Open Their Eyes: Doing What Only God Can Do

Part 2

Campus Crusade Conference | Fort Collins, Colorado

People of the mission, captivated by God through the gospel, that was yesterday and people of the mission, called to the world with the whole counsel of God is where we’re going today. Now to go there, I would like to have you open your Bibles if you will, to 2 Timothy 2:24–26 where we ended yesterday, all too quickly. I want to build a bridge between yesterday’s five points and today’s points. Let me rehearse where we were and then focus on the bridge that is in this text. Yesterday, point number one was that the gospel has events — the death and resurrection of Jesus for sins; it has an offer — believe and you will be saved; and it has a good, a benefit offered and bought by the events.

And I argued that people don’t have the gospel if they just know the events, and they don’t have the gospel if they just see and understand the nature or dynamics of the offer, namely that it’s by faith. People have the gospel and are saved when they penetrate through the events, through the offer to the ultimate, final, best, highest good that is offered in the gospel — namely, 2 Corinthians 4:4, which says the gospel is the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. To be saved through the gospel is to see, savor, and treasure Christ.

Point number two was that, therefore, lostness is fundamentally blindness to glory.

Point number three was that, therefore, conversion is fundamentally what 2 Corinthians 4:6 says. It’s the miracle of God who said, “Let there be light,” speaking that same creative word into the dead, blind heart and saying, “Let there be light.” When that happens, Christ shines with compelling, glorious beauty. That’s conversion, and people are drawn to him. They can do no other. He has become irresistibly true, beautiful, attractive, compelling, and satisfying. And that simply left two questions: How do you fit in, and how does the teaching fit in?

I went to Acts 26:18, which says:

[I am sending you] to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God …

That’s your mission — to do what only God can do. That’s your mission. You must do what only God can do. And then very briefly, all too briefly, which is why I asked you to go back to this text, I posed the question, “Where does teaching fit into that?” So I want to read this with you again from 2 Timothy 2: 24-26.

The Lord’s Servant

Notice four massive steps. If I were discipling somebody in what it meant to be a Christian, or how to get saved, or if I were helping somebody lead people to Jesus, this would be one of my main texts, and these would be my four steps:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach …

So I’m going to get messed up with unnecessary quarrels here, but kind. Our life is in this. It’s not just words. Is our light kind to everyone? Then it says, “able to teach.” That’s my first step — able to teach.

able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

So part of your teaching is going to be to set people right when they have wrong ideas, correcting opponents with gentleness. Here’s step two:

God may perhaps grant them repentance …

That’s God’s work. You can’t make anybody repent. You can’t engineer this or in any way bring this about. This is a work of God. Repentance is a gift. If it happens in a soul that you’re talking to, God has mercifully made your teaching his instrument in bringing about repentance. That’s the way we do evangelism. That’s the way we live. We do what only God can do, and our part is teaching. So you have two steps now — teach patiently and God may grant repentance. Here’s step three:

leading to a knowledge of the truth …

Now they can have knowledge of truth before they repent, but not the kind of knowledge that comes after they repent. This knowledge here is a result of a God-given miracle of repentance, and it’s the same thing we saw in 2 Corinthians 4:6. This is God saying, “Let there be light.” They’re broken; they’re brought to contrition and the lights go on. And now all that word, all those teachings you were giving them at Pizza Hut become life, beauty, power, wisdom, and satisfaction. Let’s go to step four. The knowledge comes, the cross shines, and Jesus is beautiful. He’s compelling. Now 2 Timothy 2:26 comes in, which is step four:

and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

There’s the sequence. We open our mouths and we teach, God comes down in mercy, takes our teaching, and makes it the instrument of his divine, regenerating work of bringing about repentance and faith. Lights go on in the fallen heart and Christ is seen as beautiful. Now, why does that liberate you from the devil?

It’s because the devil only has one power — deception. He’s a liar and he murders through lying. If eyes can open to see that there is a superior pleasure, a superior satisfaction, a superior truth, a treasure beyond anything the devil could offer, his power is broken. And that’s what happens when God grants repentance unto a knowledge, or a taste, of the truth. If you want to set students free from sleeping around, or pornography, or watching endless television, or just living for money or grades; if you want to set them free, teach them. Teach them. Now that’s today’s message.

