The Gorkhas

I say to say hello, and it's always wonderful to be part of God's family worldwide, and all the different people and cultures and colors, and being able to help everyone as much as you can, trying to bring them to the kingdom.

In giving this today, you can be thankful I'm not 40 years younger because my first sermon I spoke faster than Mr. Buckle did. In fact, I started slowing down when I noticed that the sign people gave up on me. They'd kind of just do that and quit making signs. So my wife always told me to slow down. So I've been slowly slowing down the last 40 years, and it's been good for me. I get to give more sermons now, and I first started working. I graduated from Basterd College after doing 12 years in Imperial schools and 4 years in Basterd College, which are all the Church of Schools. I end up flying to Mr. Armstrong, and he kept telling me, you need to go speak more. And I said, well, they're here to hear you, not me. And so since he died, I've been giving a lot more sermons and things. And like I said with my wife, writing in my notes, slow down. So I'll try to do that for you today.

It's interesting, in having the job that I did, I was able to meet with so many world leaders and so many people around the world and listen to the Gospel be preached in different forms to people who never, some of them, never really heard about a God, or sort of not the God that we know. Some of them in China had no religious background at all, the younger ones there and other places. But Mr. Armstrong would talk about the kingdom that's going to come, and he talked about the feast. And he would talk about the plan of God. And indeed, the plan of God was the springboard for most of the lectures and talks that Mr. Armstrong would give to all the different groups that we spoke at in all the many countries we went to.

It was interesting how he was received. I look at what he was received, and I look at some of the prophets of old and the apostles and them, and I understand, Dr. Duncan, history repeats itself. You pick out these pieces of things, and you understand the New Testament and the Old Testament from the things that happened today. I always tell my students that what goes on today is no different than what happened 2,000 years ago when the church first started.

So you learn these lessons. But it was interesting, there was one couple that particularly recognized what Mr. Armstrong was doing. They never came into the church, but they did recognize what was happening. It was in Kathmandu, Nepal. And you probably know quite a bit about that, because I know that Dr. Leon Sexton has been out there, families of the Nisarian thing. Actually, I'm the one that sent him over to Kathmandu, and he ran our project over there.

And he lived in the house with General Rana in one of the houses he had on his land. When we went there to meet Mr. Armstrong, I met King Mahendra in the late 1970s. When he died, we went back to meet his son King Berendra in Queen Ashwaria. It was interesting, they wanted us to do a project similar to the project we had done in Thailand with the king and queen there, where we had actually stopped the opium growing and had some of the villagers in a project there raise vegetables and things, and the king supported them. That's another story. But they knew the king and queen of Thailand really well, and so they asked Mr. Armstrong to come there and to do a project with them. In fact, it was interesting, because later on the queen Ashwaria told me that what she really intended us for to do is to run all of the... She wanted our students, our 21, 22-year-old master's students, to run all of the foreign donations that came into the country from other governments, because there was so much corruption, and they knew we weren't corrupt. At that time, it was $90 million they wanted our students to run for them. It was interesting. Again, like I said, Mr. Leon Sexton, his wife, and two sons, went over there and lived there for a year or so with General Rana.

General Rana and his wife, Sunita, were really wonderful people. Actually, his grandfather was the king of Nepal, and the British actually helped the other family become the king. There were a couple of ruling families there. General Rana and his wife invited Mr. Armstrong to their house for lunch. If he didn't really want to go, Mr. Armstrong was always too nice to say no. He went over there for lunch, and he had one of his dudes about 4,500 feet high, so it was a little hard on him. He was 91 years old at the time. So he went over for lunch. During the lunch, he started having some heart pains and took nitrogen. He ate a little bit, but he ended up cutting the lunch short. Mrs. Rana said, we need to call Parliament and stop the meeting tonight with the government, because we were having a dinner with all of Parliament that night. Mr. Armstrong was going to speak, and I told her, no, don't cancel anything. She said, but look, he's ill. I said, just leave it alone. And so he did. That night, Mr. Armstrong, I started taking him down to the dinner of 6-6-30, but we had a room about three times larger than this. General Rana and his wife were sitting on the side, and the hallway was down there. They saw us come down the hallway, and on the way in, Mr. Armstrong had to stop, take oxygen and nitrogen in the hallway.

