Audio： Cry of the Unreached

Well, I want to read a scripture portion from Romans, chapter 15, verse 20. Romans 15, verse 20. For missions, this is a very popular verse. I like this so much because it really expresses what I'm trying to share with you tonight. Yes, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation. That's King James. In simple English, that means, Paul said, I looked around and saw a lot of people that already heard the gospel of Christ. Sin, repentance, Christ dying on the cross, hell, heaven, and all these other things. But then I looked away and saw a group of people that never, never heard the name Jesus even one time in their life. So he said, I made a decision. That is to go to those people that never heard it and tell them about this good news. One more verse I want to read for you in the Old Testament. You don't have to turn to this. Lamentations, chapter 1, verse 12. The first part of the verse. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Early part of this year, I was in Bombay, India, waiting on the street to get the lights and green so I can cross the street. As you know, you do it here. And like other times, I had a group of children around me begging for pennies or whatever in the Indian language, Hindi. I heard it and saw it so many times, so I didn't even care to look. I just wanted to go. But then I heard the sound of this young girl, about 9 or 10 years old. This is what she said. Sir, my father died a few months ago. He had TB. And my mother is very ill. She cannot beg anymore. I have a few younger children. They are waiting for me to come with some bread. Would you please give me a few pennies? The light turned green. Again, it turned red. But I stood there. I watched these kids, particularly looking at this girl. I did not know if I have seen a more beautiful face of a young girl like that one. Big black eyes, long hair, beautiful face. Obviously, she hasn't washed her hair for a long time. Dirt running through her hair or dirt under her nails. And wearing rags, holes in her clothes. I gave her a few pennies and walked across the streets. I could not shake that off from my mind. I just asked, so the Lord began to walk with me and began to talk to me. I thought about my daughter, Sarah. I have two children, Daniel, 11, and Sarah, 8. Very healthy, beautiful, intelligent, best in their school. Every night she would kneel and pray for the missionaries, for her brother. And that Lord called me to be a missionary and all those things. I mean, it's really wonderful. Early morning, I got up and took them both in the car and to the school and said goodbye. And I said, I will see you in three days. And said, Daddy will wait for you and all those things. I said, please bring me a present. Well, I thought about my daughter. A question came up in my mind. I asked, so the Lord asked me. What is the value, the worth of this 9 year old girl you just met on the streets of Bombay? Is her life less valuable than your own daughter? I came back to the United States. I kept on thinking about it. Her life represented to me again the masses of Bombay and India and many of these countries. And Jesus loves them. I want to ask you a question tonight. What is the worth of your life? I tell you how much. You get a headache, you will find out quickly. In the night, you will be going all over the place to find the medicine closet, to find your pills. Aspirin, Anacin, Bufferin or whatever you take. If it won't go away, you will call a doctor. Before you came tonight for the meeting, how many of you stood before the mirror and spent 15 minutes trying to figure out which dress fit you. You put some makeup on, you took it off. Because it's too much, then you put more on. You are saying, how do you know all these things? Well, you know. You are in America, you learn all these things. Well, how much you care about your children? You try to find the best school for them. The private schools. Even spiritual things. Why you come to this church? Why couldn't you go to some church close to your home? You want the best. You really care about yourself. Last year, one of our board members and myself, Skip Hite said, we traveled to Thailand. From Bangkok, 8 hours ride in that old beat up Datsun pickup. It was so hot. You know, I want to be humble, so I said, you guys sit in the cab, I was in the back. Little did I realize what I was going to get. My back, the portholes and everything. When we go to the other end, my nose began to bleed, my ears began to bleed. Over 135 degree temperature. It was so hot. And I turned to Skip and said, Skip, I do not know why people want to go to hell. I mean, you may laugh about it. Have you ever driven in Texas without air conditioning in your car, summertime? It's bad, eh? And he said, man, I want to get out of Texas, it's really bad. Well, Thailand was really bad for me. The reason I said that to Skip was this. If this is so hard and unbearable, what is going to be like in hell? A few things we don't want to talk about. One is death. Another one is hell. H-E-L-L. Did Jesus talk about it a lot? If hell is not real, then Christ dying on the cross, the Bible, redemption, revelation, forgiveness of sin, this Bible, Dr. Stanley's preaching, this church, you, what you profess to believe in, it's all just fairytales. It has no foundation, nothing, zero. Hell is real. It is not a