The Greatest Missionary is the Bible

The greatest missionary is the Bible. You notice the sword, the word in Africa, that's been our badge for the last 38 years, coming up to 39 years now. We're a Bible-based mission and Bible distribution is a key part of our work and Bible teaching. We want to put feet to our faith, but the greatest missionary is the Bible itself. William Cameron Townsend said, the greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner. William Cameron Townsend was one of the most influential missionary leaders in the last century. Born in California 1896, raised in the Presbyterian church, he was inspired to join the student volunteer movement after hearing missionary John Mott speak at the Occidental College in Los Angeles. Some of the first missionary conferences ever held was organized by John Mott, who was a prime mover in the Edinburgh conference in 1910. In 1917, as William Townsend prepared to join the American Army and participate in the Great War, as it was then called, he was challenged by missionary Onfurler to rather make the Great Commission his priority and go to the mission field instead of to the battlefield. And so it was, August 1917, that William Cameron Townsend departed for Guatemala, Central America, with a Bible association that sold Spanish Bibles in the field. He had almost completed his first year of service in Guatemala when one of the capture-kill Indians approached his table and looking at a Spanish Bible asked, if your God is so smart, why doesn't he speak my language? Cameron was shocked to learn that although this man lived in Guatemala and was one of 200,000 capture-kill people that spoke no Spanish, there was no Bible available for him in either his mother tongue or even a tongue that he understood, because he did not speak Spanish. The cutting comment of this Indian so troubled Cameron that he dedicated the next 13 years of his life to translating the Bible into their language. He then began an organization known as Wycliffe Bible Translators, named after the morning star of the Reformation, Professor John Wycliffe of Oxford University, who was the first to translate the Bible to English. Although he did not have access to the Greek and Hebrew, he was only using the Latin, and of course there was no printing press, it was all handwritten copies, but nevertheless Wycliffe was the first to translate the Bible into English. So in 1937, that's a long time ago, we're talking about 83 years ago, Cameron Townsend opened up Camp Wycliffe in Arkansas to train young people in basic linguistics and translation methods. Two students enrolled in that first summer. The next year, five men attended, and from these very small humble beginnings grew the Worldwide Ministry of Summer Institute of Linguistics, Wycliffe Bible Translators and Wycliffe Associates. And you may wonder why do they have a term like Summer Institutes of Linguistics, which we often know just as SIL? Well, in Muslim countries, you don't want to say I'm from Wycliffe Bible Translators. So SIL is the cover they do, they use in countries where Bible translation is not encouraged, legal, or looked on favorably. No cultural group is considered too small, no language too great a challenge. Today there are thousands of mission workers engaged in Wycliffe Bible translation projects, what they have done is spectacular. William Townsend has been credited with launching the New Missions Frontier, which no longer focuses on reaching continents and inland countries, but on every distinct ethnic group or people group in the world. Now there have been three great phases of missions. The first great phase of missions we generally understand was launched by William Carey. He launched foreign missions, but of course that was on the coastlands. Hudson Taylor is credited with launching the second phase of world missions, which was aiming at inland groups. And since he had a whole generation of China Inland Mission, African Inland Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, and you can see that that was all following on the China Inland Mission model, which was different too. The first model, the one launched by William Carey, was denominational. Baptist Mission Societies, Methodist Mission Societies, Anglican and so on. The one launched by China Inland Mission, by Hudson Taylor, that was interdenominational faith missions which were also open to lay people, people who weren't theologically trained necessarily, and also open to women, very revolutionary, single women. And the third phase is the one that aims at every distinct ethnic group or people group in the world. And this is what William Cameron Townsend launched. Now this is from Wycliffe today, looking at numbers of languages still needing work. So they understand that according to the ethnologue, there are 12,000 ethno-linguistic groups in the world. And this is the unfinished task. Now, to be fair, having said all this, this represents 2% of the world's population. That's a lot of languages, a lot of work, because there's some small groups. So when someone was hearing about a Bushman translation people work on, into Khoisan, it was Carl Frey who said that he asked this man, but how many people speak this? And he said, so how many of your ancestors arrived by ship in Cape Town 350 years ago? And the point is, it's not just for this generation, it's for all their descendants and other generations. It's not just the numbers of people at this moment. You've got to have a multi-generational vision. Jesus Christ focused on ethno-linguistic people groups in the Great Commission. When the Lord commanded us to make ourselves of every nation, he used the word ethne. Every nation, the word is ethne, from which our word ethnic comes from. The Great Commission is not merely to take the gospel to every one of the 222 countries in the world, but to each of the at least 16,000 ethno-linguistic people groups in the world. Unfortunately, many today are confused about the concept of nations. You talk about nation, and many people don't understand