David: People will have to pay close attention to this podcast, Karen, or I’m afraid they’re going to get confused.

Karen: And that’s because we’ll be replaying parts of three consecutive Chapel of the Air broadcasts recorded with evangelist Luis Palau in 1981.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David at Karen Mains.

Karen: As most people know by now, Luis died in March of this year.

David: Broadcast one was about an extended Palau crusade held in Wales in 1977. That’s just a short four-minute section we took from that first broadcast.

Karen: And then the interview with Luis in the Chapel broadcast two will be played in its totality. And that’s about meetings Luis held in Scotland between 1978 and 1981.

David: And then you get just a bit of the third Chapel program about a crusade Luis Palau was looking forward to in 1982, which was scheduled to climax in London in 1983. So, it’s Wales, then Scotland, and then England.

Karen: So, we believe our listeners will catch a glimpse of this man’s great heart for the Lord and his humanities, especially since he talks about his wife, Pat, and about his incredible faith as he projected what he hoped would happen in England.

David: And we thank you, friend for letting us go back into our Chapel archives to once again bring these interviews to you.

David: Let’s locate Wales geographically for our people. And I also want you to describe Cardiff Castle where the crusade was held. We think of a castle and it’s a little different than what it actually was.

Luis Palau: Yes. The castle is in the very center of the city. The outer walls were repaired at about 1500, in the year 1500. The inner core of the castle, the castle keep as they call it, which is the big tower that most people associate with the castle in our day, was built in about the year 90 AD by the Romans who came over to the British Isles. So, it is a historical place. It is vast. It is enormous.

The grounds could probably house three football fields. And there we were able to get it to everybody’s surprise following what they call the military tattoo, which is a military parade to which often the queen will come. And there with the same stands we were able to hold the meetings.

David: Now these were basically outside meetings and it was August. So, what was the weather like?

Luis Palau: Oh, I tell you, it was a dramatic. We chose August because we thought even in England or the British Isles, certainly the weather should turn good in August. It wasn’t. It was torrential rains as if it was a Central American storm of the wildest sort. The rain poured down every night but one and a half. The one night when it didn’t rain violently, we had about 8,000 to 10,000 people. But it was glorious. But the rain was not only heavy. It was cold because you know how the British Isles are.

David: Yes. Now Wales is the western side of that big island of Great Britain. And that’s just for people who may not know. Give us an idea as to the size of the meetings you’ve started to do that and also the response of the people.

Luis Palau: Yes. That’s right. Wales, of course, is one of the four, so to speak, subdivisions of the British Isles. England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. And as you said, it’s a southwestern tip of the British Isles. Well, the attendance overall for we took about 10 cities of, we traveled around, Wales was about 60,000. At the castle, 40,000.

About 1,500 publicly confessed the Lord Jesus Christ. And for a Wales that was spiritually practically dead, that was a glorious time of 10 days. In fact, a BBC man interviewing me one day, you may remember David chatting about it once.

He asked me, “Why are you a South American coming to Wales? Aren’t you flogging a dead horse?” And at that point I said, “Well the horse may be dead, but the Lord can raise even them from the dead.” And it was a beginning of a coming alive of many, many, many people.

David: Was there a reason you had a special burden for Wales, Luis?

Luis Palau: Actually, David, my burden is for the British Isles as a whole. My maternal grandfather was born in Scotland and then reading so much church history, so many beautiful revivals of the past, the Wesley’s, Spurgeon, Meijer, Campbell Morgan, you know, Moody and his great campaigns. You couldn’t help as a Christian to love the British Isles. Of course I was one to the Lord by British missionaries. There was a missionary from Wales. His name, he’s now gone to be with the Lord, is David Morris. And he is in that film. We were able to capture him just before the Lord took him home and he breaks down on the film crying because of the memories of the revival. He was an elderly gentleman and the state of the church now.

Well, anyway, Wales was the first of the British areas that invited me to come and therefore we accepted the invitation. When I did, I was talking with Dr. Billy Graham once and he said, “Luis, why are you always choosing the hardest cities to go to first?” And I said to him, “It’s because they’re the only ones who invite me.” So it was the first step.

David: Well, 1,500 new Christians in Wales, that’s beautiful.

Karen: Now, here’s the complete second interview between my husband David and Luis Palau. And this time it’s about…

David: Scotland is a land rich in church history, including names like John Knox, Robert Murray McShane, the hymn writer Horatius Bonar and his brother Andrew. Today in Scotland, however, would you believe that church attendance is below 5%?

