Kublai Khan and a Missed Opportunity

 

While studying the lives of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan with my children, and then reading about them once again in Scott W. Sundquist’s article entitled Asian Christianity, I was deeply saddened by the HUGE loss of opportunity for mission outreach to Asia during the time of Kublai Khan.

“In the 13th century, when Genghis Khan ruled, this empire stretched from China to Central Europe — a kingdom larger even than those of Alexander and the Roman Caesars, covering all of Asia, Indochina, and even Eastern Europe. No nation has yet to rival the magnitude of the Mongolian Empire,” (Sundquist).  His grandson, Kublai Khan, had a mother who was a Christian. Kublai “ruled when the Mongol Empire had reached its limit. It could not expand any farther, so Kublai concentrated on maintaining peace in his borders. When Marco Polo (1254 - 1323?) journeyed to China, he found evidence of Christian communities and served in the court of Kublai, having become the Khan’s trusted friend.

Kublai became interested in Christianity and even asked the Polo’s to bring back teachers and missionaries to his land,” (Sundquist). He specifically requested from Pope Gregory X, that 100 missionaries be sent to the Mongol empire to teach himself and his people about the Christian faith. Sadly and regretfully, “the request was never fulfilled because the Popes in Europe were more concerned about defending themselves militarily than they were interested in extending the Gospel spiritually,” (Sunquist, 241). This may be one of the greatest lost missionary opportunities of all times!

Imagine if Pope Gregory X had immediately fulfilled that request. He was in charge of the vast Christian Church. Popes had been able to stir up huge support for the Crusades, in the past, and he could have found 100 or more monks who were willing to go to Asia to share the Gospel of Christ with the Mongols and thus the entire Mongol Empire. God was opening a door of opportunity for Christianity to spread to the largest empire the world had ever seen through a man whose mother was a Christian. If these monks had been sent, history may have seen the conversion of a vast empire to Christianity. Look at how God used one monk, St. Patrick, to convert Ireland or Columbu to convert Scotland. What could have have been done with 100 monks who were requested, specifically, by the Mongol leader himself?

Instead, “it is in the time of the Great Khans that the Tibetan form of Buddhism gained influence in Mongolia...(and) Buddhism became the predominant religion in the Mongolian territories... Today, they do not persecute Christians (though there are only a few), but they still firmly believe that Buddhism is the only true religion and even more so as a reaction to Christian missionary efforts.,” (Sundquist).

If Christianity, however, had been the religion that Kublai Khan and his followers embraced, Mongolia, and possibly other countries in Asia today may have become Christian. Christianity may have swept across Asia the way it did across Europe. The strongholds of Islam and Communism may never have gained a foothold if Christianity had been the predominant religion.

This is a huge lesson for the Christian Church today. When God opens a door, we must walk through it! We must take every opportunity given to us to share the Gospel with those who are lost, no matter their religion or skin color. This lesson can be applied especially today where America, a Christian nation, has a powerful influence on many strongholds of Satan.. Will we send the “100 missionaries” to share the love of Jesus with them or will we, like the Popes of old, be more concerned about defending ourselves militarily than we are interested in extending the Gospel spiritually?

Bruchko

  

If you are looking for an incredible story of God's power to read for yourself or to your children or for one of your teens to read, I highly recommend Bruchko by Bruce Olson. It is the story of Bruce Olson's experiences among the Motilones, a "head-hunting" tribe of people in Columbia with whom Bruce, named Bruchko by the tribal members, shared the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. I highly recommend it! 

Here is a summary, from Forerunner about him which is very encouraging. It's awesome to see God's hand at work!!!

Missions Report: Bruce Olson's and Colombia's Motilone Indians

By Jay Rogers

Published October 1992

Since 1961, missionary Bruce Olson has labored for the gospel of Jesus Christ among the Motilone Indians deep in the jungles of Colombia’s high Catatumbo region. But today Olson’s most exciting missionary work still lies ahead.

In the past thirty years, Olson has founded bilingual schools, medical clinics and agricultural centers among the Motilones. His Christ-like humility and work of service to the Motilones has earned him the status of a tribal member. Indian chiefs throughout the region representing 50 tribes and half a million tribe members look to Olson with great awe and respect. He has become a friend of five Colombian presidents; has spoken before the United Nations; and has received educational awards from the Colombian government. Although he completed college only through correspondence schools, his work on translating the Scriptures into the native Indian dialects has earned him honor among linguistics scholars.

Nineteen-year-old Olson first travelled to South America with only a one-way plane ticket and $70 in his pocket. A young person with a deep burden for Colombia’s hidden people, Olson set out in in search of the Motilones: a fierce, primitive tribe that no white man had ever encountered and lived. Olson’s adventures in Colombia brought him face to face with the Motilones when he was shot through the leg with a three foot arrow. He was brought as a prisoner to their camp to recover. “Bruchko” – the name the Indians gave him (the Motilones were not able to pronounce Bruce Olson) – eventually won over the hearts of these tribal people. Today the Motilones are almost universally converted to Christ.

Three years ago (1989), Bruce Olson was kidnapped in the mountain jungles of Colombia and detained for nine months as a political prisoner by communist guerillas. Hoping to win him as a valuable communist leader, the communists attempted to indoctrinate him through daily political dialogues. “Papa Bruchko” – as they called him – became a source of fascination among the young recruits in training. Many of them began to join Olson in prayer and Bible study. As many as 60 communist guerillas eventually gave their lives to Christ. His refusal to join ranks with the communists earned him death threats and he narrowly escaped execution by a firing squad.

Fearing the reprisal of a united war effort of 50 jungle tribes, the guerilla leaders released Olson in the summer of 1989. The Indian tribes of Colombia had united against the guerillas in a war-pledge to defend Olson’s cause if he was executed. The unity of the Indian tribes behind one white man was unprecedented in Colombia’s history.

After his release, Olson found that he had become a national hero in Colombia. In the major cities, articles demanding Olson’s release had appeared almost daily in the newspapers. Olson’s courageous stance against the guerillas was one of the key factors which inspired the common citizens of Colombia to take a bolder, tougher stance against the drug cartels.

Since this time, the openness of the Indian tribes of Colombia to the gospel has become phenomenal. Many tribal leaders have requested that Olson begin to set up clinics, schools and agricultural centers. Some tribes have asked specifically to be taught about Jesus Christ. Olson reported recently: “In August, I was among the Cogi Indians in the mountains adjacent to Santa Marta. I baptized more than 40 adult believers. Several Motilone pastors accompanied me.”

In America, the story of Bruce Olson’s captivity brought unprecedented financial support for the work of Christ among the Motilones. For 28 years, Olson had operated with no official sponsorship, relying on only the contributions of friends, but when Charisma magazine ran a two part series: “Bruce Olson’s Nine Month Colombian Captivity” (November & December 1989), donors gave $100,000 to help “Bruchko” continue his humanitarian efforts and evangelism among the tribes of Colombia.

In addition to providing clinical supplies, scholarships and agricultural development, Olson has built several centers for the Motilones. In a recent letter, Olson explained the uses for one of the structures he is building: “Our Tibú Community House of Twelve Cultures, which we have named in Motilone: ‘Axdobaringcayra,’ is well on the way to completion. … The house will provide lodging for visiting Motilones. Tibú is the principal port of commerce for the growing tribal economy and it is the seat of government. Here we will organize Colombia’s first native language regional newspaper and house staff personnel for the northeast Colombian indigenous cultural publications.”

The cultural center he is now building will be a base from which to reach many of the tribal groups of Colombia. Olson reports that he still needs about $60,000 to complete this center.

Bruce Olson and the Motilone believers are the key to fulfilling the Great Commission in this area of the world. Jesus Christ has commanded us to go and “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-20). Many of the nations – referred to by missiologists as the ETHNE, or “peoples groups” – in this area of Colombia are completely unreached with the gospel. We have an exciting opportunity to reach half a million people who have become miraculously open to the gospel in the past three years.