what Jesus said when he spoke nation, what the Bible means when it says nation, because there's a group of state representatives in New York calling themselves the United Nations. Now they're nothing of a sort. They're not united, they're certainly not nations. Most of them have no legitimacy at all. UN members are mostly gangsters with flags. The United Nations today is the largest collection of unelected dictators, mass murderers, drug traffickers, and human traffickers on the planet. People like Fidel Castro have been honored guests speaking from the main podium in the United Nations. Mass murdering thug who turned an island paradise into a hellhole, which millions of people fled from. Gangsters with flags, like Idi Amin, who was once president of the African Union, or chairman of the African Union. Vicious dictator who killed and ate the archbishop of his country, amongst other things. Honored guest at UN. Robert Mugabe, one of the longest reigning dictators, and criminal oppressors. What else can he say about the Gaddafis and Amin al-Jihad and all those characters? Sigh. And we need to exterminate Israel with nuclear warfare type of Iranian dictators. So this is why I say they have no legitimacy at all. The United Nations is the biggest collection of unelected dictators on the earth. And they're backed up by a bunch of blue helmeted thugs. And this has been documented by the fearful master, by G. Edward Griffith, on a fearful master, taking a quote from George Washington, who said that government is not reason, government is force. It is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master. And it documents the atrocities done in the Congo by the United Nations forces. The whistleblower is a true story of Catherine Bolkovac, an American policewoman who worked in Bosnia, thinking she was meant to help women. And she discovered that the UN was running the human trafficking, sex pimping industry, the whole prostitution rings. And when she rescued some girls from it, put them in a witness protection program, the UN just handed them right back the pimps who tortured them to death. She went to the head of the mission. She went up to the General Secretary of the United Nations. And they put a contract out in her life. And she's living under a witness protection program in England, cannot return to home country America, because of fear for her life. And the British government has given her protection because they recognize the United Nations want to kill her for blowing the whistle on their running human trafficking. Romier Dallier, Canadian General in Charge of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, who documents that the UN had prior knowledge of the genocide, didn't do it, sabotaged his efforts, forbade him to confiscate the million red Chinese machetes that were already in warehouse before they were distributed into hardware, four months before the genocide. He was warning everyone from Warren Christopher, American Foreign Secretary, all the way through Bill Clinton, and of course, the UN Secretary General, Brutus Ghali, the head of the Security Council, Kofi Annan, and so on. And they did, oh, you can't say they did nothing. They did everything they could to prevent him stopping the genocide and hobbling their efforts. Black Book of Communism, Holocaust in Rwanda, we've documented this is the greatest hive, wretched hive of scum in Vilnius. Anyone recognize where that quote come from? You will never find a more wretched hive of scum in Vilnius. It comes from the first Star Wars. And it's more applicable to UN than just to that place there, which is why we've sometimes taken a UN flag out to the shooting range. And when they've had UN flag day, I've sometimes staked out a UN flag at our entranceway for people to wipe their feet on. And we've got one of these signs, this is a UN free zone. The Tower of Babel is the inspiration for these characters. Just look at the European Union's strange looking design. Now, you notice on the left, this is Bruegel's famous Tower of Babel picture, this painting on the left and on the right, the EU Parliament in Strasbourg. And you can see it's deliberately modeled right down to the incomplete structure with the scaffolding. And they know it because this is their post in the middle, Europe, many tongues, one voice. What do you think they're saying? We are reversing Babel. We are defying God. We're going to succeed where Babel failed. And look at the stars of the EU. They've specifically inverted them to make them the satanic goat head, the pentagram, with the two horns up top in the ears and in the goat's beard. And they've inverted the stars which normally face point top. Many tongues, one voice. I've been there, ministered to these characters, some of the most close people on the planet. The EU has 10,000 unelected officials who each receive more salary and benefits than the Prime Minister of Great Britain. But they're unelected. And they have no term limitations, sadly. So the EU is just one manifestation, of course, this African Union, which you could say the same about. The United States deludes itself that it is one nation under God. But look at the ethnic origins of Americans. And you can see here all the different ethnic categories. Everything from, well, you can see the French in the red. You can see the purple here for African Americans or Black Americans, they call them. You can see everything from the Japanese, which of course, mostly Hawaii. And those with English background, those with Norwegian background, those with Dutch background, those with French. Notice how the Italians totally dominate New York and Chicago and so on. And so America's got vast amounts of ethnic characteristics. In fact, America is not a nation, it is many nations. Yet, these poor kids are required to pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Now, that's not true on any level. There's no liberty and justice for pre-born babies, just for starters. You don't get the same liberty and justice if you're a Christian, as if you're a