The Need for Teaching

What’s the relationship between teaching and your calling to the world? You’re going to take up this challenge this afternoon, I believe, to wrestle with how we can do 2,000 new campuses. I’d like to be a little teeny part of saying, “Go for it, make this happen.” I’m going to ask the question: How does teaching relate to that? That’s where we are.

Teaching, it appears, in that text anyway, is essential to God’s work. My aim in these few minutes is to wrestle with Campus Crusade. I just feel like this is an unbelievably golden opportunity for us to think together about some essential elements of this ministry called Campus Crusade. Here’s what I want you to wrestle with in this message. What is the connection in Campus Crusade between theological depth and aggressive, entrepreneurial breadth? What’s the connection? What’s the connection in Campus Crusade between biblical thought and evangelistic action? What’s the connection in Campus Crusade between treasuring the fullness of Christ — all that he is for us — and taking the world for Christ?

Knowledge and Passion

Now, I don’t want to take you down a rabbit trail. I do not want Campus Crusade to become a theological think tank. That’s not your calling. It should not be that. I don’t want Campus Crusade to become preoccupied with immobilizing intramural disputes. I don’t want that to be your plague. I hope God keeps you free from that. I don't want you to wait around until you’ve got all the answers before you get dirty with unbelievers. I don’t want that to be communicated in what I say. I don’t want passion to be quenched by…I’m tempted to say knowledge, but it chokes me to talk like that.

The reason it does is that for about 40 years (I’m 59) the opposite of that connection has been true in my life — that is, to say that knowledge chokes passion. That has never been true for me. I don’t get it. I don’t understand people who say that the better you know God, the less you will love him. There are people who believe that. Don’t try too hard to know God, to understand God, to go deep with God, or to go high with God, because it’s going to get messed up in your head, and you will lose your first love.

Do you know that little comment about first love? The last thing I want in my life is my first love. My first love as a six-year-old was so small. I want more than my first love. Those kinds of songs and testimonies, those “Return to our first love” songs, never resonated with me. I know it’s a biblical statement, but that group evidently had a powerful first love. My first love was not big, was yours? I mean, give me a break. Ninety-nine percent of you did not have a big first love. Those of you who did, praise God, go back there. But for the rest of us, we got to go forward to some bigger love for Jesus than we had when we were six or fourteen.

So I’m not getting it when it comes to people saying that your love for Jesus, or your passion for God, is going to go out like a candle if you get to know him better. There are people who believe that we will marvel — there is this epistemological thing out there today — at the mystery of the mountain of the truth of God more if you don’t try to climb it. It says, “Just kind of stay at a safe distance. Whoa, that’s a big mountain. All that he is for us and all that we are …”

And you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about because you’re afraid to climb the mountain, because halfway up you get cold and you might lose your warmth for Jesus — your nice, touchy-feely warmth for Jesus. Well, I just have a hard time empathizing because that’s never been the case for me, and I can’t find it anywhere in the Bible that to know him better, to go deep into his word, is going to put out your light. There’s something crazy about that, I think.

I’m going to ask, “What’s the teaching that you should be giving and how does it relate to evangelism?” I’m talking about red-hot, laying-down-your-life, risk-taking, die-for-Jesus ministry. Reach a thousand campuses next year for Jesus. How does teaching relate to that?

Unrelenting Teaching

Now I’ve got a new text I want you to go to, so let’s go to Acts 20. Here are my two questions that’ll form the rest of this message. What is the teaching? I’m talking about teaching that ought to be prevalent in Campus Crusade. What am I talking about? What’s the content of it? And then the second question is: How does it relate to your calling to the world and the mission that you’re all about? I’m going to read Acts 20:24–27 in search of the answer to the first question. What is it? I love Acts 20:24. It’s one of my favorite verses. It says:

But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

It seems to me like everybody in Campus Crusade should memorize that verse and live that verse. Paul is saying, “My calling is not to live. There’s something more important than staying alive, and it’s to be faithful to my calling, which is to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Isn’t that a great life verse? I love the apostle Paul. Then Acts 20:25–26 says:

And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all …

Now, will you be able to say that of those you’ve had for a few years? “I’m innocent of the blood of all of you,” he says, and here’s the ground for why he’s innocent. Acts 20:27 continues:

For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

Now that’s a phrase that I’m going to put on the word teaching — the whole counsel of God. I have to be really careful here because I know you’re not the church. This is the responsibility of the elders. He’s talking to elders in the church here. You’re not elders in a church. Some of you are, maybe, but that’s not the nature of this organization. I was talking with Mark, and he talked about apostolic ministry with a small a — penetrate, move, and go. If we’re going to think in sort of analogical terms here, like how Campus Crusade is not in the Bible, this funny parachurch thing is not in the Bible. So you have to think in terms of analogies. I think it’s free for you to exist, by the way. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.

But mainly the Bible is about the church. If you’re going to think an analogy then for how you decide biblically what your task is, you might want to just say, it’s a little something like this; that if I’ve got a band of 20 or 200 students for two to four years, and they’re hanging out with me and I want to equip them to be laborers forever, wouldn’t I take some cues from what Paul just said here? So I’m not going to overstate it and say, it’s your main responsibility, not the church’s; that’s not the point here at all. It’s just sort of your responsibility, and mainly the church’s. So just learn a little something from what he’s saying to the elders here. If you’re going to hang out with somebody, and you’d like them to grow up and be mature, effective, and powerful for Jesus, what might you do with them? I’m suggesting you might deposit in their hearts the whole counsel of God or partner with the church in doing it.

The Whole Counsel of God

That now raises the question of what in the world is that? What is the whole counsel of God? Maybe you’re thinking, “I mean, I didn’t go to seminary. What are you asking me to do here?”

Let me try to just get at what this is. Don’t go to these texts. Let me just read them to you. Romans 6:17 says:

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,

Paul has never been to Rome. He doesn’t know these people. He’s assuming that every Christian in Rome to whom he’s writing has been handed over to a standard of teaching (túpon didachés). It’s a standard of teaching. So there’s a phrase to put alongside the whole counsel of God. And here’s another one. Second Timothy 1:13 says:

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Isn’t that an interesting phrase? Paul speaks of a pattern of sound, healthy words. So you have the whole counsel of God, you have a standard of teaching, and you have a pattern of sound words. I’ll keep reading in 2 Timothy 1:14, which says:

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

Now we have four phrases that are getting at this reality. We have the term whole counsel of God, we have the term standard of teaching, we have the term pattern of sound words, and we have the good deposit. So my point is that there is a body of teaching. There’s a group of teachings that weren’t post-seminary. Otherwise, Romans 6:17 wouldn’t be true, because every single believer had been handed over to it. This is basic discipleship, this whole counsel of God. This is something everybody needs to know. It’s not way off, ethereal, or only in advanced, level 305 classes, alright? What are the clues?

Now back to Acts 20. If you’re still there with your finger in it. I want to link verse Acts 20:27 with the phrase in verse Acts 20:24. Acts 20:27 says:

I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

Wouldn’t that relate closely to Acts 20:24, where he says, “I don’t care if I live. What I want to do is finish my ministry, which is to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” So I’m going to put beside each other the whole counsel of God and the gospel of the grace of God, and say — this is my effort, you test it — the whole counsel of God, the pattern of sound words, the faithful deposit, and the standard of teaching that everybody needs to receive and understand is the gospel and the surrounding doctrines of the gospel that are necessary to make it intelligible. That’s all.

Gospel Discipleship

I’m going to try to outline that for you and show you what it doesn’t include, to show that you don’t need to be too worked up as an organization about doing this part of the church, okay? Here’s my effort. This is the sort of thing that I think every Campus Crusade worker who has a disciple should care about getting into that disciple’s head or, and I’ll get to this later, who has a possible disciple, who’s willing to hang out with you once a week for a few months and listen to you. They’re not yet converted, but this is what they need to know.

They need to know something about God. He exists. He created everything. He has rights over the world. He deserves our trust, admiration, thanks, and honor.

