Page 8 - Good News April 2009 paper

The Word is spreading
An average of 160 000 people a day hear the
message of redemption in Christ for the first
time. Every hour, 3 000 more people decide
to follow Jesus Christ.
The yeast of the Gospel
In 1800 those who had never heard the popular search topic is “spiritual and
Gospel were 75% of the globe’s population. religious” information.
Today the percentage of those who have not Egypt
heard is 28% which is a major move forward. During the 1990’s, the Egyptian Bible Society
However, that still means about 1.5 billion used to sell about 3 000 copies of the JESUS
people have not heard the Gospel Message Film each year. Last year they sold 600 000
even one time! copies, plus 750 000 copies of the Bible on
Huge Middle East Church! tape in Arabic and about half a million copies
A huge cave on the outskirts of Cairo of the Arabic NT!
accommodates the largest church in the Less American Missionaries
Middle East; 10 000 meet weekly for worship, The American career missionary work force
and a Prayer Conference there in 2005 is rapidly shrinking. In 1986 there were 69 000
hosted 20 000 believers. career American missionaries, in 2006 that
Iraq was down to 35 000; almost a 50% reduction
More than 5 000 Iraqis have come to faith in in the last 20 years.
Christ over the past 4 years. There are 14
new churches in Baghdad and dozens more “The whole Bible mandates us to take the
in Kurdistan, some with up to 800 members. Gospel to the whole world. If we are not doing
The Internet - a ripe field! so, we need to sit down and seriously
Over 1 billion people are now on the Internet! reconsider our priorities.”
There are almost one million new connec- [Source: YES! August 2008 (Published by
tions a day! Remarkably, the second most Mission Activation Centre (MAC)].

n Him [Christ] lie hidden all the mighty, untapped things. You used to do them when
treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And now just your life was still part of this world;
Ias you trusted Christ to save you, trust Him, too, for but now is the time to cast off and
each day’s problems; live in vital union with Him. throw away all these rotten gar-
Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up ments of anger, hatred, cursing,
nourishment from Him. Let heaven fill your thoughts; and dirty language.
don’t spend your time worrying about things down Don’t tell lies to each other; it was
here. You should have as little desire for this world as a your old life with all its wickedness
dead person does. Your real life is in heaven with that did that sort of thing; now it is
Christ and God. And when Christ Who is our real life dead and gone.
comes back again, you will shine with Him and share You are living a brand new kind of
in all His glories. life that is continually learning
Away then with sinful, earthly things; deaden the evil more and more of what is right, and
desires lurking within you; have nothing to do with trying constantly to be more and
sexual sin, impurity, lust and shameful desires; don’t more like Christ Who created this
worship the good things of life, for that is idolatry. new life within you.
God’s terrible anger is upon those who do such In this new life one’s nationality or
race or education or social position
is unimportant; such things mean
nothing.
Whether a person has Christ is
what matters, and He is equally
available to all (Col. 2:3, 6-7 & 3:2-
11, Life Application Bible, 1971).