You’re tuned to The Chapel of the Air. I’m David Mains and our guest this visit is evangelist Luis Palau, who this last spring in a Glasgow crusade, capped off several years of ministry in Scotland. Review for us, Luis Palau, your efforts throughout Scotland that led up to the Glasgow meetings.

Luis Palau: Thank you, David. And I want to greet all the Chapel of the Air listeners. I meet them all over the country when I travel. So, if you allow me, I want to say hello to them.

David: I allow you.

Thank you. Yes, we had a wonderful crusade for five weeks this spring. The attendance amounted to about 200,000 people in 33 meetings. Well over 5,000 made a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. The penetration was unusual. We were thrilled to see how God worked. It was slow at first. It gathered momentum slowly, but eventually the whole nation, we felt, heard the voice of God because of the dedication, the prayers, the tremendous work, the uphill struggle of the Christians in Glasgow.

David: Now you actually had meetings in other cities of Scotland before you went to Glasgow. Is that not correct?

Luis Palau: Certainly, David. We started three years ago in Aberdeen, which is on the east coast by the North Sea, where all the oil has been discovered. Many Americans worked there, especially from Texas and the southwest of the USA. Then from there we visited literally scores of fishing villages and little towns with sometimes one-night rallies, in some cases a week of meetings. So, the northeast of Scotland was covered. Then we went to the north. Then a year later, about two and a half years ago, we went to the city of Er, which is in the county of Ershire, and then to Motherwell and Hamilton, which are closer to Glasgow. Then this year we went to Glasgow finally. So, it was sort of starting from the outskirts and closing in on the big city. For Glasgow is three million population.

David: Luis, you make films of some of these meetings. You had one called Broken Up People. Is that an overstatement about the Scottish people, or do you feel good about that?

Luis Palau: It’s taken from a song sung by a British called David Pope, entitled Broken Up People. We feel, and in fact a minister who speaks for a prolonged period of time on that movie, I think proves that the Scottish people have broken up not in a sense of spiritually broken up yet, in the sense that they’re searching for the Lord in a revival way, as I know your burden is, as well as mine. They’re broken up in the sense that they feel alone. Unemployment is so high in Scotland. Emotionally, the country would be properly said to be in a depressed state. Drinking is a very, very obvious social blight. Young people see no hope. The economy is bleak. And so I think that broken up in the sense of sociologically, economically, and emotionally, in the sense that there’s little hope, I think it well describes the situation of Scotland, yes.

David: Ok, now you’ve been there. You’ve come into this kind of a setting. The Lord has worked. Picture yourself giving a report to God. You’re kind of in a sense standing in judgment and you’re saying, “Here, Father, is what I feel best about of all, and here I am not feeling real good about, whatever.”

Luis Palau: Oh, my goodness gracious, you’ve put me before the judgment seat before I get there. That’s good. Well, that is a wonderful way of looking at it, David. I think I would first confess to the Lord that perhaps hard as I tried to understand the Scots, I didn’t quite understand them as well as I do now, after three and a half years of working with them again and again. The Scots are a lovely people, really. They’re very cool on the outside. They don’t make friendships quickly. When they do, they embrace you forever. When they catch that you love Scotland and the Scots, they treat you like a king. And I feel over there, I feel loved in a way that probably most Scots don’t feel loved among themselves. They are very loving, very dedicated.

You know, there’s always the jokes about the Scots being tight about money. I found them to be exactly the opposite. They were very giving. They covered all the expenses. It was the most expensive crusade ever. I would say I wish I had stayed longer, Father. We were there five weeks. When it was over, if the Kelvin Hall had been free, we would have gone another five weeks. It was like the beginning of something.

I would have said, “I wish, Father, we had stayed another five weeks or maybe another ten weeks because the harvest was beginning to come in.” It is going on now, by the way. The reports are glorious. They want us to come back for a series of 30 cities. And of course, Edinburgh, we still haven’t touched. So those are some of my confessions, if I had that awesome task.

David: Were you preaching outside again or were you preaching within an enclosed hall?

Luis Palau: This is an enclosed hall. The Kelvin Hall seats about 11,000. It’s very old and it’s the only covered large auditorium in the city, right? Pretty much in the heart of the city.

David: One of the statements you made, Luis, during that crusade that the press picked up was, for Scotland it’s either “Back to the Bible” or “Back to the Jungle.” Do you feel that was a true emphasis of your preaching?

