the room I met a group of priests and nuns who were singing choruses and praying loudly in tongues as they raised their hands in the air. Before the dream ended I was praying with them.

When I woke up I was startled and immediately told my wife what I had seen. I am not prone to having prophetic dreams, but because it was so vivid I knew God was speaking to me in this strikingly visual way.

After I prayed about it, I felt the Lord speak to me in no uncertain terms: Pray for the Catholics. I desire to send another wave of My Spirit. And this time it will turn the church upside down.

Depending on your age, you may remember that one of the most profound spiritual movements of the last century began in 1967 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. After some Duquesne professors read David Wilkerson’s 1963 book, The Cross and the Switchblade, they were baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. When they shared their experience with a group of students at a religious retreat, this new Pentecostal fire sparked a blaze that quickly spread to millions of Roman Catholics around the world.

In the earliest days of the movement, nuns were casting out demons, priests were healing the sick and many lay Catholics were attending charismatic conferences where they danced in the aisles and waved praise banners. At the movement’s peak in 1976, 30,000 charismatic Catholics jammed into Notre Dame’s football stadium to celebrate this heavenly visitation.

But even though Pentecostalism revived the Catholic Church for a while–and ignited huge Catholic renewal movements on every other continent–the glory days ended in the United States almost as quickly as they began. Prayer groups
disbanded, conference attendance lagged, and many participants either left
the Catholic Church to join Protestant congregations or became “former charismatics” who returned to status quo Catholicism.

What happened? Leaders of the Catholic charismatic movement are understandably defensive when you ask that question. They claim that their movement–which was officially endorsed by Pope John Paul II–went mainstream and continues to influence the church, only in a quieter way. Critics, however, charge that religiosity, tradition and questionable
syncretistic practices (such as misplaced emphasis on apparitions of the Virgin Mary) quenched the fires of renewal.

We could argue the point. (And the Lord knows there are plenty of Protestants eager to argue about Catholic doctrines.) But I would much rather focus on what the Lord asked me to do–which is to pray for another wave.

I think all of us could learn from what happened to the Catholics. Some Catholic leaders viewed the coming of the Spirit as a nice theological “add-on” that might appeal to some people and grow some churches. They welcomed the Spirit as long as He did not make too much of a mess.

But the Spirit is not something we add to our own programs and religious agendas. He does not come simply to touch us, to make us feel good, to heal our bad memories or to make us rich. He comes to subdue our carnality, incinerate our selfishness, throw out our idols and transform our very nature.

In other words, He messes us up!

When the Spirit came upon the disciples in the book of Acts, He manifested Himself as a rushing wind and a blazing fire. Chains were broken, buildings shook, tyrants were convicted, blind men saw, false teachers were struck blind, demons came out screaming, riots erupted and pagan empires were subdued.

The same Holy Spirit is here to invade us again. When the next wave of the Spirit hits, let’s pray that it will crash into all denominations, not just the Catholic Church. And let’s pray that He will cut through the shackles of man-made tradition, topple outdated religious structures and restore in us genuine, radical New Testament faith.

How I long for the innocent days when we didn’t put a price tag on the Holy Spirit’s anointing.
My heart sank in January when the Orlando Sentinel began running articles about prominent Christian recording artist Clint Brown, who pastors one of the largest churches in Central Florida. The news was bad: Brown and his wife, Angie, were embroiled in a divorce and were dividing their financial assets. After looking at court records, Sentinel reporters published Brown’s salary, the cost of his two homes, the value of his seven cars (including a $95,000 Mercedes-Benz) and the amounts he spent on luxury items from pricey boutiques.

It was sad enough that a Christian leader’s marriage was falling apart. It was sadder that the Browns were in court. But what was most tragic was that so many people in the Orlando area were hearing these reports about a pastor’s lavish lifestyle. Of course, members of Brown’s 6,000-member church defended him. But a larger group of already jaded unbelievers probably said to themselves, These preachers are all the same–they’re just in it for the money.

We could argue all day about whether it’s right or wrong for a minister of God to buy a $40,000 Rolex or pay $7,000 a month for his house. Brown draws a lot of his income from his recordings, and I will defend any person’s right to make a decent living.

And besides, there’s no rule in the Bible that says ministers can’t own multiple properties or wear nice clothes. Church leaders are not required to be poor.

But the questions remain: Are Christian ministers, whose callings are a public trust, allowed to damage God’s reputation–and smear the rest of us–by living any way they choose? Is it right to collect people’s tithes–money that is set apart
for a holy purpose–and use it to make ostentatious purchases?

Some prosperity preachers think so. It seems they’ve rewritten the Bible to suggest that greed is now a virtue.

I can’t judge what is in Clint Brown’s heart. I love his music, and I pray his marriage is restored. But his situation is further evidence that we face a crisis.

Greed has invaded the church. The message of Jesus has been hijacked by opportunistic preachers who use the pulpit to enrich themselves. They bombard our airwaves every day, selling promises of instant blessings in return for “$1,000 seeds.”

Their message is like an oily, sleazy smog that threatens to suffocate us. This corruption has polluted our movement and maligned our witness.

I’m tempted to walk away from it altogether when I see such bold, flagrant disregard for biblical standards among leaders who claim to have a direct hotline to God. How I long for the innocent days when we didn’t put a price tag on the Holy Spirit’s anointing.

Rick Warren, the Southern Baptist pastor who wrote the book The Purpose-Driven Life, is not identified with the charismatic movement and has probably never given a “$1,000 seed” to any prosperity preacher. Yet his book has hovered near the top of a New York Times best-sellers list for a year and is now the highest-selling hardback book in American history. He has made millions in royalties, but one of the first things he did with his money was give back to his church every dollar they ever paid him in salary.