They need to know something about man. He’s made in God’s image. He’s moral. He has a will, he has reason, and he has some affections and emotions. He exists to trust, admire, thank, and glorify God. That’s why we exist — to display the glory of God.

They need to know something about sin. It’s a choice, it’s a contamination, and it’s a depravity. It’s a power within us. It’s a blindness. It’s a helplessness. It’s a deadness. It’s a rebellion. It’s insubordination. It’s not mainly about hurting people; it’s mainly about dishonoring God.

They need to know something about Christ. He’s a real person historically. He’s the God-man, incarnate by virgin birth. He fulfilled all the promises of God. He was perfectly righteous.

They need to know something about the cross and the death of Christ. It was designed by God, from the beginning, before the foundation of the world. It didn’t happen willy-nilly, it was willing and obedient by Jesus. It was substitutionary. My sins go onto him, his righteousness comes on to me. It was sin-bearing, wrath-bearing, and curse-bearing. He became a curse for us. It was purchasing the new covenant promises of the law written on my heart and me being enabled to walk by faith.

They need to know something about the work of the Holy Spirit, otherwise, they’re going to take credit for their decision. He opens the eyes of the blind. He illumines Christ. He convicts of sin. He calls out of darkness. He regenerates. He gives the gift of repentance.

And finally, they need to know something about faith and repentance. They need to know that faith is the sole instrument of justification. Repentance and faith are a gift of God, preserved by God. You don’t have to hang on by yourself; he’s going to keep you hanging on. It’s a duty as well as a gift. It involves seeing the truth, savoring Christ, and embracing him as Lord and treasure of your life. It’s expressed in baptism.

That’s the whole counsel of God, as best as I can see. I don’t know of any of those things that I just said that you don’t need to know to understand the gospel. I might have one or two stuck in there that shouldn’t be there, but what I’m trying to do is not be extraneous when I talk about the whole counsel of God and what you need to be teaching and teaching and teaching. It’s something like that. Now notice what I did not include. I didn’t include timetables for the end times. I didn’t include church order. I didn’t include modes of baptism or the Lord’s supper. I didn’t include charismatic gifts, or whether you are a cessationist or not. I didn’t include Sabbath-keeping. I didn’t include meat offered to idols or styles of worship, and the list could go on.

So when you hear the whole counsel of God, don’t hear me saying that you have to have an opinion on everything and make sure it gets into the head of your disciple. You don’t need to do that. But you have to have a vision of God, man, sin, Christ, cross, Spirit, and faith. And you know what? That’s a lot. That’s a lot, and you can go wrong in a hundred places on those issues.

Unity and Purity

Now, if that’s the teaching that I think Campus Crusade ought to be explosively driven by, then why? I mean, you’re an evangelistic group. You want to reach lost people that don’t know anything about the saving gospel of Christ. You want to penetrate thousands of campuses, every student on every campus, in every country of the world. Yes. I like that kind of talk. Amen. I’m glad there are entrepreneurial evangelicals and not just reflective evangelicals.

I am so thankful there are both kinds. I remember one time, a guy named Greg Livingstone, who was the radical, crazy head of Frontiers. Once upon a time, he said, there are unity boys and purity boys. And what he means by that is, the unity boys want to keep everybody together under the same tent, and the purity boys want to get the gospel exactly right. And if you don’t agree with this, then you’re not in the tent.

And he said, he’s just thankful that there are unity boys and purity boys, and he had me in one of those categories. I would like to be in both of those categories. Now the question is, why is this teaching so crucial to call to the world, this big mission that you have as an organization? I have three answers.

Here’s my first answer: People come to know the person of Christ through knowing true propositions about Christ. I’ll say that again. It seems so obvious and so simple, and yet it’s so controversial today, in this post-propositional, emergent hour. People come to savingly know the person of Christ by encountering, knowing, and understanding true propositions about the person of Christ. Or put it this way, knowing Christ savingly comes through knowing about Christ truly. Therefore, as an organization, if you care about people knowing Christ and being saved, you cannot be indifferent about true propositions about Christ and the gospel. That is the whole counsel of God, the standard of teaching.

