“. . . My gospel, wherein I suffer trouble, as an evildoer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. 2:8, 9).
It must have been very irksome to Paul, the zealous missionary, to endure four years of imprisonment—apparently just because of unconscionably dirty politics—when he might have been roaming the Roman world as an itinerant missionary. He wrote his friends in Philippi (Phil. 1:12 ff.) pointing out how, in God’s amazing Providence, his imprisonment had “actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel.” What he saw was his influence on the guards and other Christians. What he could not see was the coming immeasurable role of his letters as a large part of our New Testament. Although he might be bound, “the Word of God is not bound!”
That ability of God’s Word to surmount all kinds of physical and political barriers has possibly never been more dramatically demonstrated than it is in our time as that gospel goes out around the world by means of radio (and TV). And in the Lord’s Providence, few if any churches have been granted greater opportunities for world-wide Gospel outreach by this means than our own church family through our denominational broadcasts, the Back-to-God Hour. Recent events have spotlighted especially two of these outreaches in areas of the world long closed to ordinary missionary access-China and the Arabic world.
The China Story
When the Communists overran China in 1949, slamming shut that land’s “open door” to missions, we who were involved in the effort to reestablish our mission there left it with burdened hearts. We knew that God’s word assures us that He will bring His gospel testimony “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8) and in that summer’s mission rallies there were many occasions to point out that especially Acts 11:19–21 outlines how He used the very persecution intended to destroy the gospel and church to spread it more widely. But for 30 years we heard virtually nothing about what was happening to the believers and the gospel testimony under bitter persecution in the world’s most populous country. Only recently has the remarkable story become known of bow the Lord has preserved that persecuted church and made it grow to number many millions.
The death of Rev. Isaac Jen on June 9 highlighted the way in which he for 14 years has been spearheading our churches’ radio outreach into mainland China in effort to strengthen and extend the gospel testimony there. At Jen’s June 9 funeral service Rev. Joel Nederhood recalled that his great great grandfather and great grandfather had both been Protestant ministers in China. Born in 1927 and reared in Shanghai, he came to the U.S. in 1949, to study at Westminster and Calvin Theological Seminaries and was ordained to the gospel ministry in 1955. He served as home missionary among Chinese-speaking people in Chicago and later as a missionary in Taiwan. There he contracted the hepatitis which made him invalid for some years (and ultimately took his life). In 1970, however he was able to become the Chinese voice of the Back-to-God Hour for the next 17 years. The (anti-Christian) government’s policy of imposing Mandarin Chinese as the official language among the multitude of dialects has contributed enormously to opening the whole nation to the broadcast gospel. In reaching toward his native land, a key feature of the program was the helps to build up the lay leadership of the untold number of “house churches” in their enormous gospel testimony among China’s millions. The multiplying mail response from within China testifies to the Lord’s continuing work through such faithful servants. Recall the words dictated to John, ” Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord . . . says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labor, their works follow them” (Rev. 14:13).
Into the Arab World
The June meeting of our churches’ synod recalled that 30 years ago they had begun their first foreign language outreach among another large block of people mostly excluded from other missionary contact, the Arab world, through the Arabic ministry of Rev. Bassam Madany. He was born and reared in Syria. His father had been converted from the Syrian Orthodox church by Reformed Presbyterian missionaries and was a preacher and school principal. After education in British, French and Syrian schools in Syria, Bassam came to the U.S. in 1950 to study at the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary in Pittsburgh, P A Ordained in 1953, he and his Canadian-born wife, Shirley, returned to Syria as missionaries. In 1955 government restrictions on missions there led to their return to Canada. Influenced by Dr. Peter Eldersveld, our Back-toGod Hour minister, and his own Reformed convictions, he came into the CRC, to eventually become the minister of its first foreign language broadcasts, in his native Arabic. Over the following 30 years the continually growing mail response to the Arabic gospel message is one of the many indications of the ever-widening opportunity for world-wide Christian testimony which the Lord has granted our relatively small family of churches. Acts 19:20 summarizes what had been happening in ancient Corinth: “So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.” Let’s wake up and realize that it is still doing so. May we have an ever larger part in it in our prayers, support and action.