Luis Palau: I really do. Yeah, it was a rather strong statement, which I picked up some years back from another preacher, but I really believe that. And I think the Scots know that it’s true. Therefore, they didn’t really fight the statement. They were sort of intrigued by what “Back to the Bible” meant, but because “Back to the Jungle” they know it’s true. You know Scotland has four times, especially Glasgow, four times as much crime as any other city of all of Western Europe. So, they know that they’re in trouble.

David: In Great Britain, one can’t purchase airtime like here in the United States. What kind of media coverage did the crusade get?

Luis Palau: That was one of the beautiful works of God, David. It’s absolutely true. Most Americans don’t realize that even in free Western Europe you cannot basically purchase airtime on radio television. Not even to use spot announcements, let alone a radio program. However, the Lord worked ahead. Of course, our team members really worked on it, the local publicity people, too.

The Lord opened doors one by one by one. I believe the statistics in round figures now. We were on about 20 television programs of one sort of another. Some of them half-hour programs, all of it totally free. Some of them were controversial, but the gospel went out every time. I made a point that the basics would go out, no matter what the point of discussion was. The Scots are very theologically minded, by the way. I should come back to that later, even though they are secularized now.

Secondly, on radio, as I remember my team members’ reports, we had about 150 radio programs, interviews, reports of one sort of another on a national basis. Then newspaper coverage was well over 200 articles and reports. The Glasgow Herald is the major national paper. Therefore, it covered the country. Controversy arose over the authority of Scripture, which was, in a sense, great. Though at times I regretted that it got a little hot at times. But it made everybody alert. Everybody had to think, what does the Bible have to say? What is its authority, etc.? It was really an open door. You couldn’t have paid for that many programs. Well, you might have, but it would have been expensive.

David: It’s amazing, as I listen to you, because I know the pressure that is on a person for those interviews. I know that you’re preaching night after night after night, and you can’t repeat sermons. I don’t know how you take that amount of pressure. I know that it’s very important for our people to pray for you when you’re in those times.

Luis Palau: That’s true, David. It’s amazing how the Lord does give grace, but I do believe in the power of intercessory prayer, the upholding strength that the Lord gives. I was thinking of the words of Paul before we came on the air, where he says, “I appeal to your brethren by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf,” that was in Romans 15. I really believe in that, that you need that upholding strength. It’s amazing how the Lord gives it. You get into the momentum of it. But again, yes, not to repeat yourself is one of the great struggles. Once I took the Ten Commandments and preached on one every night, that was exciting, and other aspects like this. But the Lord has to give you grace day by day, and you have to really stay in shape.

David: I know your wife, Pat, Luis, is battling cancer. Is it especially hard for you to leave for extended periods of time when you know she’s home alone?

Luis Palau: It really is, David, as you can imagine. We have worked together and loved each other for 20 years. She’s very much a part of everything we do. She loves the work. She gives me great counsel. She’s, I think, my theological advisor, I would say. She really does have a theological mind. And it’s been very hard. And yet neither she nor I would have wanted to break anything the Lord had for us to do. We did slow down. We took a few less missionary conferences. That has hurt the team somewhat in terms of support.

People don’t see you. They forget you. So, however, it has been good to be with her. She’s traveled a bit more with me because of her illness. The board of directors of our team and the team members all felt she should come with me even more. Our boys have taken it, you know, in a very biblical way. Pat’s reaction to the cancer and the news was so godly that it moves me even to tell you about it. The day the doctor said it was malignant and we had to have surgery, she went up to the piano upstairs and I was downstairs in my little office at home really shaken up. We just came from the news. She sat at the piano and I heard her playing, “The church is one foundation under his wings. I am safely abiding.” And she began to sing to the Lord. And so she has shown the strength and the reality. Everything we preach and teach and counsel has become real to our family. So, it has given strength to the message, actually.

David: I’m listening to you and I’m identifying and it’s hard for me to even respond. We’ll go back to Scotland just for a little while. What about the church there? What is your feeling regarding how the church has been left?

Luis Palau: I think that about a hundred churches in the Greater Glasgow area have definitely turned a corner because of the crusade this year. Back in Aberdeen, Ershire, Motherwell, a similar proportion has also come alive to evangelism, to the reaching out, to the fact that we must touch those who don’t know the Lord. So, I feel that we left behind an excited church and expectant church in Scotland, both in the Church of Scotland and in the free churches, Baptist, Brethren, Nazarene, etc.

David: Luis Palau, you of course have our prayers. And I thank you for these thrilling accounts. 5,000 new Scottish believers. That’s a significant number. I know I rejoice with you in this and so do our listeners.