homosexual, gay, GB creep, and so on and so forth. I much prefer the pledge of the Christian flag. I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the savior for whose kingdom it stands, one savior crucified, risen, and coming again with life and liberty to all who believe. Now, that's a pledge I could give happily on a daily basis. Why 50 states in a voluntary union should be considered indivisible seems incomprehensible to most of us. Yet, Americans are expected to make this mindless pledge on a regular basis. But the United States are 50 sovereign states. By the way, you look at the Articles of Confederation, the United States of America are. It always was are, all the way through the Founding Fathers. And it only became the United States of America is after Lincoln and the war between the states. The United States of America are because it's 50 states. It's not the United States of America, it's the United States of America. Why should these 50 sovereign states be indivisible? When you find in, for example, the last election, that it was basically California and New York voting for Democrats and everyone else voted for Republicans, basically, it was just so lopsided. Why should it be? They showed with Obama. You had a few on the left coast, as they call the West Coast, and a few on the East Coast, who were on the side of Democrats. And then everyone in the middle were not. But the Democrats ruled because they had numbers on those two coasts. But why should these people in the middle not have the opportunity to secede, should they want to peacefully and legally? Like Chicago, Detroit and so on. That's true. But the bulk of the country, if you're looking at it... I understand. I understand the way the population spreads. But the fact still is, geographically, only a small part of America is predominantly Democrat and the bulk isn't. It's true the biggest population centers, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, is where they are. I mean, that's just standard. Now, when the Soviet Union broke up and Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and many others broke away, that was considered a good thing. And it was much rejoicing. It's a good thing the Soviet Union was not indivisible. Praise God it was not indivisible. In fact, our Bibles for Sudan are now coming from Belarus, right there. You know, where Phil Beth and Brother Andrew used to smuggle Bibles into. Minsk is their capital. Belarus, which used to be one of the worst of the Soviet Union states for persecution of the Church. The breakup of the Soviet Union was an occasion for great rejoicing in these countries. Here you can see also the Soviet Union's population distribution overwhelmingly in the West. Vast amounts with sparsely populated people, like the United States to some degree, an empire. Vast amounts of people, vast varieties of religions, ethnic, linguistic, cultural groupings. Why were they forced to be part of one country with one political party? In fact, when you look at it in terms of their regional flags, you understand this is an empire. It is not a country, it's an empire. So to speak about the Soviet Union as a nation is unbiblical. Today, the Russian Federation has still a huge amount of territory and so on, but 14 other countries have broken away. I can't even call them nations. Some of them are nations like Lithuania and Estonia, but others are a bit of empires as well, and with quite a bit of a mix of people. But the whole concept of nation, you've got to understand, many people would have spoken about the Soviet Union as a nation, but the Soviet Union was an empire, it was not a nation. And even today, Russia is more of an empire than nation. It's got many languages in it too. Consider the destructive legacy of Versailles. There never was such a concept as Yugoslavia before the vindictive and destructive Versailles Treaty of 1919, and it doesn't exist today either. Here you can see what Yugoslavia has created in the Versailles Treaty. For what reason? Just to rip as much of the Austrian Empire away and to punish Austria, which had been Austerreich, the Eastern Empire that for centuries had kept Europe safe from the Turks. And Yugoslavia, meaning the land of the South Slavs, included Slovenia and Croatia, who were not Slavic, they were formerly part of the Austrian Empire, their Germanic language and culture. However, the fragile political entity called Yugoslavia was composed of six republics, five nationalities, four languages, three major religions, two alphabets, and by the way, two calendars as well, but only one political party, communist from 1945 to 1989. Under this horrible flag with this ugly red star, Yugoslavia is one of the worst countries in the East Bloc, as brother Andrew documents with the vicious persecution church. Why they got a good rap in the media boggles the brain, but it enabled the American government to sell them high-tech American weaponry because they believed they were a non-aligned communist country, whatever that is. Three independent nations had now broken away from their empire. There also was never such a concept as Czechoslovakia before the Versailles Treaty of 1919, and it doesn't exist today either. The kaleidoscope country created by the Versailles Treaty, Czechoslovakia, did not long survive the fall of the Iron Curtain and the withdrawal of the Soviet armies of occupation. In 1993, Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia peacefully after referendum. So biblically, a nation is an ethno-linguistic people group of a shared faith. The scriptures make it clear that the Hebrews remained Hebrews, even after 480 years in Egypt. They never became Egyptians, yet today people want you to believe that where you're born, which could be a geographic accident, determines your nationality. That is not a biblical concept. The Hebrews never became Egyptians. We are not geographic accidents, we are demographic descendants. I mean, if you're born in aircraft over the Atlantic or on a ship, what nationality? Well, you have nationality of your parents. I