Warren and his wife also decided they would not upgrade their lifestyle just because they struck it rich. They started a charitable foundation and pledged to use their profits to fund missions projects.

This pastor’s humble approach to success seems almost foreign to most of us. We forget that the early disciples were too radical about revival to be distracted by materialism. We overlook the fact that the apostle Paul–who wrote many of the Bible passages we preach about prosperity–spent his last days not in a mansion but in “rented quarters” (Acts 28:30, NASB).

I fear for the American church. Many of our leaders, behaving like Eli’s immoral sons, are dipping their hands into the offering plate and taking by force things that don’t belong to them (see 1 Sam. 2:12-17). Some of us are acting like Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, who traded his spiritual calling for a little silver and a couple of nice outfits (see 2 Kings 5:20-27).

And in many of our churches, the spirit of Achan rules–a spirit that covets material things that God has said are off-limits (see Josh. 7:20-22). Achan’s concealed greed caused all Israel to lose the battle. What will be the cost of the unrestrained selfishness we charismatics parade before the world?

Leaders in the New Testament church–who learned their theology while in prison–didn’t care about expensive spa treatments, plastic surgery or Gucci handbags. Yet in many Christian circles today, we view these worldly status symbols as evidence of God’s blessing.

May He forgive us for rejecting true worship to bow before golden calves.

The young man in the framed photograph below is not me–although I will admit he bears a resemblance. Allow me to introduce you to my uncle, James Young Jones Jr., who served in the United States Army immediately after he graduated from high school in West Point, Georgia, in 1943.

I wish I could tell you that Uncle James took me fishing or taught me to play football at family reunions, but I never knew him. He was killed in action on December 26, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. He was only 20.

He was buried in Belgium, but when the war ended the Army moved his remains to a cemetery in Georgia. My mother has his Purple Heart medal, along with a letter of condolence that President Roosevelt sent my grandparents.

I have the 48-star flag that was draped over his coffin. His picture is on my dresser. I look at it every day.

We didn’t talk much about Uncle James when I was a child because the mention of his name would make my grandmother cry. That made me all the more fascinated with his legacy.

Here was a guy who looked like me and had my same first name. We even shared the Jones cleft chin. Yet he had given his life on one of the most famous battlefields of World War II. When I was a kid I often wondered if I would share Uncle James’ courage or if I would have to use it in combat.

Some people consider the death of a young soldier a tragic waste. Filmmaker Michael Moore, for example, has used his mock documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 to suggest that the soldiers who are dying in the Iraq war are the needless casualties of a conflict that he claims is only about oil, corporate greed and President Bush’s personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein.

That’s insulting to anyone whose relatives died to protect the world from tyrants. Nobody in my family shares Moore’s cynical view of the current war on global terrorism. My father–who served in the Navy at the end of World War II–taught me that some people have to lay down their lives to preserve peace.

I know the subject of war is a touchy one, even among people of faith. I have some Christian friends who are opposed to the conflict in Iraq and others who believe that military action is never justified. Judging by the letters Charisma received during the last election, our readers are divided on this issue too.

I hate war, but God sometimes ordains military force to deal with wicked people. The apostle Paul told the Romans that government is “a minister of God” that “bears the sword” and acts as “an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil” (Rom. 13:4, NASB).

God used the military of the United States, along with other Allied forces, to stop the spread of Nazi terror in Europe in the 1940s and to restrain Japan’s plan for world domination. More than 450,000 American soldiers died in that conflict. If we had adopted Michael Moore’s views during World War II, most of Europe would be speaking German today.

More than 1,200 American soldiers have been killed in the Iraq war. When I watched the TV reports of Iraqis voting in January–to participate in the most
significant democratic election in the history of the Middle East–I knew our
soldiers didn’t die in vain. Their sacrifice shouldn’t be mocked or trivialized.

Was it God’s will for President Bush to overthrow Saddam? Were we supposed to ignore the fact that this barbaric Iraqi dictator had shot, gassed or tortured more than a million helpless people? History will prove, I believe, that U.S. intervention was both moral and necessary.

I am not suggesting that we should rush to war on flimsy evidence or that every action the U.S. military has taken in Iraq is justified. All Americans should be outraged by the behavior of the few out-of-control soldiers who abused the prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo–and Christians should be the most vocal in demanding accountability for those atrocities.

But those abuses don’t negate our responsibility to defend freedom when righteousness demands that we act. Somebody has to fight.

Somebody also has to pray. It irks me that cynicism about the war has infected many Christians–and weakened our commitment to pray for our soldiers.
I hope our cover story–which shows how God protected a Marine battalion in the early days of the conflict–will inspire you to intercede for those on the front lines.

There are many young men and women like my Uncle James in Iraq now, trying to protect a fragile Iraqi democracy from terrorists. Let’s honor all our soldiers–
and pray for their protection and swift return home.

When I spend time with the Africans my spiritual passion glows hotter.
The village of Ohanku is at least 15 miles from any major thoroughfare in Nigeria. When I visited there in January, our bus followed a one-lane dirt road that looked more like a footpath. I saw only two cars along the way, but several women were walking on the side of the road as they balanced bundles of food on their heads. Seeing my white face in this remote area prompted surprised looks from everybody.

