Mark Gillmore: Welcome to the Go Mission podcast.

I’m Mark Gilmore once again and privileged to be here with Brother Glenn.

And if you have not caught the last podcast, I encourage you to click back on that and get to know Brother Glenn in our previous recording.

He’s with me once again.

And we are also at the Thee Generation Youth Summit, a room full of great young people.

Say hi, everyone.

How are you all doing?

Hello.

Hi.

Okay, there we go.

Okay, good.

If you want to hear their name, that’s in the previous podcast.

But it’s great to be here together.

I thank the Lord for your testimony, Glenn, as a man surrendered with that missions, vision, and open doors God’s giving you.

In the previous time together, you shared about going to Sierra Leone recently.

That’s right.

The amazing open doors you experienced.

Yeah.

And the privilege to trek with the gospel.

And, but, something happened among your team post-trip, and could you tell us about that?

Glenn Cole: So, Andrew Beattie, three weeks ago, dropped his brother off at the airport.

His brother’s name was Elijah.

Elijah?

Elijah Beattie.

And Andrew was concerned for Elijah because Elijah was coming with us to Sierra Leone for this mission trip, 10 days shot into the bush.

And he said, Elijah, you know, this is serious business.

You could die out there.

He said you could get bitten by a poisonous snake.

You could contract malaria.

Lots of stuff could happen.

You could, you could die there.

And Elijah told his brother at the airport, it doesn’t matter, it’s worth it.

He said it’s worth it.

Monday morning, Elijah died from malaria that he contracted on this trip in Sierra Leone.

He was 19 years old.

As we sit right now, there’s memorials being yelled for him actually right now down in Florida where he was going to college, but also in Sierra Leone, in the Congo, in South America, in Zambia.

There’s being memorials that are being held for him right now for Elijah Beattie because it was worth it.

Elijah was an example, maybe unwittingly, of someone that was willing to give their lives for the sake of the gospel.

It wasn’t 1845.

It was Monday morning.

Monday morning.

Yeah.

I mentioned in the last podcast that they have a radio tower that they’re putting up in Marambo Junction that’s going to be able to reach the bush.

They are naming that tower, Beattie Tower, for Elijah Beattie because he gave his life for that trip.

And through the efforts that he was part of, 500 plus people got saved in five days.

And many more will continue to get saved because of that effort.

That work is continuing on because of what he was a part of.

He gave his life for the gospel.

Mark Gillmore: When you look at that, we kind of try to revisit, walk back through it.

What could we have done to keep him from that?

And yet he was taking some malaria medication.

Yep.

Elijah was doing everything right.

On the coming home, he took some of the medication that would normally be taken.

That’s right.

Glenn Cole: There’s only two strains of malaria that are asymptomatic for the first couple weeks.

And so the assumption now is that he contracted the malaria in Sierra Leone, but it was not until two weeks later.

And then with this strain of malaria, or these two strains of malaria, apparently symptoms don’t show up until 24 hours before it becomes fatal.

And so Elijah didn’t have symptoms until 24 hours before he passed.

So it was literally the hand of God.

God allowed Elijah to pay that price for the gospel’s sake.

Mark Gillmore: So this, this is God’s hand.

And sometimes when we think of someone’s life being lost in a mission’s effort, we kind of say, oh, you might die, this man died, I guess we can’t go there.

Like, oh, this is terrible.

Our whole effort has been ruined by this.

We can’t go back and there’s some, another young person might die next time.

What if our American military operated that way?

Glenn Cole: Well, we’d be speaking a different language right now.

Mark Gillmore: Mm-hmm.

Glenn Cole: And we wouldn’t live in a free country.

Mark Gillmore: What if one man falls, everyone retreats?

Is that the story?

Glenn Cole: That’s a wholly ineffective way to fight a war.

Wholly ineffective.

Mark Gillmore: And sometimes that’s our approach to missions.

And what you’re talking about, Operation Mordecai, the difficult places of the world.

Why aren’t we going there?

Because things like this can happen.

Because it’s scary.

It’s difficult.

And our mindset.

Our mindset.

So share with us.

I know God’s touched your heart and he’s put in your heart mindsets that need to drive us forward in missions.

Glenn Cole: Yeah.

You know, Elijah was an excellent example of someone having the right mindset because he understood the risks and the cause was worth his life.

And he understood that from the beginning.

And the fact that it cost him his life doesn’t change that.

The cause is still worth his life whether he lost it or not.

Mark Gillmore: Right.

Glenn Cole: And that comes from a totally different mindset.

See, our mindset in Christendom has become a lot of this, and I hate to poke fingers at things, but I don’t like the idea of surrender.

We talk about surrendering to missions.

I don’t like surrender.

We surrender to enemies.

Surrender is a passive action where we give up.

And I understand the context, and when we talk about surrendering to the Lord, we’re talking about yielding ourselves to him.

But you know what the Bible teaches? something different.

It teaches to present our bodies as a living sacrifice.

That’s our reasonable service to do.

And Elijah presented himself as a living sacrifice.

Anyone who’s in missions has got to get to that point where they presented themselves as a living sacrifice.

That doesn’t mean they’ve given up their expectations.

They’ve given up their own priorities.

They’ve given up themselves.

And a really good example of that is if you understand the fact that we are indeed at war.

You know, we talk about spiritual warfare, but we talk about it in sort of a theoretical sense.

Theoretically, we’re at spiritual war, right?

Or theoretically, we saw some spiritual warfare.

But what we don’t understand is spiritual warfare is war, but it’s real war.

Yeah.

You understand, I served in the war in Iraq, and my grandfather served in the war in Korea.