place to go for vacation. The man went to hell, Jesus said. And he was in such agony, he began to scream and cry out. For what? Give me a drop of water. And I imagine after a billion years, he'll be still crying out for a drop of water. And it is not for a short time, for a long, long time, never to end, eternity. And I sat down, sometimes thought about it, the state of people that go to hell. I suppose, after they go there, they are in such agony, pain. Flames will never die, flames shooting out from the ear, from their nose and their mouth. And in such pain, I suppose, they will be crying out for one thing. I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, that's all I want. But after a long, long time, eternity never to end. And the answer comes back to them saying, you will never die, you will never die, you will never die. My brothers and sisters, hell is a real place. It is called a bottomless pit. One day I was thinking about that, I said, how come? It is called like that. I did not know what the shape of hell. Maybe it is like a round ball. The people in it, they love to land somewhere. Have you ever had a dream that you are flying in your sleep and all of a sudden, you lost control and zoom, you are going down, your stomach comes out? Well, actually, I have been in some airplane flights and I thought, it's it. I said, Lord, here I am coming home. Well, can you imagine for a million years, somebody is falling, never able to land nowhere. Jesus said, all the commandments He summed up in this. Love your God with all your heart, all your mind, all those things, then what? Loving others as? As yourself. I want to ask you a question as a brother in Christ. Do you care? Do you love those that never have a chance, do not know the Lord Jesus Christ? They are dying and going to hell. This week is missions. As a matter of fact, in a year about 60 to 80 cities are traveling and speaking in meetings and mission conferences. And learn a lot of interesting things through this. I want to make a statement. Please listen close. World missions is not you giving some of your money. No matter what amount it is. It is not saying, God, our church will send two missionaries somewhere. And give them some dollars and pray for them once in a while. World mission ought to be your life so totally, subjectively, emotionally involved with the pain for lost and dying daily. Your individual life, your family must revolve around every day. For a lost world that is dying without Christ. At the age of 8, the Lord in His mercy saved me. At 16, I went to Bangalore to hear a crazy man preach. I never knew who he was until I went there, George Worwer. And there it was, he talked about North India. Having born in South India, never left my village. You want to know where I was born and raised? Go and watch an old Tarzan movie. Is this good water to drink? My daughter told me two weeks ago, you better stop traveling and speaking. I said no, I cannot rest. But here I heard him speak about North India. You see, AD 52, first century. Thomas, Jesus disciple came to my place, my village. He planted seven churches in South India. One of the churches only three kilometers away from my home. And in this community, in my village, the first time I wore shoes or socks, anything on my feet, was when I was 17. After I joined Operation Mobilization. Didn't wear these kind of things, I had wraparound. And I'm sure this is the result of man's fall. Why on earth man must wear this thing? I'm wearing this for you. Really, I am. I hate this thing. And I got two of these. And I like this one better. The other one is in my hotel room. Well, there I was. That one night, God really spoke to my heart. I didn't have much to give up or sacrifice. But all I had was a skinny body of mine. And I decided to go to North India. With Operation Mobilization teams. It was interesting. Didn't know the language, nothing. They asked me what my name was. All I could tell them was, in Hindi language, 50 paisa, good book, please buy it. They asked me where I come from. I said the same thing over again. They said, what are you doing here? I said, the same thing. Well, in the end, I said, OK, you get it. And for months and months, literally, with others, I traveled in the villages. In the rural areas of Rajasthan, North India. Never to meet a Christian. Never to see a church. And we would ask people, sir, have you heard of Christ? Normally, they would say, no, no one by that name lives in our community. Why don't you try the next village you may find in there? And numerous times, as years went by, I remember, God began to break my heart. I began to mature and learn from the Lord. For the lost souls, I remember, a few times I went out on the streets to give out tracts and preach, and I could not do one thing because I was so broken. I wept and wept and sat on the street corner. In 1974, at the invitation of Dr. W.A. Criswell to come to his school, spent two years. I mean, I'm looking at this crazy watch. It takes about three hours to tell you all the stories. I will not. You'll read some of this in the book. I came here hoping to spend two years and see what God does. Maybe go back to India and all those things. But, you know, January 8th, 1974, I came to New York and then to Dallas. And I can't believe this. The first time in New York, I was so hungry, I went to the restaurant. I didn't