July 1974
"Let The Earth Hear His
Voice"
I leaned forward in my chair, trying to catch some of the words of the language spoken by the girl with the long blond braids seated in front of me.
"Maybe she's Swedish," I thought, "or Norwegian." All around me people were listening through earphones as the message given from the platform was being translated at the same time into French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese, their native languages. The girl and her companions were all dressed in black. There were two women — the girl, and an older woman; the rest were men. The young girl was obviously the interpreter for the group.
"Finland? Hungary? Yugoslavia? Austria?" My mind kept clicking off all the European countries from which a blond girl so dressed could have come.
There was a pause in the meeting as the speaker on the platform sat down, and I leaned forward and tapped the girl on the shoulder. "Excuse me. Would you tell me something? What country do you and your friends come from?"
"We're from Romania," she answered.
"Romania! Oh, I'm so glad you came!" I sank back in my chair. Even from behind the Iron Curtain, then they had
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come. And we were all here to worship the same Christ and to discuss together the task of worldwide evangelization.
I looked about the room with its multiplicity of earphones, the bank of translation booths off to one side, and the colorful assortment of national costumes visible everywhere. Clearly the gospel could not have reached so far without surmounting a jungle of language barriers. Yet I wondered if anyone would believe my husband when he told them, come Saturday, that most of the language and culture barriers were still to be crossed!
My husband, one of the Congress speakers, had been asked to deal with precisely that subject — cross-cultural evangelism. He called it "the highest priority."
We were seated in the big hall at Lausanne, Switzerland, there for Billy Graham's International Congress on World Evangelization. Two thousand seven hundred participants from all over the world were there, and many had brought their spouses. The great convention hall was crowded. From the back rows those on the platform seemed almost toy figures moving about. Yet, astonishingly, high above the speaker's head a huge screen depicted on closed circuit television every gesture and facial expression of the person speaking.
Ralph knew many of the people, so many, it seemed to me, that out in the central lobby we couldn't walk more than five steps before he was greeting or being greeted by someone. Some were friends — mission executives or evangelical leaders from other parts of the United States. Others were his former students — missionaries and national leaders from India, Africa, Taiwan, Australia, Germany, Latin America and Singapore. By now he had had more than a thousand in his classes at the School of World Mission of Fuller Theological Seminary.
Some weeks before the Congress, his address, and all the others, had been sent to each delegate. From the flurry of responses which had come back, we knew his address would be controversial. All the delegates were involved in evangelism,
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but almost all worked exclusively with their own kind of people. Few were working cross culturally, and of these, almost none were working among unreached peoples. Yet the remaining missionary task was huge!
Saturday was the end of an exhausting week, with another yet to go. Some of the delegates had joined their wives on a bus trip to L'Abri, Francis Schaeffer's world-renowned Center. Any other time I too would have liked to go. But . . .
Even so, the hall was mainly full, and I prayed as I sat near the front that the Lord would use Ralph's words to convict the hearts of those present.
Ralph's address1 was one of only two or three that had scheduled responses from the platform. His responders were three well-known mission leaders working in different areas of the world. Their comments were written responses to Ralph's pre-conference paper which they had received weeks before. Since the address Ralph was about to give continued where that earlier paper left off, at his suggestion all three "responders" spoke before he began. Two were a bit critical of his first paper. One had missed his point completely and the other assumed that if we appeal to strategy, we ignore the crucial role of the Holy Spirit.
I was troubled by the criticism, especially of the second. "It is true," I thought, "that in relying on a specific strategy we may be relying on man's best wisdom without reference to the Holy Spirit. But it does not have to be this way. The scriptures show that God often gave detailed plans as to how He wanted something done. Isn't that strategy? I do hope this man's negative comments don't confuse people so that they will fail to understand the importance of what Ralph has to say!"
Then Ralph began to speak, backing his statistics with diagrams on the video screen high above his head. He responded first to those who had preceded him and then commented on some of the pre-conference letters he had received. Several from India and Africa had written: "We are
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able to evangelize our own countries. The day of the missionary is past; we don't need missionaries any more."
Obviously they too had missed his point. How could he make them understand? "If you are like most evangelists, pastors and missionaries, almost all your efforts are spent bringing nominal Christians to a real and vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. Even when your church does evangelize people from a totally non-Christian background, are these not almost entirely from within your own cultural group?
But what about those others, maybe even in your own country, who do not speak your language or who belong to a different culture, tribe or people? That is where the main, unfinished task lies. Almost no one is even trying to reach them.
"Do you realize that in India alone there are 500 million unreached people, mainly hidden behind caste barriers? And what about the 600 million Muslims, 800 million Chinese, 100 million tribal peoples, and many other unreached people groups scattered around the world?
"Even supposing every church in the world were to reach outside its doors and win everyone within range — people who speak the same language and come from the same culture — do you realize there are so many other untouched groups that, even then, five out of six of the non-Christians in the world would remain unevangelized?"
The figures were too staggering. Ralph's words were like a time bomb that had not yet gone off. Yet I knew that his information was accurate, as accurate as anyone's could possibly be. I had been with him through the years when he was amassing those statistics. He had drawn on the most reliable sources, and because of his graduate degree in mathematical statistics, he knew how to analyze the data. Yet we both realized that many at the Congress would find it hard to believe there was so much yet to be done — beyond new barriers!
I glanced around to see how those near me were reacting.
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With a sigh of relief, I saw they were listening intently, with apparent understanding and increasing conviction.
"Nominal Christians need to be truly saved," Ralph was saying, "and I'm all for the kind of evangelism that brings such people into a personal relationship with Christ. Even more crucial, perhaps, is winning the non-Christians who speak our various languages and are from our own cultures. All too often we have really neglected them.
"But if you are asking what evangelistic task must have the highest priority today, then without question we must refer to those who have never had a chance to hear the gospel in their own languages and cultural settings. Of 2.8 billion non-Christians in the world. Despite all the wonderful mission work across the years and the outreach of national churches everywhere, there are still 2.4 billion people beyond the range of present efforts of any existing church or mission."
I could hear the sharp intake of breath from someone behind me. Glancing back, I could see that he looked astonished, incredulous.
On the platform, his face now televised on the screen high above him, Ralph put it more vividly. "If every one of us had stopped on his way to this Congress and won a million people to Christ, we could have disbanded this Congress. The job would have been done. But each delegate here would have had to win one million people. That is the size of the unfinished task!"
Ralph wrote that message for the participants, but God meant it also for Ralph (and for me). Was his role only to be that of "a voice crying in the wilderness," pointing the way? Or did God intend for him to set a personal example?
That was the question which, almost two years later, launched us on the greatest adventure of our lives.
Chapter Two || Table of Contents
1. This address was printed in the Congress compendium Let the Earth Hear His Voice, edited by J.D. Douglas and published by World Wide Publications, 1313 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403. It is available as a separate pamphlet entitled "The New Macedonia: A Revolutionary New Era Begins," available from William Carey Library, P.O. Box 40129, Pasadena, CA 91104.