And so they had seen this. I took him up to the head table and sat him down where the meal was, and I went and sat with General Rana and his wife, and she said, how can you do this to him? You're killing him. And I said, just, you know, wait. And sure enough, we ate a little bit, and he was sitting there, and then they pushed the mic up in front of him from the talk, and he stood up, and he started pounding the table and speaking and talking about the kingdom. And Mrs. Rana, about three minutes into it, Mrs. Rana leaned over, and she said, that's not him speaking. That's God speaking.

He's not that strong. And that was on one of the telecasts. You can still see those on YouTube, some of those things. But it was interesting that she could see that. There was something different about him, different about the message that he brought. When he did those things in different places, I think of Christ and Matthew 10. He tells us that if you're brought before kings and queens or before magistrates or whatever, for his name, for his sake, don't take any thought about what you're going to say. God will give you the words. And he always does, because he says his spirit will do that for us.

And it was interesting to see people, to hear what he said and see the reactions people had. Now, General Rana and his wife never came into the church. General Rana died about 10 years ago. He's a good friend. And I was always impressed with General Rana, because he was a special man. He was rather quiet at times, but yet every place that we would go, I'd see people whispering. And we'd come up to different soldiers, they'd stand in attention and salute.

And I knew he was a general. But being a general in other countries is pretty easy. If you're in the army 20 years in Thailand, you're a general. He kind of goes with dates rather than performance. So there's a lot of generals flying around in some countries over there. But his was different. His was special. There was an awe and a respect of him that was different. Again, I knew his grandfather had been the king. Because before I knew this, I knew when we'd go around the government buildings, he could tell me what was behind every door at every corner and everything.

And I realized that as a small boy, he grew up in these palaces that they had that turned into government buildings. So he knew where everything was in these buildings. So it was interesting. He didn't have a resentment from the crown being taken away. Because, like I said, the British helped the other family take over and become king and queen. They were kind of sided more with the British in some of the problems of the past.

And the British got involved in a lot of things they probably shouldn't have, but that's how it was. But it was interesting because his son, the general around the son, was actually the chief aide to the crown prince. And they were really good friends. So there really wasn't a problem. Even though his crown, so to speak, had been taken from him and given to a different family. Because he would have been king as the firstborn. And you think about Revelation where it says, you know, hold fast to your own crown. And how do you feel when someone takes it away?

But like I said, he didn't have a problem with that, but he was so respected. And I finally asked somebody, I said, you know, why does he have so much more respect than the other people? And I was told, they said, well, he saved the Nepalese from the Chinese. I said, what do you mean? He saved the Nepalese from the Chinese. And they said, well, you don't know this? I said, no, I don't know anything about it. He said, well, General Iran was a Gurkha soldier. And when in the 1950s, the Chinese sent a whole battalion up over the passes to take over Nepal.

And the four army, they sent up there to take over. And the Nepalese heard about it in Kathmandu. And there wasn't any time. I mean, the Chinese were really close. So what he did is he took about 20, 25 men. They took a backpack and their rifles, and they hiked up to the pass.

And when they got to the pass, which is around 15, 16,000 feet, they hiked up another couple thousand feet above that. And these 20 men held off the whole Chinese army for several days. Very little food, very little water, cold, miserable. But that's what he did. And it impressed the people.

So he earned their respect because of what had happened. I mean, I can't even imagine what it would have been like taking that kind of trek to hike, you know, 15, 20 miles straight up pretty much. And then stand there with just your rifles and a little bit of food and hold off the Chinese army. But he won favor for doing that. He lived up to the reputation of the gherkas. Maybe some of you have heard that.

I've always been impressed with the gherkas ever since I saw the one movie about the gherkas. In fact, I'd always wanted a gherkan knife because it's called a kukuri. For those of you who are technically minded. Well, it was called a gherkan knife, because we heard of the gherkas. Gherkas were kind of like the Israelis. They're well known for their fighting and their ability to do that. Well, the last time I was there, when I was with him, I was leaving, it was on Sunday, all the shops were closed, unfortunately. And I just made a comment to General Brown.

I said, you know, the one thing I really wanted to buy when I was here was a gherkan knife. And so I said, but all the shops are closed and I can't do it. And unfortunately, it was long enough ago that they'd let you on planes with something like that. But it was, he looked at me and he always wore this big heavy coat.