Reformation Day - not just Halloween

Today is Reformation Day!

"On October 31, much of the culture will be focused on candy and things that go bump in the night. Protestants, however, have something far more significant to celebrate on October 31. It’s Reformation day, which commemorates what was perhaps the greatest move of God’s Spirit since the days of the Apostles. But what is the significance of Reformation Day, and how should we consider the events it commemorates?

At the time, few would have suspected that the sound of a hammer striking the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany, would soon be heard around the world and lead ultimately to the greatest transformation of Western society since the apostles first preached the Gospel throughout the Roman empire. Martin Luther’s nailing of his ninety-five theses to the church door on October 31, 1517, provoked a debate that culminated finally in what we now call the Protestant Reformation.

An heir of Bishop Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther is one of the most significant figures God has raised up since that time. This law student turned Augustinian monk became the center of a great controversy after his theses were copied and distributed throughout Europe. Initially protesting the pope’s attempt to sell salvation, Luther’s study of Scripture soon led him to oppose the church of Rome on issues including the primacy of the Bible over church tradition and the means by which we are found righteous in the sight of God.

This last issue is probably Luther’s most significant contribution to Christian theology. Though preached clearly in the New Testament and found in the writings of many of the church fathers, the medieval bishops and priests had largely forgotten the truth that our own good works can by no means merit God’s favor. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, and good works result from our faith, they are not added to it as the grounds for our right standing in the Lord’s eyes (Eph. 2:8-10). Justification, God’s declaration that we are not guilty, forgiven of sin, and righteous in His sight comes because through our faith alone the Father imputes, or reckons to our account, the perfect righteousness of Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).

Martin Luther’s rediscovery of this truth led to a whole host of other church and societal reforms and much of what we take for granted in the West would have likely been impossible had he never graced the scene. Luther’s translation of the Bible into German put the Word of God in the hands of the people, and today Scripture is available in the vernacular language of many countries, enabling lay people to study it with profit. He reformed the Latin mass by putting the liturgy in the common tongue so that non-scholars could hear and understand the preached word of God and worship the Lord with clarity. Luther lifted the unbiblical ban on marriage for the clergy and by his own teaching and example radically transformed the institution itself. He recaptured the biblical view of the priesthood of all believers, showing all people that their work had purpose and dignity because in it they can serve their Creator.

Today, Luther’s legacy lives on in the creeds and confessions of Protestant bodies worldwide. As we consider his importance this Reformation Day, let us equip ourselves to be knowledgeable proclaimers and defenders of biblical truth. May we be eager to preach the Gospel of God to the world and thereby spark a new reformation of church and culture."

by Robert Rothwell

Ignatius - Thrown to the Lions Yet Praising God

Icon of the martyrdom of Saint Ignatius

"And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."  Matthew 24:14

The next few months of this blog will look at the lives of missionaries through the ages. It is my hope that you will be encouraged and strengthened in your faith as you see God's hand working through the lives of ordinary people as they followed the will of an extraordinary God. 

The first period of time covers the time of the Apostolic Church, Christ to 500 AD. During this time, Christians often came into conflict with the Roman government because they refused to worship Caesar as God. Despite the persecution, "by the end of the third century, the majority of the residents of some areas controlled by Rome were Christians converts. (The Gospel had reached such places as Sri Lanka, Algeria, Portugal, Morocco, Britain, France, India, Switzerland and Belgium, with Armenia accepting Christianity as their state religion in 304 AD...see Timeline of Christian Missions). The high cost of following Christ was more to be treasured than the Roman sword," Foxes Voices of the Martyrs. And God brought great good out of this persecution because as persecution arose in one area, Christians would flee to other regions, thus spreading the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. 

The missionaries that will be highlighted during this period are:

Ignatius of Antioch (30-107 AD)

Polycarp of Smyrna (70-155 AD)

Ulfilas (311-381 AD)

Patrick (389-461 AD)

Ignatius of Antioch     (30-107 AD)

"I would rather die for Christ than rule the whole earth."

Born around the time of Jesus' return to Heaven, Ignatius was good friends with the disciple John. Tradition says that he was one of the children that Jesus took in His arms and blessed. It is believed that his appointment to be bishop of Antioch came from the apostle Peter. Ignatius "wrote with a focus on Christ and the unity of the church - themes he sounded before the trial court (held when he was seventy-two) where he faced trumped up charges of disloyalty to Rome for failing to bow to pagan deities," (Foxes, 49). 

Ignatius was part of new spiritual movement whose followers could never again offer Rome ultimate loyalty. "Throughly devoted to Christ...he was part of that great generation who taught and built the church, buried the apostles, collected their writings, stood before the emperor's psychotic wrath, and fought heretics and swindlers infiltrating the movement," (Foxes, 50). 

En route to his martyrdom in Rome, Ignatius wrote a series of seven letters which have been preserved as an example of very early Christian theology. Important topics addressed in these letters include ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the role of bishops. The letters were addressed 

- To the Ephesians (Turkey)

- To the Magnesians (Turkey)

- Letter to the Trallians (Turkey)

- To the Romans (Italy)

- To the Philadelphians (Turkey)

- To the Smyrnaeans (Turkey)

- To Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (Ignatius). 

He was sent to the lions by Emperor Trajan, with these words to those who knew him, "Now I begin to be a disciple. I care for nothing of visible or invisible things so that I may but win Christ. Come fire and cross and grapplings with wild beasts, the rending of my bones and body...only let it be mine to attain Christ." (Foxes, 50).  

Witnesses to the Ends of the Earth

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.  John 14:12-13

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.  Acts 4:13

Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."  Acts 5:38-39

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.  Acts 20:24

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."  Matthew 28:18-20

After Jesus rose from the dead, "He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God." Acts 1:3 The Bible records very little of what He said. Yet, what He did say echoed through the Gospels and Acts: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8

This charge, this commandment, was for the early Church, all through the centuries, to the Church in 2019. We are to be His witnesses, for God's glory and for the salvation of others, to the ends of the earth. It's not given to a select few who God "calls," but to all of us.

The truth and urgency of this commandment was not really clear to me until a few years ago. I had been asking God to "break my heart for what breaks Yours." And He did. Beginning with a concern for orphans, then for the persecuted church throughout the world and then for missions, He has laid this commandment on me and it is one that I desire, with every ounce of my being, to obey.

As this passion for missions has grown, I have become more and more interested in learning about missionaries of the past and present. Ordinary people who God used to do extraordinary things. I find great encouragement as I read about how God met their needs, encouraged, provided and protected them and allowed the Gospel to be preached to the ends of the earth through them.

As I have gained encouragement, as my faith in God has grown and as I have had a deeper passion for missions through reading their stories, I am going to share their stories with you, in the hopeful prayer that you too will be encouraged toward a greater involvement in Christ's Great Commission.

You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.  2 Corinthians 3:3

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.  John 21:25

The next few months of this blog will only scratch the surface of the men and women God has used to further His Kingdom. May you gain greater faith through their testimonies and believe that you, too, can be used by the Lord to share the Good News of Jesus with the world...not just in your own backyard but to the ends of the earth.

I plan to highlight missionaries in chronological order. Thus, I will begin with the "Apostolic Church" from Christ to AD 500. Below is a list of what happened to Jesus' disciples and early followers. You will note that they all died a martyr's death, except John. But also notice the regions of the world where the Lord took them as He spread the Gospel through His followers:

Matthew -Suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, killed by a sword while carrying out Jesus' commission to reach the world with the Gospel.

John - Faced martyrdom when he was boiled in huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome ...However, he was miraculously delivered from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos ...He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos. The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve as Bishop of Edessa in modern-day Turkey. He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.

Peter - He was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross in Rome. According to church tradition it was because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.

Philip - He was crucified in Hierapolis, in present day Turkey.

