Cross Talk Show 1 - Part 3

I finished reading this letter, which came from the mission field, by the way, from one of our pastors. I was no more sitting on my chair. I was kneeling and weeping.

The letter talked about 35 million people coming to Haridwar by River Ganges. I think a lot of people are familiar with the River Ganges. This is a holy river in India where Hindus believe the river was sent from heaven, from the gods.

At least once in your lifetime you must go into the river and dip yourself to wash your sins away. Our brother, after all the witnessing, was going home. This was a week where they have the high celebration called Kumbh Mela.

This is among the Hindus? Just imagine, 35 million people in a matter of a week or two converging into one place to go into the river. It's more than the population of Canada. As he was going home that evening, he writes in this letter, which now my wife gave to me to read, he saw this young woman sitting by the bank of the river, weeping uncontrollably and pounding upon her chest.

By the custom and the culture, you will know something worse than death itself took place for the woman to do that. So our missionary goes to her and asks, what happened to you? Why are you so desperate? Now he writes her answer. She said, my husband is sick.

He is ill. He can't work. We are very poor people.

And my sins are so many. To find forgiveness for my sins and solution to the problems of my home, I have given the best offering I can give to God as Ganges. My only child, my 6 month old baby boy, I just threw him into the river.

Paragraph. He writes, I sat beside her and explained to her, but your sins are forgiven 2000 years ago. Jesus died for you.

All you have to do is just to believe. God didn't make you poor. He is not mad at you.

He is a loving God. After having explained all these Bible verses and how God wanted to bless her and all these things, he writes, she wiped her tears, looked straight into my eyes and simply said, but why, why didn't you come to me half hour sooner? I didn't have to kill my child. It is too late, isn't it? It is too late.

And Randy, when I finished reading the letter, I said, Lord, every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, all that I am, my wife, my children, everything I have, it is all yours. Whatever you want to do, Lord, I never want again to read another letter like this one. But Randy, that is not strange.

In John's Gospel, Chapter 4, we find Jesus who was thirsty, hungry, worn out, tired, sits there by the well. And this woman comes along, who is a Samaritan woman, who did not know the Father's love, living in darkness. And the disciples come back with the food, telling Master, Rabbi, please eat.

And Jesus says, I lost my appetite. Then they are saying, what happened? Did someone give him something to eat? He says, no. If you read the passage, he says, I have food to eat that you do not know about.

What really happened, his encounter with this woman became a window for him to look through and see a harvest, multitudes that do not know the Father's love and perishing. Like a harvest that if you don't do it at the right time, it perishes. So he says, lift up your eyes and see, you don't have four months, right now it is.

This is what Jesus is all about. He literally lost his appetite. He could not make himself eat anymore because he was so gripped with the reality of the lost.

And this is what I am saying. When you talk about the woman by the river Ganges, you are talking about over a billion people. You are talking about 300 million untouchables.

You are talking about a billion Muslims. See, for us believers, we should not be caught and deceived into all the politics. The wars and rumors of wars and killing and all this stuff will go on.

We are citizens of heaven. You know, I tell people, I can tell you the same thing. I do not know how old you are, but you don't want to tell people maybe.

But I can tell you one thing for sure.