And he reached behind his coat and he pulls out, and he hands me this, his own gherkan knife. And of course, the first thing I started to do when I grabbed it was to pull it out. And I stopped. Because if you're a gherka, you don't pull out your knife unless you intend to drop blood. And there wasn't anybody there I wanted to kill, so...

So I left it in his sheet.

Technically, you generally don't give a knife to someone in those countries in Asia because when you give a knife, usually it means you've tried to sever your relationship with them. And certainly if you drew it out, you would be. But he considered me a friend and so he gave me his knife. And again, protocol dictated I couldn't refuse it. So I thanked him and took it. But it was interesting because when he handed me this, and it's not a polished one, I'm sure there's some decorative ones and silver and gold you can get, whatever, but this is actually the one that he wore when he fought the Chinese.

But it was very special for him to give it to me. And I sat there and as he gave it to me, he started talking to me and he said, you know, he says, we're really good fighters, we're really proud. But he said, we made a big mistake. He said, we should have lost to the British. Instead, we have our pride. If we'd lost to the British, we'd have roads and schools and bridges that we don't have today. Now, I tell this story because I want to speak a little bit about the Gurkhas and do some comparisons with us because we're an army of gods. You see, the Gurkhas are a very special group of people. You tend to think of them all as Nepalese, but they're not really that. In reading about them in the colonial pursuits of the British, they learned how tough the Gurkhas were about 200 years ago in the Gurkha Wars of 1814 through 1816. It was when the British East Indian Company was taking over and God was blessing Ephraim, and Manasseh at that time. And the troops that were there in support of the British, they invaded Nepal with the Indian troops that they had. And the British had never seen fighters like them. They suffered so many heavy casualties so quickly that they actually signed a peace treaty more quickly than they had with any other country because they realized these people were tough. In reading the memoirs of some of the soldiers, one of those soldiers in the 87th foot division wrote his memoirs. He said, I never saw more steadiness or bravery exhibited in my life. Run they would not. Of death they seemed to have no fear, though their comrades were falling thick around them. The British were really impressed with what they saw after reaching the stalemate. They even offered to pay the Gurkhas to be in their army because they couldn't believe who were these people that fought them and won. But they were not a single people. You see, the Gurkhas' soldiers were recruits drawn from several different ethnic groups. They weren't one single tribe. When the British began recruiting them from Nepal, it lists them as the various nationalities with the ethnic groups. It's the Magar, the Gurung, the Rai, and the Limbu. See, ethnically, the Gurkhas all originated from Nepal, but they comprise many Indo-Tibetan Mongolian types of people, including the Rajput, the Gurkhas of Tibet and Mongolia, the Magar, the Rai, the Limbu, the Gurung, Taman, the Karanti. The Gurkhas of Aran origin even belonged to the Chhetri and Brahman. So there were a whole bunch of different people, kind of like, I suppose, the Cherokee and the Shani and all the different Indian tribes here. But yet they fought together as one. Turn to 1 Peter 2, if you will.

1 Peter 2, we'll begin reading in verse 1. But see, they had one things in common. They were able to lay aside their tribal uniqueness for a greater sense than a singleness of purpose. In essence, they had become one for a cause, and that becoming one made them a formidable force.

1 Peter 2, verse 1, we read, "...laying aside all malice, all guile, and apocracies, and envies, all evil speaking." And we're not always so good at that, but we need to be. "...as newborn babes desire the sincere mark of the word, that you may grow. If so be, you've tasted that the Lord is gracious." We've tasted His grace. "...to whom coming as a living stone disallowed a deed of men, but chosen of God and precious. You also, you, me, all of us, as lively stones built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer a spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And through Him we are accepted by God as a people. He was our chief cornerstone. Through Him we are accepted." Go down to verse 9, "...but you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of peculiar people." Yeah, we're different. Different nationalities, different races. Why? "...that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into this marvelous light." The light, the truth, God is light. "...but in which times pass," verse 10, "...you were not a people, but now you are the people of God, which did not obtain mercy, but now have obtained mercy." Verse 11, "...dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from flesh to lust, which war against the soul." We have a code of conduct. We're supposed to live by. A code beyond ourselves, having your conversation honest among the Gentiles. "...whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may buy your good works, which they shall behold glorify God in the day of visitation." Our works are to glorify God. We don't become individuals. We become a collective. We become the body, that peculiar people, that church of God.