James the Less - Son of Alphaeus, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, was also assigned the area of Syria as his mission field. He was thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a fuller's club.

James the Great - Son of Zebedee, was a fisherman by trade when Jesus called him to a lifetime of ministry. As a strong leader of the church, James was ultimately beheaded at Jerusalem ...

The Roman officer who guarded James watched amazed as James defended his faith at his trial. Later, the officer walked beside James to the place of execution. Overcome by conviction, he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt beside James to accept beheading as a Christian.

Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel - Was a missionary to Asia ...He witnessed for our Lord in present day Turkey ...Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia where he was flayed and then crucified.

Andrew - His missionary travels may have taken him as far as Scythia (southern Russia) and included time around Ephesus with John. He was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece ...After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that, when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words: 'I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.' He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he expired.

Thomas - Was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church in the sub-continent.

Simon the Zealot - The traditional account of Simon's missionary travels has him taking the road less traveled. He went south and west from Jerusalem, crossing the full breadth of northern Africa, passing through Egypt, Libya and Mauritania, and then up through Spain and even into the islands we now call Britain. All of these destinations fell within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. He is later found with Jude (Jesus' brother) taking the Gospel to Persia. He was sawn in half.

Judas, also known as Thaddaeus - Brought the Gospel to Armenia, present day Turkey and possibly as far as India.  Was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.

Matthias  - The apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, traveled as far as Sevastopol, Ukraine before he returned to Jerusalem where he was stoned and then beheaded.

Mark - Died in Alexandria , Egypt , after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead.

Luke -  Was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost.

Paul - Was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67. Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment, which allowed him to write his many epistles to the churches he  had formed throughout the Roman Empire. These letters,  which taught many of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” Jim Elliot, modern-day missionary to Ecuador, martyred that many more might be saved.

Who Was St. Patrick?

Yesterday many people celebrated St. Patrick's Day. This day is special for me since my great-great-grandmother was from Ireland and my grandma, Esther, went home to be with Jesus on St. Patrick's Day. But it has also become special to me since I have learned the incredible story of St. Patrick! 

Below is the story of St. Patrick:

St. Patrick: From Slave to Saint by Grainne Rowland "Watch out! Hide! Here come the raiders!" My family's servants were screaming and running for cover. I watched in horror as my father's land and house were overrun. The raiders came with the Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Suddenly, I was grabbed from behind, tied up, and roughly pushed towards a waiting ship. I, Succat, was being taken as a slave! I struggled to get free. I thought of how angry my father would be when he learned that his son had been kidnapped. My father was the most powerful man in that part of Britain. Surely he would rescue me! I was thrown on board the ship with the other captives. The ship quickly sailed away. The raiders began to celebrate their successful attack. I  knew then there would be no rescue. I was only sixteen years old. In Ireland, I was sold to Miliucc, a chieftain in Co. Antrim. I was forced to herd pigs in cold and rainy weather. I was hungry, wet, and shivery with cold. Always, I was lonely. I was a slave for six long years. I learned the Irish language and the customs of the Irish people. I also learned to pray. One night in a dream, I heard a voice say, "Behold, your ship is ready." I woke up and knew my chance to escape had arrived! I began my long walk to freedom. After many days, I reached Wexford, 200 miles away. I found a ship nearly ready to sail. But the captain was searching for someone to care for a pack of Irish wolfhounds on the journey. I was just the person! I was on my way home! The ship landed in northern Gaul, where there was only desert. For many days, we wandered in that desert. We found no food. The sailors made fun of my God. They asked why He didn't send us food. So I prayed. To the sailors' surprise, a large herd of pigs came into sight, squealing and grunting. It was enough meat for not only the men, but all the wolfhounds as well! On the day I walked into my home again, my mother and father ran to hug me. They both talked at once and asked question after question, never giving me time to answer. That night, I was the guest at a huge party. I was given many gifts. During the next few years, I studied in several places. I finally became a priest. It was then that I was given the name Patrick. One night, I had another dream. I saw the people of Ireland. They pleaded with me, saying, "We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more." I knew I must return to Ireland. When I arrived back in Ireland, I first went to Tara, the home of Irish kings. I asked King Leary's permission to preach in the country. He agreed and I began to travel throughout Ireland. I brought many people to the Christian faith. In about the year 441, I spent 40 days alone on a rocky, windy mountain praying for the Irish people. The mountain is now known as Croagh Patrick, or the Mountain of Patrick. One day, I was telling the people about God. They did not understand. So I picked a shamrock and showed them that there are three leaves but only one plant. Then the people could better understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make only one God. That is why, when you see a picture of me, I am usually holding a shamrock. I trained new Irish priests, and they learned many things. They knew how to copy and beautifully decorate the Bible and other books. They copied everything by hand and made paint from plants and minerals. In later years, the people of Europe forgot about learning. The Irish monks and scholars kept copying books and kept important knowledge alive. Not long before I died, I built a large stone cathedral in the town of Armagh. I also had a school built there. It later became a famous university. I died on March 17, 493, in the town of Saul, in Co. Down. This was the same place I had built my first church. Many towns wanted the honor of giving me a burial place. So my body was put on a wagon drawn by two oxen. The oxen pulled the cart to the town of Downpatrick. There I was buried. My body lies in a cemetery next to the Downpatrick Cathedral. The grave is marked by a large granite stone and the name Patrick.

This story was found at the website: http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/1Kids/StPatrick.html

After St. Patrick died, Ireland was used greatly by God to keep Christianity alive in Europe during the Middle/Dark Ages. At a time when there was much corruption in the Church in Europe and when very few people knew how to read so that it was difficult to spread the Gospel, the Irish/Celtic Church sent out many missionaries and helped preserve the Christian religion through its monasteries. This early Celtic Church flourished with many monks and priests leaving Ireland to begin missions in Europe. In the first two hundred and fifty years after Patrick's death, around five hundred Irish saints were recognized. These missionaries established monasteries in Scotland, England, Switzerland, France, Germany and as far south as Italy.

We have much to be grateful for in the lasting Christian heritage and legacy of Patrick and Ireland!

Mongolia - From Darkness to Light in One Generation

"And I tell you that you are Peter, 

and on this rock I will build My church, 

and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."

Matthew 16:18

When I was born in 1970, Mongolia was a dark country, completely closed to the Gospel behind the Iron Curtain of communism, with no known Christian believers. Today, it sends out more Christian missionaries, per number of Christians, than any other nation in the world.

How did this nation move from darkness to light in less than 40 years? Brian Hogan, part of a Youth With a Mission church planting team working in Mongolia, tells the story in There's a Sheep in my Bathtub: Birth of a Mongolian Church Planting Movement. 

"In the 13th century, the Mongol tribes, united under Genghis Khan, thundered across the steppes of Central Asia and terrorized the known world. In a short time, these fierce horsemen had carved out an empire dwarfing those of Cyrus and Caesar combined.

The Mongol empire was not to endure for long. The Mongols embraced Tibetan Buddhism and became a backward hinterland ruled by a succession of Chinese dynasties. In 1921, a Communist revolution turned Mongolia into the first “independent” Soviet satellite. All missionaries were expelled before any church had been planted, and the darkness of Communism settled over this “closed” country. 

Mongolia was one of the very few countries on earth with no church and no known national believers.

After 70 years of being sealed off from the outside world, Mongolia gained freedom and independence along with other Soviet Bloc nations in early 1990, and Satan’s defenses against the gospel came crashing down. Creative strategies sparked the beginnings. 

A team of Native American believers entered Mongolia as tourists in 1990. Their visit generated a great deal of interest among Mongols and even hit the national press. By the end of their second visit in 1991, they had publicly baptized 36 new Mongol believers. The spiritual landscape of Mongolia would never be the same. 

A young Swedish couple, Magnus and Maria, came to Mongolia intending to plant churches. As they began to learn the language in the capital, Ulaan Baatar, friendships developed with the new and very young Mongolian believers in that city’s growing churches.

