The World is a Mission Field

In 1967, a young missionary from Germany Reinhard and Annie Bonnke and their little son arrived the shores of South Africa following in the footsteps of countless hundreds of thousands of European and American missionaries who laid down their lives in Africa, Asia and South America.

As the Bonnkes worked in Africa, he became more and more restless, dissatisfied with the results the apostolic mission fields was producing. He had seen a persistent vision of an Africa blood washed. The apostolic missions saw South Africa as their allotted portion to evangelize, but Bonnke saw all of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo, from Kenya to Cape Verde.

He once calculated the number of years it would take his mission post to reach the 700 million population of Africa as per the results of their converts then. He came to an astounding approximation that it would take 5000 years to win those 700 million Africans. He realized that they need a better strategy of reaching more people en mass. He saw that they were neither going to live on earth for 5000 years and neither would the Afric. ans.

After three decades, his crusades alone have won well over 70million Africans to Christ!

Almost a century earlier, David Livingstone came on missions to Africa. Hitting land in Cape Town. When the ship docked, he had no idea what the challenge would be. As he moved through the vast uninhabited land with his young goat that provided milk for him and his intepreter, he was totally taken over by the need. Soon he went on and became so engulfed in his work and encouraged by the little sparks of success that he forgot where he came from.

He discover Lake Victoria and planted a mission field not to far from there naming it Blantyre after the hometown of his birth. Many years later even after independence, Blantyre became the political and economic capital on an independent Malawi.

David Livingstone totally embraced Africa to the point that he left his heart as his will to Africa, ordering that when he dies, his heart should be buried in Africa. So it was done and his body shipped back and buried, heart-less in Westminster's Abbey.

Time and space will not allow me to mention the countless young married couples who died of simple mosquito bites and cholera etc, yet instead of discouragement, thousands more from Great Britain, from Italy, from the Netherlands, from Scotland, from Ireland, from Sweden, from Spain, Finland, Canada and the United States sign up freely, renouncing earthly wealth, embracing sacrifices form the spread of the Kingdom of God.

How can we ever be thankful enough for that! Surely, there are many unknown faces we will see in the presence of God with glittering faces who either died on the path to obedience, died on the mission fields worldwide or served and returned with not earthly inheritance.

Can we even count the multitudes who serves through many violent revolutions in China, India, Mongolia, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong?

Centuries have come and gone. Those Western Sacrifices paid off as obedience to God brings reward. There is no nation that exports missionaries that does not become great. Such obedience was the key to the industrial revolution. Isaiah 1:19 says, "If you are willing and obedient,  you will eat the good things of the land." And Job 36:11 "If they obey and serve him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity  and their years in contentment."

That is history. What about now?
Well times have change as generations changed. So desires have changed. Pursuits have changed. Goals have changed.

Why do we struggle with hopeless generation today? Because our forefathers embrace liberalism. Kids are left to decide what is good or right. Children rights activists have taken it too far. Child upbringing is now considered torture. Kids then decide what to do.

The most enticing thing in the mind of a child is fun, pleasure, foolishness. The bible says we should train up a child. It didn't say we should let kids train themselves. One of the biggest expression of love to a child is to discipline him and save him from his own foolishness. God chastises those he loves.

Today we have a generation of flaming gays, abortion is fun as kids are raised with seared consciences. We have kids who have no emotions, no gratitude, no compassion which are producing corruption, mass shootings, crime, abuse of elders, love for money, and passion for pleasure.

God is to them an imagination of the mind, love is far from them, lust is their religion, they make a mockery of godliness and glorify the cravings of man.

In time past, Africa was referred to as a dark continent. It was an allegory of the skin colour with symbolized a continent that had not seen the light of the gospel of Christ. Now it is no longer so. Some of the most diehard defenders of the Christian faith live in Africa.

I see Christians in Egypt, Northern Nigeria and Kenya pass through decades of murder, harassment and persecution and yet the stand firm. I see Christians stand firm going through faming, civil wars and genocide. I see the African Anglicans willing to go their separate ways with England and America for defiling the Church with homosexuality.

Today, it is a fact that the entire world is a mission field. It is a fact that Western believers are hardlg willing or able to fight to death for the truth. It is a fact that China is the largest Christian nation in the world with well over 100 million active believers who are not only willing but going all the way to die for their faith. It is a fact that in Iran, and Iraq and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia there is a mighty revival and an underground church thriving.

Yes there is work that needs to be done in Africa. But the West is proving to be the next hardest mission field in the world.

We need to throw away our armchair Christianity. We need the stop the entertainment Christianity. We need to ignore the convenience Christianity. If an equal number our sons and daughters that died at war today died on mission battlefields, we could have a more peaceful world than we have. I'm in no way putting down the sacrifices of those who died defending their homeland. Infact, I believe war is biblical.

We need to hunger again. We need to thirst again. We need to dream again. Not about money and careers. We need to hunger to send our sons and daughters to foreign lands as missionaries. We need to put real missions back on church agendas. Not the UN charity programmes that we call missions. Any charity work that does not aim at introducing Christ is mere humanitarian work. We will win the applause of the world but achieve nothing. Certainly not God's.

Can you send you teenage child to the mission field. Have you ever talked to your kids about the need on the mission field? Will you be proud of them? Will you finance their missionary calling as you financed their college tuition proudly. Would support another person even a stranger who is at the mission field?

Can God count on you today? Will you make it easier through your prayers and finances to see His kingdom spread? Will you go anywhere he sends you? May you find God's place for you through this Word.