Now this needs to be said today, especially among your age group. I have this conception of who you are and I know you’re mixed, but most of you are younger. You’re therefore imperiled in this day where your generation is fascinated by being called post-propositional, post-evangelical, post-conservative, and post-everything into some branches of the emergent church where the upshot of that post is heresy.

Propositional Truth

Let me take you back to my encounter with Athanasius on this issue of propositions. What I’m saying is that I hope Campus Crusade, without getting any ruffled feathers at all, simply says, “We really believe in propositional revelation. We really believe that it’s important in saving souls that you say true things about Jesus.” Isn’t it remarkable? Listen to this. I just started this because I had it somewhere in my notes and wasn’t going to include it, but I’m going to include it now because it just came into my head. In Acts 16:14, Paul comes into Philippi and he finds a group of women and he starts telling them things, just teaching them things by a river. And it says, in Acts 16:14:

The Lord opened [Lydia’s] heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.

The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to the things coming out of Paul’s mouth. The Holy Spirit looked down, and thought, “I like those words. I like those truths about Jesus. I’m sent into the world to make much of Jesus. I will now open some eyes to see the truth of those things spoken.” I hope that your whole mindset, as you do evangelism on campuses, is that true propositions about Jesus are the means by which the Holy Spirit enables people to know the person of Jesus. We’re not into idolizing propositions; we’re into making Jesus King and saying true things about him.

Now here’s what Athanasius got worked up about. Athanasius lived in the 300s, a long time ago. He was against Arius, the heretic who said Jesus was created. Arius said that the Son of God did not exist forever, but he was created. And Athanasius said, “No, the Bible teaches he always was.” And he said, sentences like this. Now these are propositions. “There was a time when the Son was not.” Or the proposition, “He was not before he was made.” Or the proposition, “The Son of God is created.” Now those are three propositions about Jesus, which are strictly damnable. If a person receives them, embraces them, believes them, and builds a life on them, they will go to hell. Propositions really matter. That’s what Athanasius made so clear to me. And it would have grieved him, I think, to hear many in our day say things like, “It’s Christ who unites; it’s doctrines that divide.” Or things like, “We should ask, ‘Whom do you trust?’, not, ‘What do you believe?’”

I think Athanasius would have said, “That’s exactly the way the Arian bishops talked, in order to lure us into saying, ‘Just trust Christ.’” And I think Athanasius would have said, “Which Christ? The Christ that has always existed? The Christ of whom it can be truly said he has no beginning? Or the Christ of whom it can be said he had a beginning? Which Christ do you trust?” Oh, I hope Campus Crusade does not get suckered into this kind of talk that it doesn’t matter what you believe, but it only matters whom you trust. Do you see the kind of division that’s being drawn there? What a deceptive, demonic thing that is. Who is this whom that you trust? a door knob with the name Jesus on it? That’s where we’re going if you start belittling propositions.

I am thankful for Athanasius and him awakening me last January for a concern about this. So my first answer to the question, “What’s the relationship between the teaching, the pattern of sound words, and evangelism, reaching the world, and going onto thousands of campuses?” is that knowing Christ, moving from death to life and darkness to light, happens through the embrace of true propositions about Jesus. People need to know the truth about Christ.

Reasoning Daily

Here’s my second answer to the question, “Why teach?” Maybe someone would say, “I mean, we’re not a teaching organization, we’re an evangelistic organization. So why should there be this concern for holding to the deposit, holding to the standard, holding to the whole counsel of God, and teaching and imparting? Why should we be concerned about that answer?”

Here’s my second answer: Students, along with everybody else, don’t have the categories to embrace a simple gospel statement yet, by and large. There are exceptions, but you’re the experts on this. You tell me. Do they have a right conception about God? Do they have a right conception about who they are as human beings in God’s image? Do they have a right conception about sin, the nature of it, and why it’s a problem? Do they have a right conception about Christ, who he was, and what he did? Do they have a right conception about the cross? Do they have a right conception about the work of the Holy Spirit in saving them? Do they have a right conception about the nature of faith and repentance? The answer is going to be no; this generation is not the fifties generation.