Maria and Magnus made several forays up to Erdenet, Mongolia’s third largest city, with short-term Mongolian evangelism teams from a church in the capital city of Ulaan Baatar. These trips bore fruit in the form of 14 teenage girls who responded to the teaching on faith and repentance. Magnus baptized these first disciples in January 1993, the beginnings of the church in Erdenet.

Fourteen young girls—not a very auspicious beginning. The new fellowship needed on-site help if it was to grow into anything more. In February, the young couple moved up to Erdenet accompanied by one of the best students in their English classes, a 19-year-old female Mongolian believer named Bayaraa.

As Magnus and Maria ministered with and discipled Bayaraa, their relationship served as an effective bi-cultural bridge. Magnus and Maria gained important insights into Mongolian culture that guided their ministry. Bayaraa was a natural evangelist. What she learned about Jesus and the Bible from Magnus and Maria, she put to immediate use leading many to the Lord.

The disciples were quickly organized into three groups that met in homes. They gathered for prayer, fellowship and teaching in an atmosphere of support and accountability. From the very beginning they were taught to obey the simple commands of the Lord Jesus Christ. They learned to love God and each other, to pray, give generously, repent and believe, baptize, celebrate the Lord’s Supper and to teach others to love and obey Jesus. 

As the girls led their friends to Christ, the groups multiplied. Magnus couldn’t lead the expanding number of groups, so active and faithful believers were equipped and released into leadership. After some time, they began a larger gathering, the “Celebration Service,” on a monthly basis to bring the house groups together for corporate worship and fellowship. After one year, the number of baptized Christ followers had grown to 120—almost all teenage girls! This was not the multi-generational church of entire families the church planters were dreaming of - it was half a youth group.

After a year of language study in Ulaan Baatar, my wife Louise, our three daughters and I moved to Erdenet joining Magnus, Maria and Bayaraa. A year later, others from Russia, America and Sweden joined our team’s ranks. Apart from three members of the Peace Corps, our team was Erdenet’s sole foreign presence —we were utterly different. We tried to work from behind the scenes so the movement would have visible Mongolian leadership.

We realized that teenage girls were not the best foundation for starting a church movement. At that time, however, youth were the only ones responding anywhere in Mongolia. So we worked with the fruit the Lord provided and prayed for a breakthrough to begin reaching whole families. We established “provisional elders” (starting with two younger men and Bayaraa) in order to begin the process of allowing a Mongolian style of church leadership to develop.

There was a great divide between our youthful, urban circle of friends and the family-oriented heart of traditional Mongolian society. The three cities of Mongolia were a relatively recent and imposed urban social structure overlaid by Communism upon a nomadic tribal society—and nomadic social structure was seen by all as the more legitimate and authentic of the two. Even our early converts had the impression the gospel wasn’t relevant for “real Mongols.” 

Even though Mongolia had become a 50% urbanized society, to the Mongol understanding, “real Mongols” are horse-riding pastoralists and gher (traditional round felt tents) dwellers. An urban teen growing up in an apartment building who has never even sat on a horse is not an authentic Mongolian. The gospel would be seen as just a foreign import, like Coca Cola, if it were only embraced by city dwellers. If Jesus were going to “become a Mongolian,” He would need to enter into the lives of nomadic herders.

A visiting short-term team began to pray for the sick in some of the traditional gher suburbs on the outskirts of town. God answered prayer dramatically. A lame person, a deaf person, a mute person and a blind person were all healed, and several demons were cast out. These healings provided a seal of authenticity recognized by the older Mongols. 

The news spread like wildfire and the fellowship was flooded with growth from every age group and segment of the city. The urbanized youth were especially surprised that “real Mongols” were coming to faith. 

Soon two older traditional Mongol men joined the ranks of our provisional elders. When these men, who were respected heads of households, began leading house churches and ministries, it made a huge difference in gaining credibility for the movement in the larger culture."

This story doesn't end here...I will share more tomorrow. 

"Do Not Pray for Easy Lives; Pray to be Stronger"

I wanted to share a writing that impacted me. This is by Samuel Marinus Zwemer (April 12, 1867-April 2, 1952), nicknamed "The Apostle to Islam." He was an American missionary, traveler, scholar, and a missionary to Busrah, Bahrein, and other locations in Arabia from 1891 to 1905. Famously turned down by the American Missionary Society, which resulted in him going overseas alone, he founded and edited the publication The Moslem World.  His greatest contribution to missions was that of stirring Christians to the need for evangelism among Muslims.

I believe that need should be stirred again today! The Muslim people are the most unreached people of the world. They comprise a vast majority of the 10/40 Window and in some places have as many as 3 missionaries per million Muslims. Their's is the second fastest growing religion in the world, after Christianity. 

The Glory of the Impossible

by Samuel M. Zwemer

The challenge of the unoccupied fields of the world is one to great faith and, therefore to great sacrifice. Our willingness to sacrifice for an enterprise is always in proportion to our faith in that enterprise. Faith has the genius of transforming the barely possible into actuality. Once men are dominated by the conviction that a thing must be done, they will stop at nothing until it is accomplished. 

Frequent set-backs and apparent failure never dishearten the real pioneer. Occasional martyrdoms are only a fresh incentive. Opposition is a stimulus to greater activity. Great victory has never been possible without great sacrifice. If the winning of Port Arthur required human bullets, we cannot expect to carry the Port Arthurs and Gibraltars of the non-Christian world without loss of life. Does it really matter how many die or how much money we spend in opening closed doors, and in occupying the different fields, if we really believe that missions are warfare and that the King’s Glory is at stake? War always means blood and treasure. Our only concern should be to keep the fight aggressive and to win victory regardless of cost or sacrifice. The unoccupied fields of the world must have their Calvary before they can have their Pentecost.  

The unoccupied fields of the world await those who are willing to be lonely for the sake of Christ. To the pioneer missionary, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ to the apostles when He showed them His hands and His feet, come with special force: “As my Father hath sent Me, even so send I you”. He came and His welcome was derision, His life suffering, and His throne the Cross. As He came, He expects us to go. We must follow in His footprints. The pioneer missionary, in overcoming obstacles and difficulties, has the privilege not only of knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection, but also something of the fellowship of His suffering. 

(And what is that suffering but the) glory of the impossible! Who would naturally prefer to leave the warmth and comfort of hearth and home and the love of the family circle to go after a lost sheep, whose cry we have faintly heard in the howling of the tempest? Yet such is the glory of the task that neither home-ties nor home needs can hold back those who have caught the vision and the spirit of the Great Shepherd. Because the lost ones are His sheep, and He has made us His shepherds and not His hirelings, we must bring them back.  

(We go out) not with hatchet and brand, but with the Sword of the Spirit and with the Belt of Truth. They went and blazed the way for those that followed after. Their scars were the seal of their apostleship, and they gloried also in tribulation. Like the pioneer Apostle Paul, “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, and approving themselves as ministers of God in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in watching, in fasting.”

If the uttermost confines of the Roman Empire were part of (Paul's missionary)  program who had already preached Christ from Jerusalem to Illyricum in the first century, we surely, at the beginning of the twentieth century, should have no less ambition to enter every unoccupied field that “they may see to whom no tidings came and that those who have not heard may understand.”

In the first days of Christianity, there is an absence of the calculating spirit. Most of the Apostles died outside of Palestine, though human logic would have forbidden them to leave the country until it had been Christianized. The calculating instinct is death to faith, and had the Apostles allowed it to control their motives and actions, they would have said: ‘The need in Jerusalem is so profound, our responsibilities to people of our own blood so obvious, that we must live up to the principle that charity begins at home. After we have won the people of Jerusalem, of Judea and of the Holy Land in general, then it will be time enough to go abroad; but our problems, political, moral and religious, are so unsolved here in this one spot that it is manifestly absurd to bend our shoulders to a new load.’”