Does the world see oneness in our purpose? Does it see us united? It needs to. God is purifying us. He's testing us. He's always sorting out the wheat from the chaff, to make sure we are oneness. And it's sad when some people go away. But they have to see a group known as the children of God, not individuals who seek their own will. And usually when there's division, it's people seeking their own will. I've seen it for my 63 years of life, and divisions every decade. People seeking their own will. And what happens then is you fail. You have to have that oneness of purpose.

Again, the bravery of the Gurkhas is legendary. And the movie Gunga Din showed that. The man on top of the stone blowing his bugle while he's being killed warned the British. Bravery. See, 200 years ago, when the British East Indian Company invaded Nepal, they suffered those casualties.

And they never saw that kind of bravery before. Phil Marshall, Sam Manish-Gaw, famously said of the Gurkhas, He said, If a man says he is not afraid to die, he's either a liar or a Gurkha. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Gurkhas fought on the British side and became part of the British Indian Army.

During the conflict, 25 Indian Orders of Merit awards were given to men during the regiment that sieged New Delhi. Three days after the mutiny began, one Gurkha battalion was ordered to move to Meeut, where the British garrison was barely holding on. In doing so, they had to march 30 miles a day to get there. During the four-month siege of Delhi, they defended the garrison, losing 327 out of their 490 men.

By the end of the Indian Rebellion, in the start of World War I, the Gurkha regiments served in Burma, Afghanistan, the Northeast Frontier, Northwest Frontier of India, Malta, Cyprus, Malaysia, China, and Tibet. The British took them with them, wherever they went.

In 1901 and 1906, the regiments were renumbered from the 1st to the 10th and redesigned as the Gurkha Rifles. In this time, the brigade of Gurkhas had regiments that came collectively known as the expanded 20 battalions with 10 regiments. In World War I and World War I, in 1914-19, more than 200,000 Gurkhas served in the British Army, suffering 20,000 casualties and receiving 2,000 gallantry awards, with large numbers that served in France, in Turkey, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. They served in the battlefields of France, in Louis, in Gavinci, in Ubusch-Appel. When they were serving, the British felt good around them. They were legendary. During Gallipoli, the campaign there, you see movies of that, because it was an utter failure on most counts, because they couldn't take it.

But it's interesting because the Gurkhas were the first ones there and the last to leave. In fact, the first of the six Gurkhas landed at Cape Hells, led the assault on the first major operation to take out the Turkish high point, and in doing so, captured the feature later but can't known as Gurkha Bluff. At Surrey Bluff, they were the only troop in the whole campaign to reach the crest line and look down the straits, which was the objective.

The Australians didn't do it, the British didn't do it, the Gurkhas did. It was interesting because they were so well known that everybody wanted them. The most famous of their battles, the detachment that served with Lawrence or Arabia. It was interesting, during the Battle of Luz, the 8th, the Gurkhas fought to the very last man. The whole battalion died, hurling themselves time after time against the enemy, and the German defenses, who was there by holla.

They were willing to die. Signal is a purpose from different tribes, different places. Turn to Luke 9, if you would. Luke 9 and verse 23. Because God is looking for Christians that have that same kind of bravery, that willingness for a cause, for the cause of the kingdom. Do we have that at a time when the world is falling apart around us? We must. We live in a time of peace, relatively, right now, but that's not going to last. With the decisions being made now in the Supreme Court, with the Constitution basically being thrown away, we can expect to have to stand up for what we believe at some point, and have that kind of courage.

Verse 23 of Luke 9, He said to them, If a man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Take up his cross daily. Prosear will save his life, shall lose it. And whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged if he gains the whole world, and lose himself, and be cast away?

It's a goal you have to have and focus on. And whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he shall come to his own glory, and in his fathers, and of the holy angels that come with him. You see, if you're willing to die, you also will become legendary. Not in this life. What will you look like when you get that time? You know, the Gurkhas, improving their bravery, the British gave them special uniforms. They had a special green uniform so they would stand out.

People would know who they were. And like I said, they did it as much because of Brett Comfort. If you were there with the British troops, you didn't know what you would... You're kidding me, I knew what your comrades were going to do. When you saw that green troop coming, you knew they had died of the last man. You can count on them. How do we know what will look like God? Be like Him and stand out? Now in 1 John 3, we know that we'll look like God looks because He tells us in 1 John 3, "...one manner of love is the Father bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God.