know the names of your food. I had eight dollars in my pocket. And I said, lady, what is that? She said, that is hot dog. And took two steps back. And it was a black lady. I said, lady, you please tell me, in America, people eat dog meat? And she took it and she thought, I was not crazy. I really thought it was something. How would you interpret D-O-G? Well, I was so glad to leave New York for Dallas, Texas, thinking all my troubles are behind me. It was like jumping from the fire, you know, what is that? Frying pan into the fire. For two weeks, nobody understood me. I didn't understand anybody. In the end, somebody said, KP, please don't feel bad. In Texas, they do not speak English. They speak Texan. I'm still learning. Well, it didn't take me very long. In six months time, I was called to pastor church while I was in Bible college there. And in two years time, I learned it all. Kind of became semi-American. A three bedroom house, two cars. One was Impala. The biggest car you can find. Have you ever seen a mosquito sitting on an elephant? That's how he found me if he saw me sitting in the car. He can find me. And I had 100,000 life insurance plan, savings account, checking account, string of credit cards. I was in debt. Seven suits, minimum. Five pair of shoes, about 25 ties, 30 shirts. Learned to eat hot dogs, hamburgers, chocolate shake. Every junk food he can find. And by then, of course, being a theological student, I must have a library of 2,000 books. Greek, Hebrew and all those things. I mean, it was okay. I was not doing anything bad. So, I got used to it. Oh, believe it or not, I even, ladies, brought a book called Color Me Beautiful. Winter, summer, autumn, spring. I am winter. Well, that tells you how far this skinny, lost Indian, how far he has come. A long way. The end of 1976, it was like somebody pulled the bottom out. I went to the darkest night of my soul. I felt like a terrible hypocrite, standing like this and preaching to Americans Sunday after Sunday. And I said to my wife, you know what? I know now what happened to me. I was deceived by demons. I left my country, and here I am in America. My heart is completely empty. I never felt like that before. I told my church what has happened to me. I didn't tell all the details. I said, look, I am in a real dilemma. I couldn't eat breakfast, lunch, go to sleep. I was in turmoil. If you ever believed in losing salvation, it was then I could think so. My wife said to me, well, I said, look, I think the best thing to do is go into real estate. The other day, my wife and I talked about it. I began to get books and trying to figure out how to make money again. She said to me, look, God never calls anyone and forsakes them. It only takes for you to wait and ask Him. He will speak to you. I said, yes. With the same Bible, New Scotial Reference, I went to my study, closed the door and said, God, if you ever saw a man who is desperate, want to hear you, totally willing to do anything you ask him to do, it is me. I am lost. Would you please talk to me? God is gracious. His grace is great. And He came into the room just as He did when I was 16 years old, all alone, in that room in Bangalore. And He began to speak to my heart and anchored my soul and reassured me of His love and told me what I must do. I came out of that room as a crazy man. And all of a sudden I realized two years went by in my life in America, my eyes were dry. Every Friday night, I had all night prayer meeting for seven years in India. Not one night did I pray in America. World map was completely, there was nothing about a map in my home anymore. I had the TV, the Newsweek magazine and Dallas Morning Newspaper which is about 5000 pages every morning. I lived for these things. But you know I came out for next few days and weeks. People thought I was kind of sick or something because I had to continue to wipe my eyes so I can talk to people. I carried this Bible in the Bible bag like a man without food. Not trying to preach next sermon to my people. But I said, Lord please talk to me. I want to obey you. This became my life. I remember that following weeks, my devotional time reading from the Gospels, I began to read through four Gospels to see what Jesus was saying. It was also so fresh once again. The Lord spoke to me, if any man want to come after me, let him deny himself. Then let him pick up his cross and bail him. Then let him come after me. All these words became so real to me. If you don't love me more than your father, your mother, your son, your daughter, your wife, even more than your own life, you cannot be my disciple. That same week my wife was working at Baylor Hospital as a nurse. Somebody gave me a book. I don't know if it was there. I don't know who wrote it. Nothing like that. And I was reading it. The man who wrote that prayed a prayer. He said, Oh God, would you please take eternity and stand in the both of my eyes. Never read a prayer like that. And I went to my bedroom, closed the door, knelt down beside my bed. I said, God, I don't know what all this means but would you please do this for me. The following weeks I found my hair was growing long and I walked around asking God for permission to get a haircut. See if I can find me three dollars here. It cost three dollars during those old days to get a haircut. I would look at my three dollars and I say, These three dollars