In some of the most restricted countries the Gospel spreads in an
unprecedented way, driven by prayer, boldness, persecution, and the Holy Spirit,
according to a recent report by ‘Brother Jonathan’, a Voice of the Martyrs
missionary. “What we are seeing around the world is really a Gospel wildfire,”
he says. Recently Jonathan asked one indigenous leader in Myanmar about their
strategy to send workers into unreached villages, and he replied:
“The
secret is Fridays.”
“What is it about Fridays?” Jonathan wanted to
know.
“On Fridays we all come together and we fast and we pray - every
Friday, all day.”
“What if you’re going into a hostile village?”
“If we
think it’s going to be a really hostile area, we set aside seven days to fast
and pray. When that’s over we go and let the chips fall where they
may.”
Jonathan spoke to a 19-year-old worker in Myanmar who told
him:
“I’m going to move into a village where there are no churches and no
Christians.” He planned to build a small lean-to in the forest to live in, work
in the rice fields, and start sharing the Gospel.
“I’m going to plant a
church and appoint a leader and then I’m going to move and do it again,” the
young worker told him.
“How long do you think you’ll do this?” Jonathan
asked.
“Until Jesus comes back.”
'I bang on my drum until
a crowd comes out and then I preach the Gospel.'The fuel
that Brother Jonathan sees in this wildfire is a combination of prayer and a
bold proclamation of the Gospel. In north India, he met with a coalition of
1,000 pastors working in Uttar Pradesh (UP), one of the most unreached states in
India. “They risk their lives every single day,” Jonathan noted. One young
minister told him:
“I ride my bicycle into a village where there are no
Christians [he had a drum fixed to the cross bar of the bicycle and behind him
he had a lantern sitting on some Gospel tracts and a small speaker on the front]
and I bang on my drum until a crowd comes out and then I preach the Gospel. We
see people’s hearts touched, we see them repent and we see the birth of a
church.”
“What about other times?”
“Oh, they beat me.”
“What do you do
then?”
“When I wake up I ride to the next village.”
Uttar Pradesh in northern India has a population of
205 million peopleJonathan noted there are 1,000 other young
ministers like him riding around UP State on their bicycles doing the same
thing. The result is that UP State has gone from almost no Christians to about
three percent Christians - about 6,000,000 believers.
The spark for the
Gospel wildfire is the Holy Spirit, Jonathan observes. “Dreams and visions are
becoming so common among Muslims that when we meet someone for the first time we
ask if they’ve had any strange dreams lately.”
'Maybe we're
lazy, but we just want God to show up.'Among Hindus and
Buddhists he is seeing signs and wonders, with many miraculous healings. One
pastor told Jonathan, “Maybe we’re lazy, but we don’t want to spend 12 weeks
convincing them that Jesus is God. We just want God to show
up.”
Persecution is the accelerant of this move of God. “When the church
is persecuted the church thrives,” Jonathan notes. “The places where the church
is growing most rapidly are also some of the worst places of
persecution.”
What can you do to be part of this? “Make prayer a
priority. Proclaim the gospel with boldness. Don’t be ashamed of anything. If
you’re a follow of Christ, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Trust God to show
up. Pray with confidence. Believe God still does stuff today. God is very active
around the world and he can do the same things here,” says
Jonathan.
Source: Brother Jonathan, Voice of the Martyrs