It was the bigness of the task and its difficulty that thrilled the early Church. Its apparent impossibility was its glory, its world-wide character its grandeur. The same is true today.

He that ploweth the virgin soil should plow in hope. God never disappoints His husbandmen. The harvest always follows the seed time. “When we first came to our field,” writes missionary Hogberg from Central Asia, “it was impossible to gather even a few people to hear the glad tidings of the Gospel. We could not gather any children for school. We could not spread gospels or tracts. When building the new station, we also had a little chapel built. Then we wondered, will this room ever be filled up with Moslems listening to the Gospel? Our little chapel has been filled with hearers and still a larger room! Day after day we may preach as much as we have strength to, and the Moslems no longer object to listen to the Gospel truth. ‘Before your coming hither no one spoke or thought of Jesus Christ, now everywhere one hears His name,’ a Mohammedan said to me. At the beginning of our work they threw away the Gospels or burnt them, or brought them back again - now they buy them, kiss the books, and touching it to the forehead and pressing it to the heart, they show the highest honor that a Moslem can show a book.”

But the pioneer husbandman must have long patience. When Adoniram Judson was lying loaded with chains in a Burmese dungeon, a fellow prisoner asked with a sneer about the prospect for the conversion of the heathen. Judson calmly answered, “The prospects are as bright as are the promises of God.” There is scarcely a country today which is not as accessible, or where the difficulties are greater, than was the case in Burma when Judson faced them and overcame.

The prospects for the evangelization of all the unoccupied fields are “as bright as the promises of God.” Why should we longer wait to evangelize them?

Is there a more heroic test for the powers of manhood than pioneer work in the mission field? Here is opportunity for those who at home may never find elbow-room for their latent capacities, who may never find adequate scope elsewhere for all the powers of their minds and their souls. There are hundreds of Christian college men who expect to spend life in practicing law or in some trade for a livelihood, yet who have strength and talent enough to enter these unoccupied fields. There are young doctors who might gather around them in some new mission station thousands of those who “suffer the horrors of heathenism and Islam,” and lift their burden of pain, but who now confine their efforts to some “pent-up Utica” where the healing art is subject to the law of competition and is measured too often merely in terms of a cash-book and ledger. They are making a living; they might be making a life.

Bishop Phillips Brooks once threw down the challenge of a big task in these words: “Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.” He could not have chosen words more applicable if he had spoken of the evangelization of the unoccupied fields of the world with all their baffling difficulties and their glorious impossibilities. God can give us power for the task. He was sufficient for those who went out in the past, and is sufficient for those who go out today.

When David Livingstone visited Cambridge University, on December 4, 1857, he made an earnest appeal for (Africa), which was then almost wholly an unoccupied field. His words, which were in a sense his last will and testament for college men, as regards Africa, may well close this book:“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”

Christianity and Kublai Khan - A Missed Opportunity

While studying the lives of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan with my children, and then reading about them once again in Scott W. Sundquist’s article entitled Asian Christianity, I was deeply saddened by the HUGE loss of opportunity for mission outreach to Asia during the time of Kublai Khan.

“In the 13th century, when Genghis Khan ruled, this empire stretched from China to Central Europe — a kingdom larger even than those of Alexander and the Roman Caesars, covering all of Asia, Indochina, and even Eastern Europe. No nation has yet to rival the magnitude of the Mongolian Empire,” (Sundquist).  His grandson, Kublai Khan, had a mother who was a Christian. Kublai “ruled when the Mongol Empire had reached its limit. It could not expand any farther, so Kublai concentrated on maintaining peace in his borders. When Marco Polo (1254 - 1323?) journeyed to China, he found evidence of Christian communities and served in the court of Kublai, having become the Khan’s trusted friend.

Kublai became interested in Christianity and even asked the Polo’s to bring back teachers and missionaries to his land,” (Sundquist). He specifically requested from Pope Gregory X, that 100 missionaries be sent to the Mongol empire to teach himself and his people about the Christian faith. Sadly and regretfully, “the request was never fulfilled because the Popes in Europe were more concerned about defending themselves militarily than they were interested in extending the Gospel spiritually,” (Sunquist, 241). This may be one of the greatest lost missionary opportunities of all times!

Imagine if Pope Gregory X had immediately fulfilled that request. He was in charge of the vast Christian Church. Popes had been able to stir up huge support for the Crusades, in the past, and he could have found 100 or more monks who were willing to go to Asia to share the Gospel of Christ with the Mongols and thus the entire Mongol Empire. God was opening a door of opportunity for Christianity to spread to the largest empire the world had ever seen through a man whose mother was a Christian. If these monks had been sent, history may have seen the conversion of a vast empire to Christianity. Look at how God used one monk, St. Patrick, to convert Ireland or Columbu to convert Scotland. What could have have been done with 100 monks who were requested, specifically, by the Mongol leader himself?

Instead, “it is in the time of the Great Khans that the Tibetan form of Buddhism gained influence in Mongolia...(and) Buddhism became the predominant religion in the Mongolian territories... Today, they do not persecute Christians (though there are only a few), but they still firmly believe that Buddhism is the only true religion and even more so as a reaction to Christian missionary efforts.,” (Sundquist).

If Christianity, however, had been the religion that Kublai Khan and his followers embraced, Mongolia, and possibly other countries in Asia today may have become Christian. Christianity may have swept across Asia the way it did across Europe. The strongholds of Islam and Communism may never have gained a foothold if Christianity had been the predominant religion.

This is a huge lesson for the Christian Church today. When God opens a door, we must walk through it! We must take every opportunity given to us to share the Gospel with those who are lost, no matter their religion or skin color. This lesson can be applied especially today where America, a Christian nation, has a powerful influence on many strongholds of Satan.. Will we send the “100 missionaries” to share the love of Jesus with them or will we, like the Popes of old, be more concerned about defending ourselves militarily than we are interested in extending the Gospel spiritually?

Children's DVD Series About Christian Heroes

I wanted to let you know about some awesome DVDs available for your children. They are DVDs based on the lives of:
Jim Elliot (missionary to Auca Indians)
Perpetua (one of the first Christian martyrs who heroically gave her life in the Coliseum)
Eric Liddell (runner made famous in movie Chariots of Fire)
John Bunyan (wrote Pilgrims Progress...most influential Christian book outside of Bible)
Gladys Aylward (missionary to China who led over 100 orphans to safety during WWII)
Richard Wurmbrand (imprisoned for his faith for 21 years in Romania and founder of Voice of the Martyrs)
Harriet Tubman (a brave young woman who not only saved her family from slavery in America but countless others as she led them on the Underground Railroad)
Adoniram and Ann Judson (young American missionary couple who bring the gospel to the closed nation of Burma)
Martin Luther (young Catholic monk who courageously stood up to church corruption and began the Protestant movement)
Robert Jermain Thomas (a brave missionary who smuggles God's Word into the hermit kingdom of Korea with amazing results)
John Wesley (fiery preacher who, with his message of God's free grace for all, goes on to evangelize England and early America and help found the Methodist Church)
Corrie ten Boom (brave woman who, with her family, hid hundreds of Jews from the Nazis and was later sent to a concentration camp)
Augustine (a famous Christian preacher, author and apologist in the early Roman empire)
Samuel Morris (a young African prince who was captured, found Christ, miraculously escaped and went on to share his faith as a missionary)
William Booth (founder of the Salvation Army, a worldwide charity organization)
Amy Carmichael (missionary to India who saved many young girls from temple slavery and started an orphanage)
William Tyndale (translated the Bible into English and killed by English government for that).

Each of them are TRUE Christian heroes and people our children should know about and admire. The DVDs are very well done and for those who were martyred (Elliot, Perpetua, Robert Thomas and Tyndale) that fact is done in such a way as to give honor to God and to show that their lives were not in vain. 