represent three thousand tracks that can be printed in some language for my brothers to distribute for people to hear at least one time about the name of my Lord. And the TV four legs walked out of the house. Newspapers stopped, magazines stopped and I said to my wife, Gisela, I just want to keep two suits, five shirts, two ties, two pair of shoes and I said, either I sell it, Salvation Army, whatever, I just want to keep this much only. And I said, Why are you buying cookies, cakes, and ice cream and all these things? The cleanest water people have in Bangladesh or India, if you brush teeth within America, you will get diarrhea. How clean is our water here? I said, we can drink clean water, use all our money to support missionaries. Well, life insurance cancelled, sale account went and everything we found so much changed. Hey, before you go on interpreting things, I am not promoting legalism, work, or anything like that. You can do all what I did and more than what I did, it will not make you any spiritual. That is not what I am saying to you. I am just telling you the story of this Indian. Everything in my family as a little family of husband, wife and two children, we began to look at the world once again as lost without Christ and our responsibility to reach the lost world. Tuesday night, we start a prayer meeting, still goes on, faithfully praying for the world and world map came back into my home. Why am I saying it to you? Do you care? About those that are dying without Christ. That never heard the name Christ. In a few weeks time, Christmas will be here. Can't believe. I like Christmas. You know why? Because I get presents. But while we have the Christmas here, all the things that goes on, the buying and the selling and the presents and the joy and everything, you must remember, still today, half of the world is waiting to hear about the first Christmas. I was in Oklahoma City not too long ago, visiting a church. One of the pastors came to me privately and said, Brother KP, I am disgusted. I am tired. He happened to read the book. I said, How come? He said, You see the church building? I said, Yeah. He said, We are paying $52,000 a week to the bank. Mortgage or whatever you call it. Newsweek, I was reading couple of years ago, I remember super churches they call it. A church in Houston, the pastor boasted, boasting, I am repeating some words so you will not miss it. After millions of dollars been spent on gymnasium, you know, for aerobics and jumping up and down like monkeys and frogs, whatever they do. He was saying, We have better things to offer than the world can offer so our people will come to our church. Am I against church buildings and gymnasiums? No. But I am saying to you, if you belong to Christ, to this church, to the body of Christ in this country, when 2.7 billion people are waiting to hear about Christ and going to hell, you have no right, I have no right to live our life the way we live and handle God's money and go on thinking nothing is wrong. Everything is wrong. Revolution must start in our individual life. After two years in North India, having lost some weight, tired, weak, old clothes, I walked back into my village to see my mother travelling five days in a third class compartment in the train. As I walked into my village, I saw my old mother slightly bent, short. She came and she embraced me weeping and this is what she said, My son, for three and a half years I prayed that one of my sons will become a missionary, a preacher. Brothers and sisters, recently I spoke to a group of young people in an evangelical fundamental church, 350 young people. When I talked to them, I found out there was not one soul in that whole group that had any thought about world missions. Where are our children? What are you praying for your children? What they must become? Over 20,000 Mormon people, 18, 90, 20 marching in the face of the earth, conquering people for the cult's sake. Every 24 hours a 747 jet from Russia, Moscow, lands in Delhi or Bombay loaded with communist literature, magazines, books, selling all over India on the streets. In 1985, it was the Indian Express newspaper, more American money came to India for Hinduism than for missionary work. Number 7 was for Christian missionary work. I'm asking you, are we not playing games? Do we really believe what we say we believe? How can we take it so calmly? I was listening to a tape by Keith Green this morning. The church that is sleeping in the light. And he said, all I hear anymore is, bless me God, bless me God, no one ate, no one heard, no one read. When God began to break my heart, I'm not going to break that. I went to my study and saw the two thousand some books, and half a dozen leather bound expensive Bibles. And I said to myself, I can't believe I did this. When hundreds of my brothers do not have even a Bible, with any notes in it, here I have all these Bibles. All the study books that I will never read. That reminded me, one day I asked George Woolworth, George, why don't you have a leather bound Bible? It was several years ago. He replied to me, KP, how can I spend money on a leather bound Bible when half of the world today do not have a Bible to their name? Not our brothers on the mission field don't have one book to their name. I packed all our books by the way, and sent it by ship to anybody I can find that can use it or read it. Even