Karen: When Interview 3 began, David said to Luis Palau that most people thought of him as the Latin American evangelist. So, what was he doing going to England? And then David added, “Are you now a man like John Wesley who said, the world is my parish?”

Luis Palau: In a way I’d like to think that, although still the Spanish speaking world is, so to speak, a particular responsibility from the Lord. But on the other hand, this burden for Britain is important on my heart because I think that if a revival struck Britain, it would go out to the ends of the earth because of the influence Britain has had in the past over the world. Therefore, I’ve had this burden because as you and I have shared many times, we both have a burden for a genuine worldwide awakening and probably, although God has his own sovereign designs, if it started in Britain, it could touch the world. So, in a sense, the Lord has expanded my vision, yes.

David: You’ve spent quite a bit of time now in Wales and Scotland. How does England compare to these other parts of Great Britain? Is it going to be easier in your mind or harder?

Luis Palau: Well, you know, you can’t help but compare. It’s part of life and the more you travel, as you know, that’s done. I would say that in my mind, England should be, humanly speaking, easier. As soon as I say that, it makes me tremble because it’ll probably be more difficult. We thought of Scotland as the most difficult. Actually, I think Wales turned out to be more difficult than Scotland. England appears to be easier because there’s a touch of God already going on.

The British are more open. The young people are more alert to trends. They’re not as provincial. They’re not as oriented to looking back. They have sort of shared the idea, “Okay, the empire is gone. Now what?” is the attitude of the new generation?

David: I’ve read, Luis, that you’ve compared England spiritually to say Latin America of 20, 25 years ago. What do you mean by that?

Luis Palau: Well, yes, I have said that, which kind of shocked some of the British because they used to think of Latin America as a mission field that they must come and help and enlighten. They have done that very well. But as I’ve traveled around and looked at it from, so to speak, a distant perspective, I see the state of Britain as getting ready for a harvest, such as Latin America was getting ready for 30 years ago and is now experiencing. In other words, you notice under the surface that the young leadership is tired and impatient with the status quo. The young leadership wants to do anything creative to bring the masses back to the Lord.

They want to and are willing to break and shed what cultural, as they say nowadays, hang ups, you know, would hold back the presenting of the gospel. And that was happening when I was a young teenager years ago in Argentina and South America. So that’s why I say that Britain is today where Latin America was 30 years ago getting itself ready for a harvest. And I can see that on the horizon.

David: You sense the challenge. Do you also fear a little of what might be ahead? 21:01

Luis Palau: I do, David. I sometimes fear so much that I feel like going to Dr. Graham and saying, why don’t you take London? I’ll just pray for you. But on the other hand, there is a thrill at waiting to see and know that only God can do it and we must depend on him. You fear because the British are a very sophisticated, a very traditional nation, so to speak, the British in my mind are sort of above us all type of thing. And I go there with that sense. But on the other hand, there is a great humility among the leadership. And it’s good to see that the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, the leaders are behind the effort. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone actually.

Karen: I believe there’s time, David, for each of us to make one last comment about this man whose life in ministry touched so many people, well, that’s tens of thousands of people around the world.

David: Yeah, easily. I would say, Karen, that the Lord has privileged us to meet many religious leaders. And I don’t think I’m being hypercritical to say that many times you get huge egos. Luis was not that way. Luis had his ego in check. He was interested in others, even in private conversations. He was asking questions. It was a beautiful thing. And then on the other hand, he wasn’t syrupy sentimental about his faith.

Karen: He was a pragmatist.

David: He was a pragmatist. He talked about Jesus, what he was doing, his faith, his humanity. He was who he was. And there weren’t a lot of people like that. And that was a very beautiful thing. He made you very comfortable with him.

Karen: Yeah, I think we’re so fortunate to have these tapes, this archive, because we forget about these leaders. Now Luis just died within the last month, didn’t it? Two months ago.

Yeah, two months ago. But we listened to these broadcasts, and I’m deeply, deeply moved by their spiritual leadership, by their passion for God in his ministry. And we need to be reminded of that. We who are still here alive, though aged, we’re still here, that I don’t want that passion in me to die.

I want it to be renewed. I want to love Jesus as much now and want to be as much a His servant as I ever have been in my life. And that’s what listening to someone like Luis reminds you of, that this is a man who was like that, and we want to retain that sort of direction and drive in our own lives. And to be people who dream for Jesus.

David: Yeah, dream big for Jesus. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, good to have you join us, friends.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address: hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lower-case letters: hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.