When my group arrived in the village I was amazed to find almost 1,000 people waiting for church to start. They had assembled near a giant tree in the central market area; the tribal king and several chiefs and their wives were seated under a makeshift canopy. Most of the crowd belonged to different congregations but they had gathered in unity this afternoon to celebrate a miracle.

They called it “the healing of Ohanku land.” I was one of a handful of non-Africans to witness it.

The ceremony began when Mosy Madugba, a respected Nigerian minister and mentor of mine, reminded the people of how God blessed Israel when they renounced their foreign gods.

Then a frail tribal leader recited the history of the village. For centuries the people of this region had practiced witchcraft and worshiped a river goddess. Then in 1920, the chieftain explained, white missionaries brought the gospel to the
village–but local occult priests sent insects to drive them away.

“Today we are asking God to forgive the people of Ohanku for rejecting the gospel,” Mosy announced. He then asked another white minister, Jeff McGee from Texas, and me to represent the missionaries who had been expelled 85 years ago. Three tribal leaders took the microphone, one after the other, and asked for forgiveness. Jeff and I forgave them and pronounced God’s blessings on the people.

I knelt in the dirt. “Father,” I prayed in front of the crowd, “send Your prosperity to this village. Bless the crops. Bless the water. Bless the children with health and education. Let the gospel of Jesus be preached from this place.”

The healing of Ohanku continued on Sunday when we returned for a second service. This time the villagers had collected reminders of their old religion–goat skulls, sticks, chains and feathers used as occult charms–and dumped them in a huge pile.

Just as the Ephesians burned their occult books in the days of the apostle Paul (see Acts 19:19), the people of Ohanku broke a cycle of poverty and ignorance by burning their false gods. I joined with my Nigerian friends in singing worship choruses as their idols were consumed by the flames.

More joy erupted the next day when someone phoned Mosy with a report of a miracle. Some public water pipes in Ohanku that had been rusted shut for years opened suddenly the next morning.

Villagers saw the gushing water as a sign of God’s promised favor. Children began dancing in the streets.

The celebration in Ohanku is being repeated throughout Africa today. Entire communities in Nigeria are rejecting idols and embracing faith in Christ.

Only a century ago Nigeria was dominated by occultism. Today it is home to the world’s largest church and one of the world’s fastest growing denominations. Researchers say that in 25 years the global headquarters of missionary activity will be in Africa and Asia–not North America.

What does this mean for us? If we Americans want to stay in the flow of what the Holy Spirit is doing, we should learn a few things from our African brothers and sisters. We need the spiritual gifts that God has deposited in them. It’s time to stop looking at them as a mission field and recognize that the Holy Spirit has uniquely equipped them to instruct us. It is time for partnership.

The men and women I’ve met in Nigeria have forever changed my life. Mosy Madugba has taught me lessons about spiritual warfare that I never could have learned in an American setting. My friends Emmanuel Kure and Abu Bako–both of whom were attacked and scarred by Muslims after they preached in public–are models of apostolic bravery.

Many Nigerian Christians recognize that God has visited their nation and entrusted them with a serious responsibility to evangelize the world. They carry a sense of urgency that I don’t see in most Western churches. When I get close to the Africans my faith grows more aggressive, my prayers become more militant and my spiritual passion glows hotter.

Their intense zeal has nothing to do with skin color or nationality. It’s due to the fact that they have embraced a bold, raw, New Testament faith that we barely even recognize from where we sit in our cushioned pews.

When this African zeal spreads in our direction, I hope we gather around a bonfire of our own–to burn our idols of intellectual pride, racial prejudice and religious compromise. That will be a celebration indeed.

Fifty years ago doctors told Dutch evangelist Andrew van der Bijl that he was “too weak to travel” because he suffered from chronic back pain. That bit of medical advice now seems absurd. This veteran preacher, known as Brother Andrew by his adoring supporters worldwide, has done nothing but travel since his outreach to the persecuted church began in 1955.

So far the man who shouldn’t travel has visited 125 countries and logged an estimated 1 million miles since his first missionary trip. He’s gone through at least a dozen passports but miraculously has never lost a suitcase. He has survived one plane accident, but he says the impact of that crash in the early 1970s actually healed his back.

His amazing journey started with a drive from his home in Alkmaar, Holland, to Warsaw, Poland, where he first witnessed the suffering of churches behind the Iron Curtain. Then came Czechoslovakia. Then he drove his blue Volkswagen–which came to be known as his “miracle car”–to Yugoslavia. Next came East Germany, Bulgaria and Romania. Then came trips to Russia and China.

Brother Andrew’s travels never stopped, but they became more dangerous. In the 1950s and 1960s he successfully transported thousands of Bibles into communist countries, and a 1967 book about his adventures, God’s Smuggler, gave his ministry the worldwide support he needed to expand. After the biography increased his visibility and made it difficult for him to travel in the communist bloc, he began focusing more of his attention on the Middle East.

Today he is 76, and the organization he founded, Open Doors With Brother Andrew, has 27 offices around the world, 350 full-time employees and an army of volunteers. They smuggle 1 million Bibles to China annually and distribute tons more to 45 other countries.

That’s not too bad for a guy who was told he shouldn’t drive or get on a plane.

When Charisma interviewed him at his home in Holland recently, he was preparing to fly to Pakistan, where he frequently conducts large-scale evangelistic events. As long as his health is good and the suffering church needs Bibles and face-to-face encouragement, Brother Andrew says he must go.

Born to Be Wild

We might be tempted to glamorize Brother Andrew’s daredevil life, as if he were a Christian version of James Bond or Indiana Jones. But he flatly rejects such comparisons. “I am not an evangelical stuntman,” the white-haired evangelist says defensively. “I am just an ordinary guy. What I did, anyone can do.”