spiritual things he can become selfish. The video tapes, the seminars, the trips he make, the cruise on the ship, all this is junk. Why am I saying it to you? There must come a time in our life we will say, Dear God, I want someone else to be holier than me, I will give up. My brothers and sisters, I grew up in a home with five brothers. My oldest brother was a communist before he became a believer. Now 52 years old. I remember as young boys he used to tell us, when he became a communist, he took his own blood from his hand and signed his name over to communism. I never could forget that statement. I just want to ask a question. How old are you? In America, nobody wants to tell their age. But do you know your age? Go ahead. Add 100 years to your age. Where are you now? You see what I am saying to you? You can accumulate all the riches you want, all the reputation, keeping it with the Jones next door to you, and all the clothes, the fashions, the cars, and everything, all these things, spend time the way you want it, everything. But remember, it doesn't matter what other people think about you, it will all be gone before you know it, just like that. And all that you will be doing is fooling yourself. Oh, what I tell you brothers and sisters, if only, if only, the living God can for a split second open your eyes to the eternity and world that is waiting here to hear about Jesus, it will change our life. Other day in our prayer meeting, we were talking about Maldives, a small island, we are praying so much for, some 200,000 people live on that island, not one known Christian among that many people. No church, no Bible, no radio ministry, no hymn, nothing. It is said, it is a capital crime to become a Christian there. 600,000 villages in India without a church today. And on and on and on like that. Oh, by the way, these people I am talking about are not monkeys and rats and snakes, they are human beings just like us. And Jesus is not an American Jesus. Heaven is not just for us. And He cares, and He weeps, and He is concerned. The question is this, do we care? And our prayer is this, that some of you will say, well, as for me, I am going to walk away from this mess, this plastic watered down superficial me, mine, pleasing Christianity. And as a one way ticket, I will go somewhere if need be, never to come back. And give my life so completely over to Him. And for others, although you will not make it some other country, you will make an inventory of your life and what you are living for what is the purpose. Then say, Lord, I cannot go to China or one of those countries, but I am going to give my life to become a sender helping missionaries to go. Half of the world countries are closed to Americans and Europeans to come and be missionaries anymore. But God has raised up tens of thousands of what I call native missionaries. They don't look like you, but they speak the language of the people, live like their people and paying a price. And with your praise and financial help, they will and they can and we can reach our generation for the Lord Jesus Christ. 1967, Bundi, Rajasthan was the first place I was physically beaten up for preaching the gospel. I was not the only one, I had seven others with me. We all got enough beating. Our Bibles and tracts and everything was burned right before our eyes by the fanatic Hindus. Seven times our teams went there all seven times with their stones and beaten up. Three years ago, now about three and a half, nineteen year old young brother named Sam went to Bundi with a determination if need be he will die there but never he will return from that place. The leader Emma Thomas said to him, Sam, you are too young, inexperienced, it is too risky and dangerous. He said, I can't, I must live in this place and win these people to Christ. Seven dollars rent for one room. Start living there. Of course, they came to him and said, Hey, what are you doing here? We are going to kill you. You know what we will do? He said, fine, I have come here to die. He said, what? He said, Jesus loves you. He is the only saviour. I will not leave this place. You can kill me or do what you want. Early part of this year, Brother Terry Jones was there. Six hundred of the brothers we support in northwest of India gathered and I met Sam and went to Bundi later to see nearly hundred people that came to the Lord, baptised, worshipping the Lord and he said to me, Brother KP, these are few fellows that persecuted me when I first came here. Gospel of Asia is a mission. We have 2,500 brothers on the mission field. The story of some of them is incredible what God is doing. A new day. Our prayer is to support 5,000 brothers by the end of next year. Of course, I am crazy and I am a dreamer. And 50,000 one of these days. You know what? I am absolutely convinced in our generation we can win these nations to Christ. I am so convinced I wish I had a time to tell you the story behind that. I have never been so excited like this that I said this generation in my time we will turn this generation to Jesus Christ. It can be done. It must be done. But it is going to take you each one of us Johnson Barbara Tim John Margaret each one not looking at from far but getting involved as a radical maniac soldier laying down our life. May the Lord speak to us. He is seeking to use you. I know he will. Thank you pastor. That's gfa.org slash sponsorship.