have taken place which can only be attributed to Him, and how we rejoice and rest in Him! Evacuar tion came again, but only for a short period, during the June war. Even in this, God worked it out for good in His plans and pur poses. As we review the whole Middle east and North Africa, we are see ing how God is moving to make His message known. For the first time in the history of missions, as far as we can ascertain, we see a pattern where the whole of North Africa and the Middle East are being reached with the Gos pel, and the thrilling thing is that Muslims are listening and turn ing to Christ. From ELWA broadcasting in from Monrovia, Liberia, the Word, geared to the Muslim, goes out through the Middle East and North Africa nightly. From T W R broadcasting in Monaco, the Word goes down to North Africa and over the Mid dle East nightly. From RVOG (Radio Voice of the Gospel) in Addis Ababa, the message daily travels down the Nile Valley, through Khartoum and Cairo, and on across to the wadis and deserts of the vast peninsula of Arabia. From FEBC (Far Eastern Broadcasting Co.), now in the process of installing a radio sta>- tion on the Seychelle islands in the Indian Ocean just north of Madagascar, the Word will go forth to Pakistan, India, and Cey lon, and later to South Arabia and East Africa. “ What God can do for any man, He can do for every man” “Can we whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high; Can we to men benighted, the Lamp of life deny? Salvation! 0 Salvation! The joy ful sound proclaim, Till each remotest nation has learned Messiah’s name." WAFT, WAFT, YE WINDS, HIS STORY! BE
spring forth anew in that desert wasteland, and the slugging match continues, albeit with a new ardor. How are the multitudes to hear, those back in the hinterland of Yemen, the Hejaz, in Oman and the Hadramout, those hidden away in the wadis and deserts of the great peninsula? Violence erupts. The national ists, the communists and terror ists combined to cause the penin sula of Aden to become a minia ture battlefield. Then there was evacuation. The few believers were on their own! Were all of these years wasted? Were all the toil, sweat, the heartaches — for this ? Six months before the evacu ation, in an up-stairs prayer meet ing, God revealed to us the secret of the Christian life: “ The battle is the Lord’s." “All that God is is available to the man that is avail able to all that God is.” The long years of the slugging match in which we were worn down in the uneven match, was His, not ours. We asked for His help to hold us, when we should have s imp l y turned it completely over to Him. Hearts flamed with the realiza tion o f a living Saviour in us to do the work through us. His was the toil, the labor, the sweat; ours was the rest. “ In Thy strong hand I lay me down, so shall the work be done; For who can work so wondrously as the A lm i gh t y One?” And work He did in those last six months in the hearts and lives of many. The believers were not on their own at all! He was in them to work through them as He was in us to live His life and work through us. Exhilaration is the only word to describe the way we felt as we saw Him work, amidst the terror and the fighting. Yet only a small segment of this area had heard the Word — how was He going to do it? We didn’t know, but we rejoiced in that He knew! We were home for 10 months and back to Beirut where we had first stopped 15 years before on our first trip to the field. God is doing the work at ELWA Arabic recording studio here; miracles
The Rhodesia Castle pulled out with us on board, and in a few days we were gazing at the sights and sounds of our new home, finally on the Arabian peninsula, the cosmopolitan port of Aden. A light could be placed on the map now, a little, feeble light, hardly to be seen down near the comer of the peninsula near the Red Sea. The vastness of the task, the inadequacy o f the forces, the stone-hardness of the hearts, the brutality of the forces o f evil to keep enslaved his subjects, forces arrayed, battles engaged, faced us. Victory? No! Not victory, just toe-to-toe slugging, day in and day out! Never had there been a more tenacious foe. How long, Oh Lord, how long are these to be kept enslaved to the evil one? The sun beats down in unrelent- less fury; the sweat pours off one; the burdens increase; the slugging match continues; there is no quar ter. “We’ve a story to tell to the na tions that shall turn their hearts to the right” we used to sing lustily at school. But what about when they don’t turn, when they refuse to turn, when the mockery, the spittle, and often the stones make one wonder if perhaps the majority o f the church was right after all. Perhaps they are “un- saveable.” The missionaries’ task, someone well said, “ is to go to a place where he is not wanted, to sell a pearl whose value is not rec ognized, to people who are deter mined not to accept it even as a gift.” How shall they hear with out a preacher?” asks the Lord and dogged determination to “ do or die” begins to etch in the lines of the battle-weary countenance. One comes to Christ, and the ange l s ’ voi ces r e v e r b e r a t e throughout heaven w i th their songs o f joy, but no more than the joy that is in the heart of the missionary. They are not “unsave- able” ! God does work in their hearts. Zwemer was right: “What God can do for any man He can do for every man.” Courage and hope
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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