Therefore the world doesn't know us because it didn't know Him." You are now the sons of God. "...It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we'll see Him as He is." If we're told if we look on God now, we die. And we would. But we won't then... In verse 3, "...every man that has this hope purifies himself, even as he is pure." We become like Christ, willing to die. Have that love for mankind that says, you'll give your all. Everyone wanted the gherkas to fight for them. They've been hired by almost everybody in this world because they can be trusted.

They've been using peacekeeping operations around the world. They want them because they're loyal to their word, they're willing to die rather than give up. Just as we must. Zechariah 8. We read this in the Feast a lot. Verse 23. Zechariah 23. Future prophecy. It says, "...the Lord of hosts, in those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold of all the languages of all the nations, even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you." God is with you.

Yes, you're an army under Christ. And God the Father is with us. Why? Not to destroy the world, but to teach it. To teach it a way of happiness. To teach it what you're learning right now. God wants us to be like His Son. He expects that. And He knows the difficult task. No one says it's easy. Many people have had to die for what they believe. See, the Gurkhas became legendary through war. Yet we make our mark by being humble. Going against what the world values.

Our resume is humility. Our resume is service and sacrifice. Our resume is not the $8-9 billion that Trump asked for his campaign. We're proud of that fact. There's a lot of zeros after that. It doesn't impress God. It doesn't impress us. Certainly He has an ability. We can respect that for making money and those types of things. But that's not what God looks for. There have been 26 Victoria Crosses awarded to the Gurkhas and the British. The first was awarded 1858, the last in 1965.

Two George Cross medals awarded to Gurkhas soldiers for acts of bravery in situations that didn't even involve combat. A large number of men have been recruited for all sorts of special functions. We're recruited for different roles as well. Roles that God has in place. Roles that we don't necessarily know what they are.

I always joke that I've never asked for a job in the church, and I've had most of them, I think. But I'm still trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Eventually I'll know what God is trying to do with me. Maybe He's still looking for what I can do. I don't know. He keeps trying all these different things. But it's interesting because you don't have to slay Goliath.

You don't really know... The only person I know of that's a Gurkhas soldier that's famous is a generana. I didn't know that before that. He never said anything about it if I hadn't asked other people. Not a whole bunch of other names that you hear about in that. But yet there have been so many people. But it's not about slaying Goliath. That's why everybody always comes up to me. I know those people that, what I call the climbers, they always want to find that one big thing they can do.

And it's an act of service to slay Goliath, but the key is David slew Goliath because Goliath was cursing his God. Because Goliath was putting down the God of Israel. Because Goliath stood for something totally wrong. It wasn't because David wanted to be important. If I killed this guy, I'll be important. It wasn't his motive at all. And all too often I see people that want to slay Goliath so that they can be put on a pedestal.

So they can have all those good things that come with notoriety. That's not what it is. It's about being willing to sacrifice. About serving the elderly, serving the widows and the orphans, serving others that need help. It's about valuing your future more than you value your present. It's about giving up yourself and making God in Christ the center of your life.

Instead of what the world would put. Matthew 25 makes it very clear what we're expected to do. Matthew 25 verse 35, he lays it out pretty clearly when he says, I was hungry and you gave me meat. And I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. You do it by doing those little things. Of course, you read that whole section. The people who were doing it said, when did we do that for you?

Christ, we never did that for you. His answer was, well, you did it for the little ones. You do it for the little ones, you did it for me. And there were those who said, if we had seen you doing that, we'd have done it for you. There's always people. I saw that a lot. In my service, Mr. Armstrong, being the pastor general, there were a lot of people that had run up wanting titles, wanting jobs, wanting this. People asked me, how did you get your job on the plane?

How could I do that? And I said, why would you want it? I said, do you really want something that's cost my wife and I, the only two people I know that stayed married, who were traveling so much in the 70s, it wasn't a good life in that sense. Although God put you in, and I always say, God put you in and He helped you, and He certainly helped Michelle and I. We've done very well. But in the 70s, the airplane was gone a lot.

In 1975, we were out at the airplane. Go to the log books. The airplane was out of the country, 312 days. Those were tough times. A lot of people paid a price for it. It's not the way you do it, but again, God asked you to do a lot of funny things. When I did some of these things, I always looked back at the prophets, and God asked them to do it, and I thought, well, I haven't had to do what they had to do yet. But it was difficult. I asked them, why would you want to ask for a job that would probably destroy your marriage? Why would you want to ask for something that can't be done without God's help?