His early years were shaped by enormous challenges. During the German occupation of Holland he hid in ditches with other teenage boys to avoid being drafted by the Nazis. He often ate tulip bulbs to survive food shortages.

When he became of fighting age he went to Indonesia with the Dutch army–until a bullet shattered his ankle and sent him home. The bloodshed he witnessed in Indonesia shaped his views of war and drove him to alcohol until he surrendered his life to Jesus in a tiny room in the attic of his parents’ home. In 1950 he answered the call to ministry in an evangelistic tent crusade.

Then the real adventure began. After he told God he would go anywhere for Him, his ankle was miraculously healed and he enrolled in Bible college in Scotland. His back problems prevented him from graduating, but the lessons he learned at World Evangelism Crusade’s training center in Glasgow prepared him for a spiritual battle far more challenging than anything he experienced in Indonesia as a commando.

A defining moment came in 1957, when he pulled his Volkswagen up to a security checkpoint at the border of Yugoslavia. He had dozens of Bibles hidden in the tiny car, and he had to deliver them to desperate Christians who were starving for God’s Word. Just before the guard began the search, Brother Andrew breathed this prayer:

“Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to Your children across this border. When You were on Earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.”

God answered his prayer. The guard didn’t see the Bibles even though they were visible in his opened suitcase. Andrew drove his car across the border, then met with small congregations huddled in clandestine locations. He found them in Budapest, Prague, Cluj and Moscow.

There, in those dimly lit meetings, Brother Andrew met his flock. These were the people he was called to serve. They did not want sermons as much as they wanted companionship. His presence was their reminder that the church in the West had not forgotten them.

He was a heavenly secret agent on a divine mission, and he says he never once felt fear–not when questioned by snooping border guards, Russian KGB officers or–in more recent years–Saudi Arabian police.

“I have never really felt danger,” he says, his blue eyes still sparkling with youthful energy. “There really is no danger, unless you are living your own life.”

That sense of mission has kept him calm in perilous situations. Once when he preached in Colombia, guerrillas pointed guns at him throughout the sermon. In 2001 he visited the home of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the late founder of the Hamas terrorist group, and shared Christ with him. In Lebanon, he distributed Bibles to a group of hostages who were being held in a prison.

Fear is simply not in Brother Andrew’s vocabulary. Show him an obstacle and he will figure out a way to sneak past it. Show him a terrorist and he will embrace him with open arms.

For anyone interested in sharing the gospel with a radical Islamic insurgent, Brother Andrew shared this advice with Charisma: “When you see a guy with a gun, go put your arm around him and he will not shoot you. If you are far away from him it is easier for him to shoot you! That is my attitude toward any terrorist group. I have been to the Hezbollah guys in Israel. We may be the only Jesus they ever see.”

Despite such daring, Brother Andrew has been arrested only a handful of times, in Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“But I have never lost a Bible,” he says emphatically.

No one really knows how many Bibles Andrew and his organization have smuggled into closed countries. In 1981, during an ambitious effort called Project Pearl, Open Doors delivered a shipment of 1 million Bibles to China by way of a huge sailing vessel. But Brother Andrew has disdain for numbers because churches tend to measure success with arithmetic while ignoring what really matters.

“I don’t care about statistics. I place a strong emphasis on people,” he says.

How many Bibles have Brother Andrew and his ministry distributed during the years?

“We don’t count,” he says with a shrug. “Millions. But God is the perfect bookkeeper. He knows.”

The Giant Killer

It’s no surprise that this man who has smuggled so many Bibles into unfriendly territory would have a few Bibles of his own. Actually he has more than 1,000 of them displayed in his study at his home in the Dutch town of Hardewijk.

There are French, Polish, English and Chinese Bibles, and dozens of other translations. There are tiny New Testaments (he convinced a company to publish pocket-size Russian New Testaments because they are easily smuggled) and a huge Dutch Bible, the translation of which predates the King James Version.

For Andrew, these books represent the most powerful weapon known to man, and the only hope for a lost world.

“How can they ever love the Savior if they do not have His Word?” he asks.

Brother Andrew was one of the few Christian leaders in the West who predicted that communism would fall. In the late 1970s he stated publicly that the Soviet empire would soon collapse, at a time when many American “Bible prophecy experts” were declaring that the Antichrist would emerge from the Soviet Union and take over the world.

Andrew didn’t believe such foolishness. While Westerners were cowering in fear of Soviet dominance, he was busy taking loads of Bibles into Soviet prisons and encouraging jailed pastors in every Soviet republic. He was never intimidated by anything with a communist label. To him, the Soviet regime was a noisy Goliath that would ultimately face a fatal blow to the head.

“Communism was a very stupid philosophy,” he says bluntly. “It is stupid to say there is no God. I saw the emptiness and the hypocrisy of it.”

Today, Brother Andrew is eyeing the more formidable giant of Islam, which he considers more dangerous because of its 1,400-year history.

“As far back as 1978 I was telling people that Islam will soon be a much greater threat than communism ever was,” he says. “Russia never had more than 6 percent of its population following communism. Meanwhile Islam has its own book and far more dedicated followers.”

That does not mean he is cowering in the face of the Islamic Goliath. Indeed, Brother Andrew has given the rest of his life to challenge it.

While Open Doors works in many parts of the world, Brother Andrew conducts almost all his efforts in Islamic nations. In 2004 he released his latest book, Light Force, which chronicles his efforts to evangelize the most hard-core Islamists in the Arab region.

