Small Beginnings

On the 17th of December 1859 David Livingstone, a Scotch missionary, came to what is now Lake Malawi in Africa. It was Livinstone who, for the first time, opened up the interior of the Africa continent to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The British, Anglicans from England and Presbyterians from Scotland, soon began to send missionaries to the land that we now know as the small country of Malawi in southern Africa. These missionaries were bold, brave men who were concerned for the lives and souls of the African people. They were so concerned that they were willing to die bringing the Gospel to, what was for them, a far off pagan people with a radically different culture.

Today, at a local museum in Malawi, there is a note on display that speaks volumes on the courage and faith of those early brave missionaries. It was written some years after the missionaries began their work and it says that up until the writing of that note that five missionaries had died on the mission fields of Malawi and there had been only one convert to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

There have been great changes since then. Today fifty percent of the people of Malawi are Christians and there is a great zeal and love for the Lord there.

I was privileged, last year to speak with O. Palmer Robertson. Dr. Robertson has spent the last twelve years teaching at the African Bible College located in Lilongwe the Capitol City of Malawi.

We, in the West, often forget that there is a great world beyond our shores. We see the attacks and retreats of the Christian faith going on here and in Europe, but we seldom look beyond that.

The fact is that the greatest expansion of the Christian faith, since the apostolic era, has taken place in the last 100 year. And that great expansion and engrafting of peoples into the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is continuing at a rapid pace all around the World.

One percent of Korean's were Christian at the time of W.W.I, but today half of South Korea is Christian. God's Word is going forth and the nations are being brought into His Kingdom. Don't let disappointments cloud your eyes or dishearten you. What if those five missionaries, who died bring the Gospel to Malawi, had quit because they did not see much fruit while they lived? Those brave men planted the seeds that have produced the mass conversions to the Gospel that have taken place in the last century.

God calls us to be faithful. He will produce the fruit when He decides. We are to be about the Great Commission (i.e. make disciples) and not worry about the outcome, because that is in the hands of God and not our own. If we are faithful we may know with certainty that God will produce fruit even if we do not live to see it.

Coram Deo,
Kenith