mean, it's not that hard to work out. But the world today is trying to push a different version, a new world order, globalist agenda. The scriptures emphasize that all the families of the nations of the earth are to sing the praise of the Creator in every language and tongue. Look at this. This is mind-boggling for average liberal globalist. Revelation 5 is there, and they sang a new song saying, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open the seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Even in heaven, there will be distinctions of nations and tongues and languages. Absolutely incredible. You wonder when we're singing, if we'll all be singing in our own languages, forming a magnificent orchestra of praise to the Lord. And we read not just every person, but every creature in the seas, in the earth, under the earth, in the air, every creature, including the fish, including the birds of the air, the animals on the earth, even the creatures that are under the earth, they will all be singing on that great day. And so every tongue and every language and every people and every nation, and when the Bible speaks of nation, you can be sure it's not talking about, oh, America, one nation, Russia, one nation, China, one nation. Nonsense. No, you've got to look at the world from God's perspective. There are different interlinguistic groupings that made up Europe. These are the different, the Slavic, the Celtic, the Germanic, the Greco, the Frankish and the Baltic and so on. And from the ethnologue perspective, from the Wiktor Faber Translator's perspective, they are looking at not just, oh, they have a church in Holland, good. No, what about the Vietnamese boat people in Amsterdam harbour? They're a distinct group that need language work done for them in their unique cultural grouping. And the Moroccans in Amsterdam, they're looking at them as a distinct group with their language and so on. And so in missiology, we learn how to reach every people and culture. You don't say, oh, Cape Town, they have a church in Cape Town. There's a vast amount of languages and cultures and groups in Cape Town. And so when you're looking from an ethnolinguistic point of view, Europe becomes a lot more complicated. Take India, hundreds of languages in India. And as you saw from the Beyond the Next Mountain film, yes, the Mar people were not considered the same and did not consider them the same as the average Indian. And of course, there's the Hindu Indians, there's the Christian Indians, there's the Muslim Indians, there's the Sikhs, very different religions, very different languages. Many people think of Africa like this. 55 countries, if you count the islands. But actually, you've got to look at the languages. You've got to look at the tribal groupings. The different peoples in Africa are vast and diverse. We have 3,000 languages in Africa. That means we've got at least 3,000 ethnolinguistic people groups in Africa. You can't just think of 55 countries. You've got to think of every single ethnolinguistic group. I mean, even Zambia. You get to Zambia and you reach the Chichewa people, great. But what about the Bemba? What about the Losi, who are very neglected out there in the western part of Zambia? Nigeria has 480 languages. And we generally only know about the Hausa, the Yorubo, and the Igbo, the three main ones. But there's 480 language groups in Nigeria. There's 148 languages in Sudan. There's 27 language groups just in South Sudan. There's 50 language groups just in the Nuba Mountains. And now I see that Ben's confusing things by saying there's 100 language groups in the Nuba Mountains because they've now taken South Kordofan, which is much bigger than the Nuba Mountains, and called them all Nuba languages. Well, that's confusing things because there's 50 language groups in the Nuba Mountains. There's 100 language groups, including those 50, in the South Kordofan. But not all South Kordofan is in Nuba Mountains. You know, it's like confusing Scotland with England. We need to keep distinguished also the linguistic family groups and understand how it breaks down geographically. And of course, this is what Literature of Africa has to be concerned about. You may think, why does Literature of Africa have 100 different languages? Well, we're working in areas that have at least 100 different languages. And this is how we've got to understand Africa. We've got to understand it in terms of ethno-linguistic people groups. Although, it is pointed out that there are five main languages that can reach most people in Africa in terms of the second language. Now, people are always more responsive to the home language, but English is the official language of 24 countries in Africa. French is the official language of 21 countries in Africa. Arabic is the official language of seven countries in North Africa. And then you've got five countries in Africa that have Portuguese the official language, including the Cape Verde Islands and Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique and Angola. And you even have, you could take Swahili as the fifth language out there. As examples of how demographics have changed and present challenges to missionaries, consider this. Do you know there are a quarter of a million Arabs living in Detroit, Michigan? There are 40,000 Iraqis living in Detroit, Michigan. That's a massive mission field. And so you've got some Americans saying, oh, I wish I could be a missionary to Saudi Arabia. Well, you can be a missionary to a quarter of a million Saudi Arabians just in Detroit. And by the way, you know, we in Cape Town can reach Saudi Arabians. There's Saudi Arabians in Rojava. There's more than one million Japanese living in Sao Paulo, one city in Brazil, a million Japanese. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city of eight million people, 10% of churches are Korean speaking. That's not 10% of the population of Buenos Aires, but 10% of churches because the Koreans are very highly evangelized disciple people, very high percentage of Reformed churches amongst the Koreans. So in fact, it's amazing how many Korean churches spring up in Cape Town. In Marseille, France, a city of two million inhabitants, 31% come from Africa, most of them of Arab origin. Now you might not be able to be a missionary to Algeria, say, but you could reach a massive amount of hundreds of thousands of Algerians just in Marseille, for example. In Minneapolis, St. Paul, where I've undertaken many missions, there are 136 languages represented, more than 70 ethnic groups, more than half a million people in the Twin Cities are immigrants. There are now more Buddhists, 56,000 Buddhists living in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, than Assemblies of God adherents in the entire state of Minnesota. There are twice as many Muslims, there's 110,000 Muslims living in Minneapolis, St. Paul, in Minnesota, than Assemblies of God adherents in the whole state of Minnesota. There are more Bulgarians living in Chicago than in the capital city of Bulgaria, Sofia. Do you know there's more Jews living in New York than are living in Israel? A lot of people can't see the mission field right around them. A lot of people's observation skills are really challenging. You can just imagine this guy saying, if you look over there, far in the distance on that tree, you might see a lion, and they don't see the one right next to them. And there we are thinking, if only I could reach the people in Saudi Arabia, and yet they're now in town. World missions is no longer just across oceans, deserts, and mountains, and that's why Daniel's message on the stationary Christian and the itinerant Christian is just so important. We've got to rethink our idea of missions. Missions is no longer far away in another country only. Missions is in virtually every city in the world, Cape Town more than most. Many nations have moved into our neighborhoods. We have how many Somalis living in Cape Town? And yet, you know, Somalia is one of the most closed countries on the planet. They destroyed the last church in the country in 1993. Somalia is extremely close, but you can reach tens of thousands of Somalis in Cape Town. Some mission frontiers are no longer that geographically distant, but culturally different and literally in our neighborhoods, which is why a mission base in Cape Town needs a hundred different languages to manage. I remember when going on outreach in Cape Town, all you really need was English and Afrikaans, and it was that simple. And then it came a time that, oh, we should pack a few Causa tracks, too. There are a few Causa people in Lange and Grievel. And then the time came, gee, you need to pack several boxes of Causa tracks. Next thing, you're worrying about Somali, Arabic, Portuguese, French, and it just got more and more complex. Why? The world is moving into the cities. Take Burkhop. Do you realize how big Burkhop is? Burkhop, the Malay quarter, is like another country. You go in there, it's like you're in the Middle East. And I've walked around Burkhop from 1982 with one of the finest Muslim evangelists that's, that's, I think, been produced in this last century, Kenneth Niels. And I heard Kenneth Niels relating the parables of Jesus in one home after the other as we knocked on doors. The people are very hospitable. I found the Malay people extremely hospitable, very open, willing to invite you in, serve you tea and samosas and all that sort of thing. And this is a mission field. This is, going to Burkhop is like traveling up into the Middle East. The Middle East has moved here, and it's quite a community. I mean, these people are tight. When I was doing our work in Burkhop, we counted 11 mosques in that little area of Burkhop. I believe there's now 13, possibly 14 mosques in that small area. And some of them are pretty old. And by the way, do you know that the highest place of worship that you have in Cape Town is this mosque, which is also the gravesite of a sheikh dating back to the 1600s? Now, why do we have so many Malays here? The Dutch East India Company treated Cape Town like the British treated Australia, a penal colony where they could ship troublemakers. And so, because they ran the Dutch East Indies, which includes what today is called Malaya and Indonesia, many criminals or revolutionaries or rebels or whatever caused grief to the Dutch rule there, they shipped them off here. Now, they were called slaves, but it was basically the same as where the British shipped so many Irish and so on off to Australia. They were, what do you call it, indentured laborers. They had to come and work the farm or whatever they were crowding during the day. And at night, they were able to go back to their families. So, they didn't live the life of a normal slave because they had their homes and families, but their labor was owned. They had to go out each day and work for, except Cape Town. This shape was buried up there and it built a mosque there and it's a favorite place for weddings, by the way. Just look at this prominent mosque right in what used to be called District 6. And in Athlon, we've got one of the biggest mosques around. It's absolutely staggering. Here you can see Strange Street, Lutheran, where Lenore Sung handled Messiah before, and on the other side of the road, the mosque. This is just giving us the kind of example of the clash, not just of cultures and worldviews, but there's a German-speaking Lutheran church, St. Martin's, and here's this mosque facing one another on the same street, top of Long Street. Well, we've got the details of what I've just given you in our Great Commission Handbook. The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. To reach these many nations, we need the word of God in every language. The Lord gave the word, great was the company of those who proclaimed it. Gospel literature is the most cost-effective means of evangelism. The Lord gave the word, great was the company of those that proclaimed it. The written word can go where and when a human voice cannot, like passing cars at taxi ranks, at traffic lights. It is the most cost-effective