He has distributed Bibles and copies of God’s Smuggler to gun-wielding Hamas soldiers (the Arabic version is titled In Spite of the Impossible). Yasser Arafat, who died in November, knew Brother Andrew personally and even allowed God’s Smuggler and copies of the Jesus film to be sold in a Bible bookshop in Gaza. Andrew says thousands of Arabs have read or seen the gospel as a result of his friendship with the Palestinian leader.

Though he doesn’t cower to fear, Brother Andrew has faced painful heartache through the years, especially after he became friends with Christians in the Arab world. Some of them have been martyred. Just one week before Charisma’s interview, three of his friends were murdered in Afghanistan.

Dealing with such tragedy is the most difficult part of his job. Says Brother Andrew: “Liberal Christians tell me I should just leave [Muslims] alone, but I know we must go to them. People say to me, ‘Isn’t it cruel to win converts, and then see them killed?’ I tell the liberals that it is better that these [converts from Islam] are now with Jesus in heaven than for them to be in hell.”

Andrew’s feisty, unorthodox ways often have put him at odds with traditional churches that don’t appreciate his radical approach to Christian faith or his sense of urgency about evangelism. In fact he has been kicked out of three churches during his lifetime–for being too zealous.

At age 23 he was dismissed from the Dutch Reformed Church because he witnessed to others about Christ. (The denomination at that time frowned on evangelism.) Later he was labeled an apostate because he was baptized in an evangelical church. He was also thrown out of a Baptist church because its leaders didn’t approve of his preaching to Pentecostals.

Although he is quite open about his Pentecostal experience, which occurred in the late 1950s, he refuses to describe himself as a Pentecostal or charismatic–because, he says, he “hates labels.” He has absolutely no use for denominationalism.

“Once you are out there [in countries where Christians are persecuted], denomination plays no role,” Brother Andrew says. “In China, you don’t ask, ‘What is your denomination?’ We are not playing church. That is a game that God hates.”

Love Is His Weapon

When a teenage Brother Andrew was fighting in Indonesia in the 1940s, he carried a gun and at least once participated in an ambush that resulted in horrific civilian casualties. The carnage he saw haunted him for months–and eventually brought him to the feet of a forgiving Savior.

But you won’t find a gun in his house today. He has a strong distaste for violence–and is outspoken in his criticism of most military operations, including the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq. He hopes that his new book will help convince Christians–and perhaps government officials on both sides of the Atlantic–that the only road map to peace in the Middle East involves compassionately sharing the gospel of Christ.

“The Bible is better than a bomb,” he says, hopping on his favorite soapbox. “I can’t imagine Jesus flying in an F-16. We have no right to liquidate people.”

He states clearly that he is not a pacifist, in the true sense of the word. He has always been quick to condemn violence perpetrated by Muslims, especially their grisly suicide missions.

But he doesn’t think it’s smart to fight fire with fire. He bases his strategy on Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:44: “‘Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you'” (NIV).

Brother Andrew’s insights about terrorism have paved the way for him to advise governments. During Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as Soviet prime minister, Brother Andrew found himself offering spiritual advice to a top Gorbachev aide.

The official, who represented the most powerful atheist regime in history, told Brother Andrew in that 1988 meeting: “If only we could go back to the simplicity of the gospel.”

Today, L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, calls Brother Andrew regularly. So do several U.S. congressmen, some of whom credit him for the 1998 passage of the International Religious Freedom Act, which seeks to protect the rights of all people of faith.

Knowing the Middle East as well as he does (he has visited there 55 times), he has the same advice for all lawmakers: Get smart and stop using violence.

“We are often more politically minded than we are spiritually minded,” he says. “The more you fight [radical Muslims] militarily, the more they will fight. Almost all the actions the West takes are creating more fundamentalists and terrorists.”

With a hint of frustration he adds: “Understanding Islam could have saved America billions.” Then with a boyish smile he diplomatically adds: “But I don’t like to get into politics.”

Brother Andrew has a peaceful method to resolve this conflict with radical Islam, but it is a strategy most leaders in Washington and Baghdad aren’t likely to adopt anytime soon.

“I go to them. I give them a Bible,” he says. “I give them a copy of my book. I am Jesus to them.”

Even Saddam Hussein? Even Osama bin Laden and radical Iraqi leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Brother Andrew doesn’t consider anyone outside the boundaries of God’s mercy.

He replies: “I believe everyone is reachable. People are never the enemy–only the devil.”

Brother Andrew will be a vessel of that love as long as he can drive a car, fly in a plane or walk through the dusty streets of Damascus or Gaza City or Cairo.

As long as there are terrorists in the Middle East–and Christian converts being martyred anywhere on the planet–Brother Andrew will go to them. If war continues to rage, he will dodge American bullets and Muslim suicide bombers to find anyone who needs the gospel.

The Fine Art of

SMUGGLING

Open Doors has perfected the art of
‘delivering’ Bibles.

Johan Companjen doesn’t like the word “smuggle.” It sounds so … illegal. But he admits that the Open Doors ministry still “unofficially delivers” millions of Bibles to countries where Christianity is restricted.

That would include places such as China and Vietnam–where many Christians don’t have Bibles and those who do are often jailed, tortured or killed.

Today an estimated 400 million Christians face religious persecution. Open Doors, founded by Brother Andrew in 1955, is the world’s largest ministry to the
suffering church. Companjen, 58, international president of the ministry, was personally trained by Brother Andrew after traveling with him for 14 years.