There might’ve been a day when you could assume so much about who God is, who Christ is, what the Bible is, along with heaven, hell, sin, cross, and belief. Then people came and said, “Finally make the decision,” and thousands did. It was all there because the Holy Spirit landed on it and kindled that kindling. But now you’re dealing with people that don’t know what you mean when you say, “God, sin, and Christ.” They might think, “That’s a swear word, isn’t it? Jesus? What are you talking about?” So what are you going to do? The answer is teach.

I’ve got to give you an illustration here. I just love the way Paul was so flexible. You’re a flexible organization, and there are a lot of different ways to do this. I don’t want to pin you down, but I’m just pleading that this is a big piece of it.

Here’s Paul on his third missionary journey, right? He had made one brief, little stop at Ephesus on the way home on his second missionary journey. He just kind of went in, looked around, taught in the synagogue one Saturday, probably, and then boom, he was back on the boat heading for Caesarea probably thinking, “I’ve got to go back to that city someday. That’s the hub of Asia Minor, and it’s pagan to the core. They don’t have any of the categories for God. They’re all polytheists and they’re all sleeping around. They’re all doing sex in the temples, and this is a great place to do ministry.” He’s going to go back. So he cuts across Asia minor on the third missionary journey and he stays there, and I’m going to start reading at Acts 19:8. It goes like this:

And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

He started with Jews and he took three months. I mean, you’ve got work to do Paul, get going. You have Spain, come on. What are you wasting three months in Ephesus for? He’s reasoning and he’s persuading, and it gets even more amazing. Acts 19:9–10 continues:

But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

He continued for two years, every day, in the hall of Tyrannus reasoning with people. He is the apostle to the Gentiles, and he’s got Spain in his view. What are you doing, Paul? So my second answer is that the reason you need to hang out with these kids for an hour a night for three or four months is that they don’t have the categories. You have to teach them, and they’re going to be really skeptical. They might blow it off, saying, “Why do you believe that? Blah, blah, blah.” Just suspend those things and just keep teaching them. Just say things like, “Look, I’m not asking you to believe it’s true yet, I just want you to understand it. Can you hang out with me? Just understand it.”

And then the Holy Spirit will take care of other things for you. Just get them with you, get inside their skin, and put in the presuppositions. It’s not that they’re going to embrace them right away, but they have to know them, they have to have enough facts in their head about God, man, sin, cross, and faith. That’s my second answer.

Campuses Filled with Christ’s Teaching

And I close with my third answer because it’s the next phrase in this verse. I’ll give my third answer to why this organization, Campus Crusade, should become a kind of organization where to reach the world, to touch thousands of campuses, should have as one of its methodologies, a holding fast to the whole counsel of God — that is, to teach the cluster of doctrines that are around the core of the gospel to make it intelligible, and impart them over and over and over again when people don’t understand them yet, and therefore can’t make a decision. The Holy Spirit is not going to move in and drop knowledge into people’s heads that you don’t put there.

The third answer to why that matters is that when you know him like I want you to know him like I’m pleading with you to know him in the fullness of his being, more power, more wisdom, more going, more risk, and more death is going to flow from your life. You’re going to be willing to die. You’re going to be willing to risk. You’re going to be willing to go to places, do things, and have more of a passion than you would have if you had not known him this well. I’m just going to build that on one phrase at the end of Acts 19:10. It says:

This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

You got this word catalytic. Is that what that is? He’s in Ephesus. He never moves from Ephesus. He's been teaching every day for two years and three months, and all of Asia heard the word of the Lord. One last verse. I’m going to read to you. Here’s my plea, my prayer. In Acts 5: 28 the rulers are bent out of shape because these rascals have taught about Jesus, and here’s what they say:

We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.

So I’m going to pray. God, would you please take Campus Crusade and cause it to be said of them on 2,000 new campuses in two years, and 10,000 new campuses in 10 years, “You rascals have filled this campus with your teaching. Don’t you understand? You don’t do that on this campus.” And make 10,000 campuses rise up and say, “Campus Crusade has filled this place with their teaching.”