way of proclaiming the gospel. Getting out onto the streets with gospel literature, it has no passport or visa problems like we have passport and visa problems. Literature knows no fear. We might know some fear. Literature doesn't. We might lose our temper, but literature never loses its temper. It never tires. It's never discouraged. It can tell its story over and over again, and it can be read when people are the most responsive. When people's attention is fully there, it can be received, read, and studied in secret. It speaks without an accent in the language of the people. It never compromises. The written word is more permanent than the human voice. We may go home, the books stay, the Bibles stay. A drop of ink can make a million think. So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Do you have gospel booklets and scriptures in your pocket, in your purse, in your handbag, in your vehicle, in your track compartments, in a car, to distribute to those that you encounter on a daily basis? For I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation of everyone who believes. Are you regularly giving gospel booklets to friends, co-workers, neighbors, strangers, people at the traffic department, at the petrol station? For the word of God is living and powerful, sharp as any double-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and it is a discern of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Stock up on spiritual ammunition. We are involved in the world war of worldviews. This is a battle for hearts, a battle for minds, a battle for souls. What we do now has consequences for eternity. So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to be void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. So to reach our missions around here, we go to the malls. The Bible says that there's not wisdom cry aloud in the marketplace, at the crossroads, at the gateways of the city. So to get into shopping malls, and we've been doing this since 1995, we've been getting into shopping malls, sometimes getting permission to open up book tables, and to sell books and Bibles in shopping centers like Cavendish Square. We got three years in a row where we've managed to get there. We've gone everywhere from Canal Walk out to Long Beach, many places. And one of the ways of just reading Bibles is to offer free New Testament to those who will complete our spiritual well-being survey, which is basically where the master and EE questions put in a format that you ask the questions, you don't give it to them to do, you ask them because people would give up quickly when you asked the question of, so how many lies have you told them? Things like this. And this has led to many wonderful discussions and praying with people in the shopping malls. Now, as a Bible-based mission, we import and we export. And containers have arrived at the gates. And at first, we had to offload them outside the gates, and especially to come with 40-foot container load, and obviously can't fit that through the gate. And you've seen the people over the years getting involved and offloading it. I remember the first container that arrived here, there was no one here, everyone had left, it was 5.30 in the evening, and it was just my family to do the offloading. Colin has gotten us down to fine art, and people didn't think you could get these massive Pentechmicons to reverse in through our gates. If you wonder why we've got railway sleepers on each side, it's not sleepers, the actual railways on each side to protect our walls if the drivers make a mistake. So it says vehicle B, sorry, not our gatepost. And obviously, you've got to be careful at the beginning. But this is what we call frontline Jim, being able to sometimes GCC people, volunteers, people come from KSB, and to organise volunteers and even IT getting involved, and offloading, organising, and it's great exercise. And of course, when it's raining, you've got to come up with another plan. And so sometimes we've had to have real ingenuity, like it was a July this last year, we had a deluge. And so managing to see that the literature stays dry, and gets organised. And we've got me, this is the tent that was being spoken about by Daniel last night, that used to be stores, which now is Pastor Ruben's church in Chongwe in Zambia. And you may wonder, where's all this literature going to go? The longest staff member at stores has always been Florence, 16 years, overseeing a rodent free environment. Sometimes we've had all the men in the field, and it's been mostly women doing the offloading of these shipments. And it's a great opportunity, sorting, organising, packing, distributing, arranging, getting the things out into the hands of those who need it most, whether it's prisons, churches, schools, World Missionary Press now is shipping the materials to us, posters, Sunday school materials. It's just phenomenal materials, study Bibles, evangelistic Bibles, kits, every kind of different translation. Well, we try to say KJV, NKJV and ESV are favourites, and try to get them to limit the others. But of course, many things are mixed. And it just takes a lot of sorting out. And there we need volunteers to get through those that need repairs, those that are damaged, try to get the categories together, group them together, so that we know. And for example, in 2011, we received thousands of KJV, the KJV 400 editions, which was really great to distribute out there, very popular in Zambia in particular. NKJV is my personal favourite, but the KJV and NKJV are really outstanding. We've sometimes got an old technology, this is old Sunday school audio visual materials, which we have, and I remember the Sunday schools being operated with these back when I was converted in 1977. So to be able to make sense of it, so when a missionary or a Bible college professor comes in, we want to order, categorise, have the things lined up so that we can quickly ascertain what's available for the people, and library books. This is what Colin's office looked like at one time. But obviously, we