In this day of satellite phones and digital cameras, smuggling is not the same as it was when Brother Andrew stuffed his tiny blue Volkswagen with New Testaments. “The old way of smuggling, like Brother Andrew first did, has in some cases changed to much more efficient ways to get Bibles to closed countries,” Companjen says.

The ministry’s couriers delivered 4 million Bibles, children’s Bibles and other Christian materials to persecuted Christians in 45 countries in 2003. Some of the ministry’s workers have been stopped at border crossings or imprisoned. But Companjen says he is not aware of any of his workers who have been killed in the line of duty.

“Looking back,” he adds, “this is one of the many miracles–that we have had so few real problems.”

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J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma, interviewed Brother Andrew last summer in Holland.

For more information about Open Doors With Brother Andrew, write P.O. Box 27001, Santa Ana, CA 92799, call 888-5-BIBLE-5, or log on at .

There are a few steps we can take to minimize church casualties.

Fifteen years ago my wife and I experienced a traumatic spiritual shakedown. The growing network of churches we had belonged to for more than 10 years began unraveling after the senior leaders were accused of authoritarianism. A once-thriving national ministry to university students was reduced to rubble in a few weeks–as pastors resigned, congregations closed and Christian friends stopped talking to one another.

All of us felt the heartache caused by broken promises and unfulfilled dreams. The pain of seeing a ministry blown apart by human failure was too much for some people to bear. Many became bitter.

Some marriages fell apart because of the stress of the organization’s breakup. A few of the most wounded people vowed to never again join any type of church. Some even rejected faith altogether.

It took me a year to recover from the shell shock. I vented my frustration to a few friends over coffee, stayed intimate with the Lord and read my Bible often–especially the psalms of David, which are brutally honest prayers written by a guy who experienced a lot more disappointment and heartache than you or I ever will.

Part of my healing also came when I got connected to a healthy church. I had to learn to trust again, even though a whiny voice in my head kept saying: “Just forget about church. They’re all the same.”

That’s what the devil wanted me to believe because his strategy is to isolate people and sour them with cynicism. I resisted his onslaught and grew stronger. What was meant to take me out of the battle ended up making me a tougher warrior–and giving me compassion for my wounded commrades.

Since my experience in 1989 I have met many injured Christians. Some were lured by Christian friends (or even home-group leaders) to participate in financial deals that ended up being illegal Ponzi schemes. Some were pulled into embarrassing religious deception–as in the case of the people who bought rural property in Arkansas in 1999 because their pastor predicted a Y2K disaster.

Others trusted a spiritual leader only to find out he was hiding sexual immorality. And others were simply browbeaten and manipulated by insecure, untested people who never should have been placed in church leadership.

There’s no way to eliminate all risks of being hurt in church. Stuff happens. Even the apostle Paul had to deal with religious opportunists, abusive heretics and two-faced church splitters.

God is perfect, but He always uses flawed people to carry out His mission. However, there are a few key steps we can take to provide better safeguards and minimize church casualties:

1. Demand accountability. We live in a day of freelance Christianity. It seems anyone can slap a ministerial title on a business card and incorporate a nonprofit organization. Then–voila!–he opens a church in a hotel ballroom.

I’m not against people having such freedoms. Some of the best churches in the world started in hotels or strip malls. But would you blindly trust a doctor who opened a makeshift operating room in a shopping center after buying a bogus medical license from a diploma mill on the Internet?

The new church on the block may turn out to be a great place. But before you join, find out if the pastor is accountable to a denomination or reputable church network. God’s ministers are not self-appointed, and spiritual authority can’t be bought with a credit card. Yellow lights should begin flashing when you find out that any minister is a lone ranger.

2. Value character more than charisma. People join churches for many reasons. Some love the music. Others are stirred by the preaching. In charismatic circles we often judge a church by its “anointing level,” which apparently is determined by measuring the volume of the pastor’s sermon, then multiplying this by the number of times people fall on the floor at the altar.

We should expect the Holy Spirit’s gifts to flow in church. But the biblical recipe for the anointing is not a haphazard mixture of shouting, emotional highs and spiritual quick fixes. It requires that church leaders walk in humility, integrity, marital faithfulness and theological soundness (see 1 Tim. 3:1-7). Any “anointing” without these ingredients is suspect.

3. Reset our priorities. The word love appears in the Bible more than 500 times. Love for God and others was the key theme of Jesus’ sermons, and this is echoed in the epistles of Peter, Paul, James and John. Yet we seem to major on everything but the main thing!

For many people today, church is about (1) obtaining financial prosperity; (2) securing a personal “breakthrough”; and (3) finding the key to answered prayer. I’m amazed we don’t end every service by singing four verses of “It’s All About Me, Lord.”

No wonder so many people are being hurt in a place where they should be healed and empowered to heal others. It’s time to stop the flakiness and do church God’s way.

I detect at least three toxic substances that are poisoning churches today.
During a time of severe famine in Israel, a group of prophets who were desperate to eat dinner prepared a curious meal. Because the crops had failed and bread was scarce, they sliced up some wild gourds in a kettle and cooked a mushy vegetable soup with an exotic odor and an unmistakably bitter aftertaste.

This stew may have looked tempting, but the recipe was untested and the ingredients were lethal. These hungry guys were clueless when it came to cooking, and they got very concerned after they wolfed down the first few spoonfuls. The Bible says the men cried out to the prophet Elisha: “‘There is death in the pot!'” (See 2 Kings 4:40).

Elisha saved the day when he threw some grain into the mix. Suddenly the poison stew was edible.