I knew the reason they wanted it. They liked it. They publicly liked the attention. Most people didn't know what I looked like because I stayed out of the pictures, because I didn't want to be in the pictures.

I had to be in some of them, but I always be on the end. I'd always bring my elbows and knees in so when they cropped the picture, they cut me out without leaving body parts hanging in there. If you look at some of the pictures before, there are all sorts of people with Mr. Armstrong that usually would get between him and the leader, or him and the king. And Mr. Armstrong asked me, why, how come you're not in the pictures? And I said, well, let me show you this book we got here. I said, see that picture with you and Judge Singh of the World Court?

See that painting back there? I said, that's Charles Huntington. Mr. Armstrong, we've airbrushed out so many people out of these pictures. I said, it costs $500 to airbrush somebody out of a picture.

I said, I don't need to spend $500 of the widow's money being airbrushed out of a picture. I'm not important. And I went through and showed them this palm tree here that was Godot, and this one here is Stan Rader, and this one...

All these different people, we painted out of the picture because they left. And that wasn't what was important. They actually helped me do my job because no one knew what I looked like, so therefore I could run around and do things without anybody stopping me. And that helped a great deal. Plus, you could hear what they actually were talking about rather than what they wanted you to hear. Because once they know who you are, then all of a sudden all you hear is the party line, which doesn't really do you any good for trying to help improve things.

But it was interesting because... It was a difficult time. I'll thank my wife the last five years when I became his aide and vice president because she began flying with me. That was kind of an accident in itself, but I can tell that story later.

But after she got the job, the first trip she said she wanted to quit, and she told me to go tell Mr. Armstrong. I said, you tell him. And she didn't, so she stepped flying. But it was interesting to see the people who did good deeds, did service, and I often talk about that. In fact, so many people I saw serve so well and so hard, leave. I thought, how could they serve so well?

They must have been so converted to serve so hard. And then to leave, and I finally realized that their service wasn't an act of service for service sake. It was an act of service to gain something. They wanted to be seen, like Christ said in the Pharisees, they give their alms in public, they make lots of noise, and they put the money in. They pray loudly so people see them. That's the same thing. Because, again, to rise, you needed to serve. To rise with God, you need to serve. But the point is, you need to serve every time because it's the right thing to do.

Not because you want people to see you and raise you up. And I've seen a lot of men rise to positions and leave when it's taken away. In fact, I would say nine out of ten people have left. And when I started looking at it, I realized Mr. Armstrong talked about the two trees, the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, the good, looks the same as it does on the tree of life.

The action looks the same. The motive is different. And when you look at the motives and you see that, and again, you don't see it for years. In fact, some of the people I thought served the greatest and were the most spiritual end up being the least. And if you think about it, if you work really hard to get somewhere and someone takes it away, you're angry.

With that angry anger, you lose God's Spirit if you had it, and you're taken away. But if you serve to serve and God takes the position away, you just say, okay, where do I serve now? What do you mean to do now? You may sit on the sidelines for a while. You may sit on the sidelines for decades. You may be like Joseph and upsold him to slavery. Or a gurupataphar. Rise your way up to the top of the household, get lied about by his wife, get thrown in the dungeon and work your way up again inside the prison.

God does it his way. But it's service for service's sake, not for the wrong motivation. Turn to 1 Corinthians 1, if you would. You see, the gurkis seem like the weak of the world. Look at the gurkis, they're not that big. The Nepalese people are not huge people. They're not muscular, they're not your Arnold Schwarzenegger types or anything. They're just little people. But their attitude and their courage is what it's about.

They're not well educated, but they're fully committed, fully dedicated. You couldn't ask for a true or a friend. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 24, But to them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God. If you're called and you have the Spirit, it's about God's power and His wisdom. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, the weakness of God is stronger than men.

And you see your calling. Not many wise men, not many mighty. Look around, there's not a whole lot of powerful people in the church, and a lot of those who thought they were, and managed to do it on their own. Some of these men were great orators, great speakers.