And probably everyone in this room knows someone who served in the military at a time of war because we just got done with 20 years of warfare in our country.

We see what physical warfare looks like.

We see that’s war, and we identify that as war.

But the fact of the matter is that’s only one manifestation of spiritual warfare because war stems from sin.

And sin is what the spiritual warfare is over.

The enemy is waging war against us.

But we just think it’s hypothetical.

It’s not hypothetical.

The theme of this youth conference is the war max.

Everyone’s got it on their shirt, the war max.

Do you realize how real that is?

This is war.

There is a cause.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, right at the beginning of America entering into World War II, the United States saw the largest recruiting portion in its history.

The most recruitment was done immediately following that.

Because Americans said, our country’s at stake.

Our freedom is at stake.

So they stood in lines and they presented themselves as living sacrifices to their country.

That’s right.

Because the cause was worth their life.

So they presented themselves as living sacrifices for their country.

And we’ve done that.

We’ve done that.

Anytime there’s a war, men and women will stand up and say, well, put me in the war.

I want to fight for our country because it’s worth it.

But we don’t think that way as Christians.

And that’s how we ought to think.

That’s what the scripture says.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice that’s holy, acceptable unto God, because it’s your reasonable service.

And I think that’s the mindset that needs to switch.

Mark Gillmore: So one young man goes down. it should be the moment for a whole bunch of others to enlist.

Absolutely.

And sign up.

Glenn Cole: Elijah gave his life for the glory of God and for God to be glorified.

And how beautiful would it be for that to be a call to arms for young people all over this country especially.

And I say this country because this is the country that I’m in, and this country has the greatest resources right now.

We have the most ability to impact the world, to affect the world.

You know, we ought to be affecting this country that we’re in.

Brother Miller preached a great message last night, and he mentioned how weak Christianity is in our country.

It’s terrible.

But it’s because Christians haven’t enlisted.

We haven’t enlisted.

Mark Gillmore: So you say, well, we need to realize that this young man’s death, in my opinion, is not usual.

It’s unusual.

Glenn Cole: Correct.

Mark Gillmore: It’s possible.

But most likely, you’re not going to get this malaria.

Glenn Cole: No, not at all.

Mark Gillmore: Or die.

Right.

You could.

But just recently, this summer right here in our locality, a young man, basically the same age, was nearby at an event, run over by a car.

A guy fully surrendered to the Lord.

And he lost his life. in the parking lot in Wisconsin.

Now, that’s unusual too, quite.

That just didn’t happen.

God was all over that moment, but he lost his life.

One in America, one in Africa.

God’s in control of that.

You say, well, I’m afraid to go to Africa because I might lose my life there.

You might lose your life in Menominee Falls.

That’s right.

Preserving our life isn’t the point.

No, it’s not.

Glenn Cole: Investing it is.

You know, I think that if Christians had really a glimpse of who God was, of how worthy our Savior is of our sacrifice, I don’t think we would anymore be waiting around to surrender or struggling with a call somewhere.

Because we say when we surrender, well, God hasn’t called me, but then what happens when God does call someone?

Now we’re playing tug-of-war with the creator of the universe.

Well, I don’t want to go there.

Well, God, I don’t want to preach.

Well, I don’t want to stand up in front of people and do things.

So we play tug-of-war with God. right with the creator of the universe we play tug of war because we don’t want to i think if we had a just a glimpse of who god was of how worthy of glory our god is i think we’d be beating down god’s door to work for him i think we’d be standing in lines at the throne of god offering our lives up to him and begging god to take us i think about some of my um some of my buddies that had the opportunity to serve in like military on his army special forces guys you know the way we think about this surrender to god we come to god and we’re like lord you’re welcome here’s here i am you’re welcome i’m here now take my life and use it for your glory you’re welcome for me what if somebody showed up to uh selection that way for army special forces here army you’re welcome I showed up I’m here you’re welcome no they say please accept me for this mission please accept me to serve in this role I’m willing to undergo extreme pain and suffering for an extended period of time that often breaks the human body physically and that’s what they’re willing to endure, they pursue it in order to serve in that capacity.

Man, if we can do that for service to our country in the military, what are we doing for the Lord?

Why aren’t we just running over each other to get to the mission field?

Like there should be a waiting list to get on the airplane to go to Sierra Leone because the gospel is such an open door, such an open door.

The people are dying for want of the gospel.

And that’s just one place. 40% of the world is unreached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. 40% of it.

It’s going to cost more lives to get the gospel to the rest of the world.

We ought to be standing in lines to get there.

Mark Gillmore: So, young people, can you, just in prayer before the Lord, say, God, change my mindset? change the way I look at my life and my world.

I face the same issues.

We’re in the same generation together.

We’re a soft generation.

We’re kind of like various forms of luxury and stuff like all that.

I’m with you.

I feel it.

Say, Lord, change my mindset let me give up all that that doesn’t matter it doesn’t define me i want to be used by you and there’s a world that’s waiting and uh so wow well thank you brother glenn for sharing with us your heart uh really trusting god to just take these thoughts and and uh do a work of of calling young people into his service.

We don’t have to live in fear.

Nope.

Not even of death.

Not even.

Not even.

Glenn Cole: We should all be so lucky to be like Elijah.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

That’s exactly right.

Glenn Cole: Give our lives for the sake of the gospel.

Nothing else matters on this world.

Nothing you spend your life doing on this earth is going to make any difference.

It’s going to matter to anything except for what you do for the Lord.

Only what you do for God is going to make any difference.

Mark Gillmore: So remember, the only way to stay at peace in a world of turmoil and uncertainty is to stay on mission with Jesus in his Go Mission.