Before this episode, this same prophet had supernaturally purified toxic water by throwing salt into the spring near Jericho. Now he had decontaminated the food in Gilgal. Nobody went to the emergency room that day because the man of God had an instant cure for food poisoning.

Why is this story in the Bible? We might be tempted to laugh it off, as if it were warning us to beware when men get near the kitchen. But this is no joke: Elisha’s mealtime miracle has serious implications for us today.

I believe the American church is languishing in a season of spiritual famine. While revival is stirring in many parts of the world (see our cover story on page 24), church growth in our country is stagnant. Though New Testament-style miracles are triggering waves of conversions in Africa and Asia, we have empty altars.

To make matters worse, some leaders have responded to this famine by cooking up their own mess of gourd goulash. Rather than staying within the bounds of biblical integrity, they have concocted a false gospel made of wild and deadly ingredients. This stew appeals to hungry people but leaves them spiritually sick after the first swallow.

It is time for a taste test. We desperately need the Holy Spirit to visit us and purify what is on our stove. I detect at least three toxic substances that are poisoning churches today:

1. Greed. I’m grateful that Christian television takes the gospel to the masses. But I must confess that sometimes I get the dry heaves watching some of the antics used in religious fund-raising. If this stuff makes me gag, imagine how it affects the channel-surfing unbeliever who just happens to watch these embarrassing sideshows.

One Christian leader recently told his TV audience that they would likely go to hell if they didn’t give “right now” in the offering. Do we honestly believe this kind of spiritual extortion will go unpunished?

Elisha stepped in and corrected the problem in his pot. But who will confront the unrestrained greed that is spoiling our witness to the world? We must demand a higher level of integrity in Christian media.

2. Immorality. The apostle Paul warned the Corinthian church that sexual sin spreads like a plague if it is not confronted vigorously (see 1 Cor. 5:1-13). Yet in today’s church, renegade pastors have figured out a way to jump from one bed to another and remain on the church payroll. Anyone who dares to call for discipline is labeled legalistic.

The Catholic Church has had its share of scandal caused by pedophile priests. What will happen when God lifts the covers off the unconfessed sin in our ranks? We will live through another PTL-style spectacle if we don’t deal with the problem.

3. Arrogance. We Americans have perfected the art of pompous preaching. So much of our message focuses on how great we are, and this pride produces a subtle swagger that is contagious.

On one recent religious TV broadcast, a preacher announced that donors who mailed checks to the ministry would no longer experience suffering. “Today is the end of the suffering saint,” he declared. I wonder if this man’s message has reached Chinese or Pakistani Christians who are in prison for their faith.

One of the leaders who contributed an article to this issue of Charisma is Kevin Turner, a relatively unknown evangelist from Oklahoma. The first time I heard Kevin speak, he preached his entire sermon through tears. I know a lot of fancy preachers who display silk handkerchiefs in their suit pockets, but Kevin actually used his plain white handkerchief to wipe his tears while he told of ministering to persecuted Christians in Sudan.

His crying wasn’t faked. His message moved the audience to repentance,
brokenness and compassion. We need the Holy Spirit to add those missing ingredients to our pitiful porridge.

We need tears of humility. We need a passion for purity. We need a return to biblical integrity.

Please join me in praying that the Lord will turn up the heat, stir the pot and remove the poison.

El Salvador, a nation devastated by war only a decade ago, is now a land of faith and spiritual renewal.
Machismo defines the culture of El Salvador. Most women struggle financially, and many suffer silently from domestic abuse. Women typically don’t own businesses or take leadership roles.

The same is often true of Christian women, who tend to fade into the background of El Salvador’s growing evangelical churches. In this male-dominated culture, women are expected to serve the church in menial ways while the men run the show.

But Cristina Hasbún, a 35-year-old pastor’s wife living in the capital city of San Salvador, does not play by these rules.

Ordained as a pastor alongside her husband, Juan Carlos, Cristina sparked a quiet revolution two years ago when she rented a stadium and organized a conference that attracted thousands of Salvadoran women. Many of them stared in disbelief when Cristina donned a wireless microphone and preached several sermons during the first daylong event.

Women don’t preach in El Salvador. But the Hasbúns are blazing trails for a new generation of Christians here.

“I never asked for this anointing. I never asked for this calling,” Cristina told Charisma after preaching at her second national women’s conference last July. “But it all came to me because I spent time with God.”

Held at the huge Magico Gonzales Stadium in downtown San Salvador, the second conference attracted more than 11,000 women from all 14 provinces in the country. Cristina raised more than $200,000 to rent buses to bring the women–many of them poor domestic laborers–to the capital.

She preached so forcefully that day that she lost her voice. But it was worth all the sacrifice, she says, to see so many women from her nation respond to the gospel and find true spiritual freedom in Christ.

“It was a miracle,” she says of the Second National Congress of Women. “It was the first time in the history of our country that people from different denominations gathered together.”

Her 36-year-old husband is also a risk-taker who isn’t afraid to break religious traditions. He says miracles are becoming more common in El Salvador as Christians leave their mark on secular society.

Evidence of an evangelical awakening is everywhere here. Just 13 years ago, before the civil war ended, only 5 percent of the country’s population was born-again. Today it is estimated that 30 percent of Salvadorans are evangelical Christians. One church in the capital has 100,000 members.

The Hasbúns, former youth pastors in the Assemblies of God, started their independent church, Iglesia Kemuel, in 1998. Their first meetings were held in a garage, and for the first four years they had only 80 members.

The congregation has grown to about 450 members today–and a majority of them are students and young professionals who are taking their faith into the marketplace. But what is most amazing about the Kemuel church is that it finances some of the largest Christian events in the nation.