But it wasn't God, it was them. For you see your calling. Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He chose the weak things to confound the mighty. God, the old saying is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

It's the size of God's Spiritness, not our size. We don't have enough to do it. It's the size of our Spirit. Why? In verse 29, that no flesh should glory. It's not about us. It's only about Him. Like Christ said, I can do nothing except my Father. If He didn't take credit for anything, how can we? Verse 30, but of Him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. That according is written, He that glories, let him glory in God.

It's the size of God's Spirit in us, how we work with it, how we do it.

It's interesting, Sir Ralph Lilly Turner, of the Marine Corps, of the British Army, and the 3rd Queen, wrote of the gherkis in his diary toward the end of his life, He says, I write these last words, my thoughts return to you, who are my comrades, the stubborn and the dominant peasants of Nepal.

Once more I hear the laughter with which you greeted every hardship. Once more I see in you the bivouacs about your fires, the forced marches, in the trenches, shivering with wet and with cold, scorched by a pitiless and burning sun. Uncomplaining, you endure hunger and thirst and wounds, and at the last your unwavering lines disappear into the smoke and wrath of the battle, bravest of the brave, the most generous of the generous, never had a country more faithful for friends than you. Again, normal people by the fires, serving for a cause united, a band of brothers, so to speak, heuroric.

As a group, we can be no less. I'm proud to serve beside God's people. The old, the young, the teens, pre-teens, people of God's. I've been those things now, pretty much, for my lifetime. And that's what it's about. Helping each other, encouraging each other, making sure that we all get there. General Arana saved Nepal at one point. Jesus Christ saved the world. Everyone. But General Arana was tired of fighting, tired of the sacrifices, tired of all these things for what?

He recognized the futility in everything he'd done. Hadn't really brought peace and kept his country from being occupied. Why did a man so trained and so brave that he could climb mountains and hold off an army? Brave the severity of the cold, the harsh conditions that he had to fight in? Say that we made a big mistake because he knew there was more to it.

Like he said, if we had lost the bridges, the British, we'd have roads and schools and bridges and everything India has. And now our country's backwards because it's so treacherous a train. It's hard to do those things. They have their pride. That's what they have. Indeed, mankind has given way to Satan for all these years. What the general really was saying is that mankind had only truly surrendered to God and his way of life.

We wouldn't have had 6,000 years of misery and warfare and Cain and Abel stories and others. This misery for mankind, the famine, the disease, the crime. Because God started his Gurkha army a long time ago and he gave us the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and united us by that common bond regardless of where we're from. North or south, black, white, yellow, tall, short, male or female, young or old. It didn't matter. We're the first fruits of God.

We're God's dedicated army. We're willing to go to the last man and we're true friends. Friends to each other and friends to God. And we enjoy letting God win in our lives rather than us. We know there's a time when they're going to take us up. Matthew 10, verse 19 says, when they deliver you up. And we will probably. As time goes on, as the world progresses, Satan hates you. He hates me. He hates God. He wants to destroy everything that stands for that. But we have the faith in God because we know we're going to join the people in Hebrews 11, all the martyrs of the past, the prophets of old, the various people who live by faith.

This is what we look for, to go against the grain that the world lays out. To lose in Satan's world. They'd probably call us losers to go for what we're going for, but to win in God's world. Again, we're not afraid because we have God. We're not afraid to face the enemy because we have a cause that is true, a cause that is just, a cause that is right and righteous. And that's how we gain victory through Christ, in loving God, our Father.

You see, the Gurkhas became very good. So good that, like I said, people like me want to have one of these knives because it stands for something. But indeed, you don't draw this unless you want to draw broads. So the Gurkhas don't take their knives out, except in war, to sharpen, or special occasions.

But you see, we have a Gurkha knife too. And this is it. The sword of God's Word. And I hope you open it every day and draw it out. And I hope it draws blood. The blood of God's Spirit. The blood that leads you to see yourself, not to kill somebody else, but to lose your life, to put in Christ's life in you. To understand why you're here, to be strong for Him, to be strong in what He wants you to do in preparation for His Kingdom. Because God's written about some of us, our brothers and sisters of the past, I'm sure He'll write about more of us.

Like I read earlier what they said about the Gurkhas. I hope someday God will write something about you and about me and about all of us as His people, where it may go something like this. I never saw a more steadiness of bravery exhibited. Sin, they would not. Of death, they had no fear. They fought for God and Jesus Christ to the last man. They will forever live in glory as God's first fruits in His Kingdom.