Plus, each DVD comes with about 30 pages of printable activities for your children. I will be showing these to my Elementary age children this school year.

In my experience, it is often hard to find videos which are about heroic Christians and are done in such a way as to keep your children's attention. But these do both and I can't say enough great things about them! 

You can find out all about them at their website  http://www.torchlighters.org

Women in Missions

"After the last road ended, there was still a 2-day hike to where the Balangao people lived. Two single women missionaries were making that hike. The Balangao, a tribe of former headhunters in the Philippines, continued to sacrifice to powerful and demanding spirits who caused sickness, death and constant turmoil. These women, trained in Bible translation, had volunteered to work among them.

When they arrived, they were greeted by men wearing G-strings and women wrapped in cloth from home-made looms. It is hard to say who was more amazed. The Balangao had asked for Americans to come live with them and write their language, but they never dreamed the Americans would be women!

An old man offered to be their father and was faithful in looking after them. Besides the work of translation, these women began giving medical assistance, learning about the spirit world, and answering questions about life and death. One of them, Jo Shetler, stayed for 20 years, winning her way into the hearts and lives of the people and completing the New Testament translation. Because of this dedication, thousands now know Jesus as Lord of the Balangao.

Jo Shetler, a shy farm girl with a dream, has stirred many with her story. However, stories remain unwritten of multitudes of women who likewise obeyed the call of God to serve Him on the far horizons. Many women do not realize how greatly God can use their giftedness and commitment in situations such as this."

This excerpt was taken from an article entitled "Women in Mission" by Marguerite Kraft and Meg Crossman. During now of our past school years, our family truly enjoyed reading about Jo and the tremendous way God used her in an excellent book entitled And the Word Came With Power.

God has used women tremendously in the missionary movement. Beginning with Jesus, he recognized and enlisted the help of women, as did Paul. One such woman was Priscilla. She had an impact for God in at least three different nations: Rome, Greece and Asia Minor. With her husband Aquila, they supported Paul, hosted him in their home, “led a house church, and were assigned by Paul to disciple the eloquent and committed Egyptian Jew, Apollos, ‘instructing him in the way of God more perfectly,’ (Acts 18:26)” (Kraft; Grossman). Priscilla' role in mission outreach did not seem out of the ordinary which leads one to believe that many women were involved in the Great Commission from the beginning.

Despite the Protestant Reformation’s restrictions on women, some women did enter the mission field, usually married to missionaries. Their husbands recognized the role they could play in reaching women and children in these nations...people who would generally not respond well to a man or who may not have been allowed any contact because of their culture. These women “received very little recognition for the heavy load they carried, managing the home and children as well as developing programs to reach local women and girls,” (Kraft and Grossman).

“Overall, probably two-thirds of the missions force has been, and currently is, female. Many mission executives agree that the more difficult and dangerous the work, the more likely women are to volunteer to do it!” (Kraft; Grossman) This is an amazing truth that may not be very well known. In fact, though most Americans would probably think that the largest women’s movement in American history was the suffrage movement, in fact, it was the women’s missionary movement...”By the early decades of the 20th century, the women’s missionary movement had become the largest women’s movement in the United States, and women outnumbered men on the mission field by a ration of more than two to one,” (Kraft; Grossman).

One group of people who are difficult to reach are Muslims. Yet, God is using women to reach them, partly due to the non-threatening nature of women. One such story is set in a nomadic Muslim group in Sub-Saharan Africa, where a single woman is effectively training Imams (Islamic teachers) in the gospel. They perceive her to be non-threatening, 'just a woman.' Building upon a foundation of interpersonal relationship and Biblical knowledge, she does not give them answers herself, but directs them to the Word. The Lord has confirmed her teaching giving dreams and visions to these leaders. As they have been converted, they are now training many others. She is accepted as a loving, caring elder sister, who gives high priority to their welfare," (Kraft; Grossman).

“From Mary Slessor, single woman pioneer to Africa, to Ann Judson of Burma and Rosalind Goforth of China and Sara Cronbaugh (a sweet friend from college) reaching the Northern Caucasus region, wives who fully served; from Amy Carmichael of India to Mildred Cable in the Gobi Desert; from Gladys Aylward, the little chambermaid determined to go to China, to Eliza Davis George, black woman missionary to Liberia; from translator Rachel Saint to medical doctor Helen Roseveare; from Isobel Kuhn and Elizabeth Elliot, mobilizing missionary authors, to Lottie Moon, pacesetting mission educator; from simple Filipino housemaids in the Middle East to women executives in denominational offices to unsung Bible women in China, to my dear friend Katie DePooter who is training even now to become a Bible translator in India, the roll is lengthy and glorious!

That roll, however, remains incomplete, awaiting the contribution of current and future generations. God's women now enjoy freedoms and opportunities their forebearers never envisioned. Most small businesses started in the U.S. are owned by women. Women now hold highly responsible positions in government, business, and medicine. "To whom much is given, much is required." How will women of God today harvest such opportunities for their Father's purposes?

Women, stirred by the task that lies ahead, can mobilize, devoting their skills, their accessibility, their knowledge, their tenderness, their intuitiveness, their own distinctive fervor to the work. The pioneer spirit, full of dedication and faithfulness, which women throughout history have shown will set the standard. The task is too vast to be completed without all God's people!" (Kraft; Grossman).

How A Peace Child Overcame Cannibalism

Imagine a group of people who honor treachery as an ideal, the way we honor friendship, sacrifice and loyalty. Imagine telling stories to your children about the heros of old but instead of men like Daniel or David or George Washington, the stories are about "men who formed friendships with the express purpose of later betraying the befriended one to be killed and eaten...'to fatten with friendship for the slaughter.'" Now imagine that it is your husband or your father or your son who has been not only killed by his enemies, but then roasted, eaten and that his skull is used as a pillow by his murderer. Can we even begin to imagine such horror?

Now imagine that you are a missionary, sent to tell these headhunting, cannibalistic tribes that Jesus loves them. That God sent His Son to die for them and that His desire is that they spend eternity with Him in Heaven. But there is no response to your stories from the Bible. They have no concept of God, only demons. The only person in any Bible story they relate to is Judas. In fact, they admire Judas because of his betrayal of Jesus...he fattened Jesus with friendship for the slaughter!

This isn't fiction and it's not even ancient history. This describes many of the tribes living in the former Netherlands New Guinea, now part of Indonesia, known as Irian Jaya. And this took place in the 1960s!

But God did not leave these people alone, no matter how barbaric and scary their lifestyle was. No one is lost to Him and there is no darkness too dark for the Gospel to penetrate. God sent Don and Carol Richardson to the Sawi people. And the message the Richardsons shared with them drastically changed every part of their lives.

"It had taken nearly two thousand years for the message of that new value system to range from Galilee to the miasmal swamps of southwest New Guinea. On its way, that message had already challenged, engaged and conquered barbarity in many forms in the minds of millions of people, for it was an extremely mettlesome message. It was not cowed by earthly obstacles, for its strength was supernatural. It could not be intimidated, for it was itself the ultimate antidote to fear.

The message would not back away from any form of darkness, for it was light itself! It was not embarrassed if its bearers were sometimes plain, homely or even untaught - in fact it was fond of executing its most subtle strategies through such! To the consternation of its enemies, it could triumph even when its adherents were being decimated by sword or spear.

That message was the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its purpose was nonnegotiable - to persuade men from 'every kindred, and tongue, and people and nation' to repent and be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. That message was now about to invade the Sawi world, about to confront their idealization of treachery eye to eye in a relentless spiritual struggle for the souls of men, women and children. It would match prayer and preaching against spear and barbed arrow; faith and hope against systematized barbarity; love and compassion against entrenched fear and evil," (Don Richardson).

But how to reach these people with the Gospel? What would they understand? Had God left any witness of Himself in their culture which could give a clue to the Richardsons as to how to penetrate this darkness? Yes!!!!

