ten years ago are slowly but surely opening today. Spain illustrates the point. What shall we say about the great continent of Africa? The conquest of Ethiopia by the Italians and the ultimate deliverance brought about by the Allied Armies is an old but exciting story. During the Italian occupation, the number of believers “multiplied greatly” in the midst o f severe opposi tion. God’s sovereignty shines like a beacon through the darkness of the Ethiopian story. The Congo, too, is witness to the fact that God is able to bless and multiply His church even while the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things against Him. There are sections of the Congo today in which the church is experiencing unprecedented spiritual and numerical growth. Less than ten years ago, some mission leaders were expressing fear about what would happen
it is today. Fruitful city-wide campaigns are be coming almost routine in some o f the countries. Bible sales are at an all-time high. Missionaries who have ministered in Mexico for the last 20 years find present opportunities greater than ever before. Those who were serving in Co lombia 20 years ago could never have believed that the things transpiring today ever would take place. The number o f believers has increased 300 percent in the last two decades. The evangelical church in Brazil is growing faster than the population of the country. This is a time of unprecedented privilege in Latin America. There are even those who sug gest that if things continue as they are now going, South America will become a Protestant continent by the turn o f the century. As we look to Asia, we are particularly encour aged by that which God is doing in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Before World War II, there was only a handful o f evangelical missionaries struggling against enormous odds in the country o f Japan. At the close of the war, Japan’s famous sliding paper doors were opened and missionaries by the scores entered the Land of the Rising Sun. Today fruitful church-planting programs, and na tionwide radio and literature ministries are pros pering in that country. Never in the history of missions in Japan has her people had such an op portunity to accept or reject the crucified and risen Saviour o f the world. For the greater part o f the last 20 years, both the Taiwanese and Korean governments have been favorable toward the Christian message and the work of the missionary. Opportunities to plant the living Word o f God in the lives of unsaved people could not be greater than they are in those coun tries. For this we must thank the Lord of Harvest. The protective umbrella o f a pro-Christian govern ment is not something to accept lightly. It is, however, the nation o f Indonesia that stands out most strikingly as an evidence of the sovereignty o f God in granting to His church the privilege o f fulfilling His will in the preaching of the Gospel to a people without Christ. The failure o f the so-well-masterminded Communist coup of October 1, 1965, has to be accounted for. What more realistic way is there to account for it than a recognition o f the sovereignty of God? One has every right to suspect that if the Communist coup had been successful, the foreign missionary pro gram in Indonesia would have come to an ugly end. But God had other plans. It is now estimated that close to 300,000 Indonesians have made professions o f faith in Christ in the last three years. There is a great hue and cry for missionary help in that land today. The move o f the Dalai Lama and 80,000 Tibet ans from Tibet to India has exposed more Tibetans to the message o f God’s love than ever before. The
Thousands of people in various parts of Indonesia have turned to Christ in the last three years.
Radio makes the world our parish Christian literature is as it reaches behind man-made increasing at an en- curtain8. couraging rate. when various African nations gained their inde pendence. In this brief ten-year period, over 20 such republics have come into existence. The ma jority o f them have kept their doors open to the Christian message. In some of them the Bible is in cluded in their curriculum. Not a few of the rulers of Africa today have a “mission school” back ground. In some cases these leaders have openly expressed their desire for the church o f Jesus Christ to make a greater moral and religious con tribution to the lives o f their people. The picture in Latin America is optimistic. In spite of much student and labor unrest in many Latin American republics, likely the door has never been more widely open for evangelism than DECEMBER, 1969
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