need to do a bit more sorting out to get it back to that again. Of course, we do mailing lists, boxes with love to pensioners in Zimbabwe, and then we always add a whole lot of Bibles, New Testaments, Scripture materials. There are some outstanding materials that one receives, the Discovery Series, the Navigators, and from Chapel Library. These fill the stands and get selectively outstanding teaching. The tracts, some of them we produce, others people bring in, but Literature for Africa is at the heart of this mission because it receives and distributes materials to the people who need it the most. Now, of course, we've got our own library. We've got our own William Carey Bible Institute correspondence course. We donate a lot of books and Bibles and audiovisuals to colleges and places all over. There's the homeschooling side of CLB, and then there's Indigenous Bibles, which we receive specially sponsored by George Verve's special projects from Operation Mobilization. Then off to the field. Sometimes we've got to hire a forklift, and it's good that Colin's got a license for that because when we've got to package, prepare, waterproof tons of these materials, and sometimes you can get a 32-ton carrying capacity truck, and we've got to get 32 pallets onto a truck and off. These might be going to Zambia, or Zimbabwe for other missions, and this is difficult because you don't want to block traffic. So this is often done early in the morning or later in the afternoon or even in the evening when there's less traffic around, and sometimes it's done in the rain, which explains why you need to waterproof the materials going on a flatbed truck. So that's why when we waterproof the literature, it's got to be really serious. You see why you've got to have waterproofed World Missionary Press Gospel Booklets when you go into the field. And then at the sharp end, at the other end, you've got volunteers helping to carry the box of Bibles delivery to villages in Angola, to churches without buildings which have been destroyed by the Cubans, to people who had no books except one old tattered Bible, not a hymn book, their church destroyed, able to deliver, in this case, a whole lot of great resources from All Nations Gospel Publishers. This is the greatest gift anyone could have asked for, this man said, the Word of God in my own language. I've been praying five years for my very own copy of the Word of God, this woman said. Zambia, in the field, back to the Bible mission, students from over 20 countries at any one time, getting good textbooks in their hands. Bishop Bonali Ferry, our good friend in Zambia. Here, Excellence Christian Academy up in Kabwe, old Broken Hill, stocking the Covenant College Library in Petioka in Zambia, delivering the first Biblical Worldview materials, the Biblical Principles Africa books, to Parliament in Zambia. And the first French translation of Biblical Principles Africa to Lubumbashi, old Elizabethville. And to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Zambia, General Ronnie Shikapasha, to the President of Zambia, Levi Mwanawasa. This is how it often starts, and that's some of the terrain we've got to drive over, and en route, there's a lot of people to distribute Gospel literature to. Marketplaces on the streets, in the different villages, in the most rural areas, all across Africa, distributing world missionary press, and the broad way, narrow way, in English, in French, in different languages. And these are some of the people receiving, like in this case, a French Bible. I think this lady's in the Congo. Do you know her? And of course, Congo for Christ. There we go. Now you know where we're talking about. This is definitely Elpha's territory. Biblical Principles for Africa and French, delivered to Burundi and to the Congo, the Romans, John and Romans, Gospels, which are very appreciated in the field. Reaching the Muslim world in South Sudan has been a major part of our work. At first, we could only fly in, and we flew in tons. In fact, I calculated that we have flown in, or driven in, 850,000 Bibles and Christian books in over 28 languages into Sudan, just since 1995, including to the chaplains. Bibles and Bikes is a major project of ours, providing every chaplain with a bicycle and a box of Bibles. The largest shipment of Bibles delivered to this date, 1998, 9,700 Bibles and New Testaments in seven languages. And there's the ambulance we drove up from Transvaal to donate to the hospital up there, to get people from the battlefront to the hospital. An old Second World War Dakota DC-3, ex-South African Air Force, turboprop conversion, with an ex-South African Air Force pilot on charter, to fly us into a newly liberated airstrip where we were able to distribute these Bibles, which almost all went to newly liberated territory. A ton of Bibles is what we could fit in an average caravan. The bridge that missionaries had to build over the blown-up bridges to get the Bibles to where they needed to be. The first Bibles in the moral language delivered to the church at Walnut Dye, the birthplace of Christians in Southern Sudan, Fraser Cathedral in Lurie. Obviously, a lot of the distribution is done on the road by our four-wheel drive vehicles to the soldiers, chapels, handbooks, teachers, textbooks for teachers, seeing that the Word of God gets to our friends in the field. These are moral Christians in Equatorial. Some of our good friends, Vasco over here, receiving Bibles and books we chipped up. Geoffrey Kianga, one of our very good friends, who's, oh, we've done, we've walked hundreds of kilometers together in some of the most remote areas and endured bombardments together and come under fire together, receiving libraries for pastors, Bishop Bismarck in Moraland, Reformation Study Bibles. By God's grace, we have been donated over 2,000 Reformation Study Bibles by Dr. R.C. Sproul, who is the head of this Bible for us to distribute to key people in the field. Now, the Nuba Mountains has been a particular challenge, one of the most remote, dangerous, difficult-to-reach areas