To this people who would betray even their own families, there was one act that they would never betray...the giving of a peace child. The only way to ensure a lasting peace between tribes was if the two tribes exchanged children...a son from one tribe for a son from another tribe. As long as these peace children lived, there would be peace between the two tribes. Once Don Richardson witnessed this sad exchange (tragic for the parents who had to relinquish their children forever), the Lord showed him how this was an example of the ultimate peace child...Jesus Christ. So it was through this cultural window, and a few others, that the Richardsons were able to share of God's great love for the Sawi people. The light had penetrated the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it. Jesus had indeed brought peace to the Sawi!

Don Richardson's prayer so aptly expressed the wonder that I continue to feel as I read of such encounters: "I thank You, my Father, for laying the groundwork for our ministry to these people. The Sawi were strangers to our Judeo-Christian heritage, yet You so providentially ordained these redemptive analogies within their culture ages ago, so that one day we would find and use them for Your glory. You were concerned, not only to send messengers, but also to prepare a culture to receive their message.

As You prepared the Hebrews and the Greeks, so also the Sawi were not too insignificant or too pagan to receive this much of Your providence...I see now more than ever why You are called the God of wisdom and the God of love and the God of power. I praise You!"

To read more about this incredible story of how the Sawi came to know Jesus, read Peace Child by Don Richardson!

Eternity in Their Hearts

Who were the Magi who brought gifts to the baby Jesus, and how did they know that a Messiah was coming?

Who was Melchizedek, the contemporary of Abraham, who was a priest of the one high God?

How did a fifteenth century Peruvian king named Pachacuti, recognize that there was only one true God, before the coming of the Europeans? In his own words, Pachacuti described the one true God, they called Viracocha: "He is ancient, remote, supreme, and uncreated...He manifests himself as a trinity when he wishes...otherwise only heavenly warriors and archangels surround his loneliness. He created all peoples by his 'word.'"

God has "made every nation of men...so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:26-27) Think about that for a moment...every nation of men...not just the Jews or the Americans or the Europeans or the Chinese, but every nation. Paul tells us that God has made them in such a way that men from every nation would seek Him.
But do they? Is there any proof that when missionaries enter a new culture/nation with the Gospel of Jesus, that they may find a people who are already prepared to hear and receive the Gospel? The answer is an astounding YES!!!

I read a book called Eternity in their Hearts by Don Richardson. Don Richardson and his late wife, Carol, spent 15 years among the Sawi, a Stone Age tribe of Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea. Don designed an alphabet suited to the Sawi language, authored 19 primers, taught the tribesmen to read in their native tongue and translated the entire New Testament. More than half of the Sawi accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior!

The premise of his book is that in every culture God has preserved for Himself a testimony. In His mercy, He has permitted every culture in the world to retain a portion of the truth. If a missionary goes into a region, searching the culture for its grains of truth, and then affirms that these ideas ARE true, and then presents the Gospel as the REST of the truth, he and the Gospel will quite often be received. The book is heavily documented with specific examples of missionaries finding and utilizing these culture keys, and seeing large numbers of people become Christian.

I'd like to share some of the many examples of this. I pray they will hearten any of you, including me, who agonize over the question of God's justice in regard to people who have never heard the Gospel.

In 1867, a Norwegian missionary named Lars Skrefsrud found 2.5 million people called the Santal living in a region north of Calcutta, India. Once Lars learned the language and began proclaiming the Gospel to the Santal, he wondered how many years it would be before he saw converts. "To Skrefsurd's utter amazement, the Santal were electrified almost at once by the Gospel message. At length he heard Santal sages, including one named Kolean, exclaim, 'What this stranger is saying must mean that Thakur Jiu has not forgotten us after all this time!'" Kolean then went on to explain that their forefathers had taught them that "Thakur is distinct. He is not to be seen with fleshy eyes, but he sees all. He has created all things. He has set everything in its place, and he nourishes all, great and small." These were people who had never met a Christian or Jew nor had seen any part of the Bible, yet their understanding of God was Biblical! Once Lars explained the Gospel to them, they began to experience "eighty baptisms per day (which) signified that young Santal churches in 'Hindu India' were growing more than 500 times as fast as churches in 'Christian Europe.'"

Before I share a couple more examples, I must admit that reading this book shattered a belief that I held. I believed that the folk religions (the native religions of a people group, distinct from the major world religions - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hindu, etc.) of the world were almost entirely pagan and held very little hint or understanding of God. But according to Richardson, "We have been wrong. In actual fact, more than 90 percent of this world's folk religions acknowledge at least the existence of God. Some even anticipate His redeeming concern for mankind."

"The Chinese call him Shang Ti - the Lord of Heaven...In Korea he is known as Hananim, The Great One. Belief in Shang Ti/Hananim predates Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism by an unknown number of centuries." When missionaries entered China and Korea, they discovered this ancient belief in Shang Ti/Hananim and used it to explain a further revelation of God. Just as Paul pointed to the altar to the "unknown god" in Athens (Acts 17:22), the missionaries pointed to Shang Ti/Hananim. Today, "more than 3 million Koreans belong to Protestant churches...and Seoul contains the world's two largest Protestant churches." I can attest to this fact after living in Seoul for two years...there are crosses on the tops of churches everywhere! And in China, more than 23,000 people come to Christ a day!

The Karen of Burma were another group of people magnificently poised to receive the Gospel with open arms when it was presented to them. They had been searching for centuries for a "white brother who was supposed to bring them a book...(whose) author is Y'wa-the Supreme God...that the white brother, having given them the lost book, will thereby set them free from all who oppress them." Their folk religion's hymns bear striking resemblances to God's character and "the Karen story of man's falling away from God contains stunning parallels to Genesis chapter 1: Y'wa formed the world originally. He appointed food and drink. He appointed the 'fruit of trial.' He gave detailed orders. Mu-kaw-lee deceived two persons. He caused them to eat the fruit of the tree of the trial. They obeyed not...they believed not Y'wa...when they ate the fruit of trial they became subject to sickness, aging and death." Wow! This was a remote group of people who had never come in contact with Jews or Christians before, yet their own religion, thousands of years old, had an incredible witness of the Lord! The Karen nation was thus poised like an 800,000 member welcoming party, ready for the first unsuspecting missionary who approached them with a Bible and a message of deliverance from God." When missionaries finally brought the Gospel to the Karen in the early 1800s, thousands accepted Christ almost immediately and "almost as quickly as Karen were converted and baptized, they became missionaries to spread the good news still further among their own people" and neighboring tribes!

There are so many more examples of people groups with prior knowledge of God, being prepared and ready to accept Jesus as Savior, once He was presented to them. It is truly amazing and so very comforting. It is our job to do all we can to bring them the Good News.

Malachi 1:11  says, says "'My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations,'the LORD Almighty." May this be our prayer:

Lord, You are the true and living God, You rule over all things visible and invisible. The nations belong to You, and you have woven into the fabric of every culture a testimony to Your name.

I bring the unreached people groups of the world before you now, and I ask Lord that You would reveal those things in their culture, that reflect who you are and Your son Jesus. Cause the hidden treasures of Your truth to be brought up and displayed for all to see. Lord use these keys of insight to ignite a curiosity and hunger among them to know more about who You are. Give Your servants wisdom and strategy to use these keys to promote the Gospel among this people group. In Your name we pray, Amen.

God's Hand in History (Part 11) - This Gospel Must Be Preached

A few years back I took an online course called Perspectives in World Missions...http://www.perspectives.org. It is an awesome course and I learned so much through it!