Hasbún has sponsored healing crusades with evangelists Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham and worship celebrations with recording artists Marcos Witt and Marco Barrientos.

“We have had a total of 250,000 people in these events,” says Cristina, marveling at the way God has covered the costs through their relatively small church. “The whole church is crazy with us.”

Taking a Whole Nation

Part of the Hasbúns’ vision is to influence Salvadoran culture with the gospel all the way to the top, in the halls of government. And they have seen amazing progress in that arena since 2004 when the country got a new president, Antonio Elías Saca González. He acknowledged God in his inaugural address last summer and told Charisma in July that the country’s evangelical churches were the key to his election victory.

Saca, 43, a former sports broadcaster, says his faith in God was a factor in his early opposition to communism. During El Salvador’s difficult civil war, which lasted for 12 years, the nation was ravaged by clashes between leftists and anti-communists. Yet today, El Salvador is one of the most pro-American governments in Latin America.

Saca’s election was considered a minor miracle. When the campaign began he was 17 percentage points behind his opponent, Schafik Handal, chairman of the leftist FMLN party. Yet on election day, Saca won with 60 percent of the vote.

“I have no doubt in my mind that it was the work of God–what happened on March 21, 2004,” the president says. “It was the evangelical Christians who defined what happened.”

In past elections, Saca noted, evangelicals have been less inclined to get involved in politics. But because they felt so endangered by Handal, they mobilized. About 75 percent of the population voted in that election.

“They had never been so threatened,” Saca says of the Christian population. “[Handal] is not only a communist, like Fidel Castro, but he is an avowed atheist.”

Evangelicals were impressed by Saca’s faith, even though he is a Roman Catholic. “Christians believed my story of faith, and today they know that I did not deceive them. It was not a political facade to win votes,” Saca says.

Hasbún sees Saca’s election as another indicator that God has visited El Salvador in a special way. But the pastor also acknowledges that the Salvadoran church must overcome serious obstacles of religiosity and small-mindedness.

The pastor is especially concerned that Christian leaders here have dictatorial tendencies, and they abuse people through what Hasbún calls “the spirit of Saul.”

“Many missionaries came here and planted God’s Word,” Hasbún says, “but the leaders tended it as though they were the owners. They aren’t–the land belongs to God. We cannot establish Christ’s kingdom as the kingdom of men.”

Noting that 75 percent of El Salvador’s population is under the age of 35, Hasbún says the church must learn to think progressively in order to reach the younger generation.

“The future of the gospel is here, among these younger people,” he says. “But our church structures don’t allow them to breathe. The structures don’t allow growth.”

With those strong convictions, Hasbún and his wife intend to continue to break religious rules even if it means offending the evangelical establishment. They are willing to pay any cost to see a whole nation transformed.

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J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma, traveled to El Salvador last July.

A lthough Jesus commanded us to wash one another’s feet, I know few Christians who have participated in a foot-washing service. Today it’s considered an irrelevant ritual–since we don’t live in the Israeli wilderness, ride smelly camels or wear dirty sandals. In this age of air-conditioning, deodorized socks and $200 dress shoes, who wants to go to all the trouble of getting out the basins and towels?

But that is what a group of us did a few weeks ago in Tennessee when I was involved in a three-day conference led by preacher and recording artist Judy Jacobs-Tuttle and her husband, Jamie. On the last morning of the event, ushers lined up chairs across the front of the auditorium and placed giant porcelain bowls in front of each seat. Then Judy asked if I would help wash the feet of the men who were attending the meeting.

When I knelt in front of the first guy, a pastor named Jim, the floodgates opened. Tears flowed freely from both of us, even though we didn’t know each other well. We didn’t care that two grown men were sobbing at the front of a church while dozens of women were within earshot.

I poured the water over Jim’s feet, dried them with a towel and prayed over him for several minutes. After him came Jon, a burly minister from Alabama who could easily bench-press 220 pounds. He sobbed long enough to soak the left side of my shirt. Then came Jamie, then Louis, then Mike. The men were crying louder than the women were.

What is happening to us? I wondered. We could barely make it to our seats after the experience. We were weak in the knees. Our masks and protective body armor had come off. We should have been embarrassed, but instead we simply wanted to worship.

It was as if Jesus had smashed our pride and then pulled it out by the roots. The pain felt more like euphoria. We were clean, as if this strange ritual had scrubbed off years of pretense and hypocrisy.

Our consciences had been recalibrated. Suddenly it felt so wrong to criticize a brother or to malign his reputation or to spread gossip. When we take the position of a servant–remembering that this is how Jesus served His disciples the night before He was executed like a common criminal–it’s difficult to hold a grudge, say unkind words or make harsh judgments.

Humility creates a channel for God’s love to flow. It cuts us to the core, turns our smugness to servanthood and levels the ground all around us–so we can’t entertain the notion that we’re better than the next person.

Maybe that’s why Jesus initiated this unusual exercise and asked us to follow His example. In the American church, pride is our biggest problem–and the towel is still the best remedy.

What would happen if pastors interrupted Sunday morning worship to wash the feet of staff members? What if estranged Christians dropped their defenses and washed each other’s feet instead of avoiding each other?

In a culture characterized by greed, self-promotion and the corporate power grab, footwashing comes off as a bizarre concept. But we can’t bypass the towel and the basin just because it doesn’t fit the American way of doing business.

Let’s learn to kneel. Let’s embrace a lifestyle of serving. We’ll never know Jesus’ full blessing if we don’t adopt His posture.