One very memorable article I read was entitled, The Kingdom Strikes Back by Ralph D. Winter. This is the eleventh and last part of the article:

The period from 1600 to 2000 began with European footholds in the rest of the world. Apart from taking over what was relatively an empty continent by toppling the Aztec and Inca empires in the Western hemisphere, Europeans had only tiny enclaves of power in the heavily populated portions of the rest of the non-Western world. By 1945, Europeans had achieved virtual control over 99.5% of the non-Western world. This would not last. The peoples inhabiting the colonial empires had grown significantly in knowledge and initiative, just as the Goths had grown strong outside the bounds of the Roman empire. The Second World War mightily distracted the Western nations from their colonial hold on the rest of the world. That did it. Nationalism exploded.

Twenty-five years later, the Western nations had lost control over all but 5% of the non-Western population of the world. This 1945-1969 period of the sudden collapse of Western control, coupled with the unexpected upsurge of significance of the Christian movement in the non-Western world, I have elsewhere called “the twenty-five unbelievable years.” If we compare this period to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire’s domination over its conquered provinces of Spain, Gaul and Britain, and to the breakdown of control over non-Frankish Europe under Charlemagne’s successors, we might anticipate—at least by the logic of sheer parallelism—that the Western world itself will soon be significantly dominated by non-Westerners.

With some reason, ever since the collapse of Western power became obvious (during “the twenty-five unbelievable years”), there have been many who have decried the thought of any further missionary effort moving from the West to the non-Western world. Perhaps they have confused the inappropriateness of political control with a need to cut ties of faith in any further foreign missions.

The true situation is actually very different. In fact, the absence of political control for the first time in many areas has now begun to allow non-Western populations to yield to the Kingdom of Christ without simultaneously yielding to the political kingdoms of the Western world. Here we see a parallel to the Frankish tribal people accepting the faith of Rome only after Rome had lost its military power. This new openness to Catholic Christianity continued among the Anglo-Saxons, Germans and Scandinavians up until the time when the emergence of strong papal authority, mixed with power politics, became a threat to legitimate national ambitions, and led to a Reformation which allowed nationalized forms of Christianity to break away.

The present spectacle of a Western world flaunting the standards of Christian morality in more obvious ways than ever may dissuade non-Christian nations from embracing the Christian faith; but it may also tend to disassociate the treasure of Christian ideals from a Western world which has, until this age, been their most prominent sponsor. When Asians accuse Western nations of immorality in warfare, they are appealing to Christian values, certainly not the values of any nation’s pagan past. In this sense, Christianity has already conquered the world. No longer, for example, is the long-standing Chinese tradition of ingenious torture likely to be boasted about in China nor highly respected anywhere else, at least in public circles.

But this worldwide transformation has not come about suddenly. Even the present, minimal attainment of worldwide Christian morality on a tenuous public level has been accomplished only at the cost of a great amount of sacrificial missionary endeavor (during the four centuries of Period Five), missionary labors which have been mightier and more deliberate than at any time in 2,000 years. The first half (1600-1800) of this fifth period was almost exclusively a Roman show. By the year 1800 it was painfully embarrassing to Protestants to hear Roman missionaries writing off the Protestant movement as apostate simply because it was not sending missionaries. But by that same year, Roman missionary effort had been forced into sudden decline due to the curtailment of the Jesuits, and the combined effect of the French Revolution and ensuing chaos which then cut the European economic roots of Catholic missions.

However, the year 1800 marks the awakening of the Protestants from two-and-a-half centuries of inactivity, if not theological slumber, in regard to missionary outreach across the world. During this final period, for the first time, Protestants equipped themselves with organizational structures of mission comparable to the Catholic orders and began to make up for lost time. Unheralded, unnoticed, and all but forgotten in our day except for ill-informed criticism, Protestant missionary efforts in this period, more than Catholic missions, led the way in establishing throughout the world the democratic apparatus of government, the schools, the hospitals, the universities and
the political foundations of the new nations. Rightly understood, Protestant missionaries, along with their Roman Catholic counterparts, are surely not less than the prime movers of the tremendous energy that is mushrooming in the Third World today. Take China, for example. Two of its greatest modern leaders, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, were both Christians. Teng Hsiao- P’ing’s “Four Modernizations” were principal emphases of the Western mission movement in China. Missions had planted a university in every province of China, etc.

But, if the Western home base is now to falter and to fail as the tide is reversed through the rising power of its partially evangelized periphery (as is the pattern in the earlier periods), we can only refer to Dawson’s comment on the devastation wrought by the Vikings—that this will not be a “victory for paganism.” The fall of the West will, in that case, be due in part to a decay of spirit. It will also be due to the pagan power in the non-Western world emboldened and strengthened by its first contact with Christian faith. It may come as a most drastic punishment to a Western world that has always spent more on cosmetics than it has on foreign missions—and lately ten times as much.

From a secular or even nationalistic point of view, the next years may be a very dark period for the Western world. The normal hopes and aspirations of Christian people for their own country may find only a very slight basis for optimism. But if the past is any guide at all, even this will have to be darkness before the dawn. The entire Western world in its present political form may be radically altered. We may not even be sure about the survival of our own country. But we have every reason to suppose from past experience that the Christian, biblical faith will clearly survive in one form or another.

We can readily calculate that during the 20th century, Westerners dropped from 18% to 8% of the world population. But we cannot ultimately be pessimistic. Beyond the agony of Rome was the winning of the Barbarians. Beyond the agony of the Barbarians was the winning of the Vikings. Beyond the agony of the Western world we can only pray that there will be the defeat of Satan’s power holding millions of people hostage in thousands of peoples—peoples which have too long “sat in darkness” and who “shall see a great light” (Matt 4:16). And we can know that there is no basis in the past or in the present for assuming that things are out of the control of the Living God.

If we in the West insist on keeping our blessing instead of sharing it, then we will, like other nations before us, have to lose our blessing for the remaining nations to receive it. God has not changed His plan in the last 4,000 years. But how much better not to focus on how to retain but to strive intentionally to extend that marvelous “blessing”! That way “in you and in your descendants all of the peoples of the world will be blessed.” This is the only way we can continue in God’s blessing. The expanding Kingdom is not going to stop with us (although it may leave us behind). “This Gospel of the Kingdom must be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all peoples, and then shall the end come” (Matt 24:14). God can raise up others if we falter.

(My thoughts) America has been greatly blessed by God, in freedom and prosperity, for a number of years. We, as a nation, have done much that is good, in bringing the Gospel and freedom to many other nations. But we have also failed God in many ways, especially lately. The moral decline in our culture and the  large scale embracing of a rich and decadent lifestyle, does not speak well of America or the Western World. God may choose to remove His blessings upon our nation.  “It may come as a most drastic punishment to a Western world that has always spent more on cosmetics than it has on foreign missions - lately ten times as much,” (pg. 227).
But this is not a time for worry or despair on the part of the Church in America. While the “entire Western world in its present political form may be radically altered (and) we may not even be sure about the survival of our own country...we have every reason to suppose from past experience that the Christian, biblical faith will clearly survive” (pg. 227).
While America has reached out to the non-Western world with the Gospel, we could have and should be doing so much more! “If we in the West insist on keeping our blessing instead of sharing it, then we will, like other nations before us (Israel, Rome, etc.) perhaps have to ‘lose’ our blessing in order for the remaining nations to receive it,” (pg. 227).
We don’t “deserve” any of the blessings we’ve been given. Each American Christian could, just as likely, have been born a girl in China or a Dalit in India. But God chose to place each of us in a prosperous country in order that we might share His blessings of prosperity and freedom with those who have never heard His name. If we are not doing this, He has every right to take those blessings away and give them to a people (like the Chinese and Indians) who are boldly reaching out to the unreached, even at the risk of their own lives.
But this should not be a source of injured pride or sadness on the part of the American church. We need to look at the big picture. We are first and foremost, part of the body of Christ in the world. In Heaven, for eternity, our nationality will no longer make a difference. Thus, on earth, we should be overjoyed at the growth of the Church in non-Western lands. We should join in prayer, financial support and even in person, with those who are spreading the Gospel in the non-Western world and celebrate with them as God, once again, seems to be shifting His blessings to yet another part of His vast world.