on the planet. Again, using DC-3 turboprops sometimes to deliver the materials. When we first started going in the 90s, there was no road vehicle anywhere. Everything was carried by hand, on head, including the blackboards for the schools. And here you can see the difference between rainy season and dry season. And notice it's all women carrying the box of Bibles. The men would bring their wives along to carry the Bibles back. No chivalry over there. Beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, banners being raised on the mountains, ministering to the people of the Nuba Mountains, people who convert from Islamic background, delivering them world missionary press, gospel booklets, scripture gift mission materials, WMPs, also seeing that they're not alone, they're not forgotten, seeing from the frontline news and from the Faith Undefined Sudan, their stories, their pictures, their testimonies. Reaching people who are as remote as possible, providing them with textbooks. And for the people who couldn't read and write, the man in the box who speaks my language, the gospel recordings, taped, hand-cranked, solar panel powered. And we've equipped hundreds of evangelists in Sudan and across Africa with great resources, which can always get a crowd in the marketplace. And these are the prototypes that we were given of waterproofed containers from gospel recordings or Bible media. And in order to have the man in the box who speaks my language, taped it with the different pictures that go along with the flip charts and so on, and the bicycle donated to him. Our one feedback was, yes, it's waterproof, but could you please not make it yellow? We don't want our forecast to be a target for the Arabs. Walking Nuba Mountains, why about trees? I thought they only were in Zimbabwe, but they get them up in Nuba as well. And ministering to Arabs in the marketplace, film evangelism used to be very heavy, 16-mil projector generator. That's so much better now with solar panels, batteries, and video projectors. But we missed preaching between each of the four reels, which is a fun way of ministering in the Nuba Mountains. And so film evangelism and audio ministry is to reach the people who are illiterate and to serve as a point of contact from where we can then build on more Bible teaching, more providing hymn books, catechisms. These are for the Otoro people, this is for the Krongo people. And as I said, you have caused a thousand tongues to sing. The Krongo New Testament, which was translated in the 50s into the 60s, but all missionaries were kicked out of the country in 1962. We managed to find the old Sudan United Mission transcripts in the old typewriter, manual, before electric, before computers. And we didn't dare scan it because who speaks Krongo to proof it? We just light the plates straight from the text, which is why these are unusual size and shape. First Krongo Bible is you can see a copy of these. It's like folio size, the old size that the Australian missionaries back in the 50s and 60s were typing on. So that's the first Krongo New Testament delivered to the Nuba Mountains. And then my record in 1998 was shattered two years ago by our team taking in 40,000 Bibles and 50,000 books. And last year broken even more with 120,000 Bibles and books delivered to Nuba Mountains. Certainly nobody ever challenged my claim that it was the largest shipment of Bibles ever smuggled into officially Islamic country in 1998, 9,700. And no one's challenged in the last two years that these deliveries to Nuba Mountains is the largest shipments of Bibles ever delivered into an officially Islamic country that we know of. So we, I want to end with this one story of how the people received the moral Bible in the Nuba Mountains, sorry, in Equatorial, back in South Sudan now. Canon Ezra Lewiri was killed in ambush very close to this point here on the road to Juba. In the year 2001, I was delivering Bibles and books in the Moro language, the first full Bibles in Moro language, which the Bible translator died nine years before in that same area. I was teaching them EE. We had a team from Dr. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. We're teaching chaplains, pastors, evangelists, the evangelism explosion method. And on the Sunday, as we were going through, if you were to die tonight, do you know for sure that you're going to heaven? The crowd went up, Antonovs, and everyone fled out the church. We were bombed. They dropped eight 1,000 kilogram bombs on us, all in a hundred meter area. One of the bombs landed 17 meters from me, and my ribs were cracked, and I knew all about it for the next six weeks. Every time I coughed, sneezed, laughed, it was agony. And some of the pieces of shrapnel I'm holding there are in our reception area behind glass, examples of the tolerant, peaceful religion of Islam. Not only did we not lose anyone, we gained people. There were more people in the service after the bombing than before. And the highlight of the service, of course, was presenting the first Bible in the Moro language to the people in the community with a Bible translator in Liberia. Five-hour church service. And there was every chance that Muslims could come back and bomb us Here's Chaplain David and Moses outside the church, and people came to see the trees that were full of shrapnel, but the people were not. And the church, it still stood despite being bombed. And a few days later, we finished the course, gave the people their certificates, the team that did the EE clinic, and here's one of the trees blown over in the bombing. And we heard one person say, this happened to show the power of God. The Bibles of the Christians are more powerful than the bombs of the Muslims. Jesus said, on this rock I'll build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So let's think literature. In Africa today, statistically, there are 500 million people who claim to be Christians. 100 million churchgoers do not yet have their own copy of a Bible or a New Testament. 100 million. Some people have seen the containers of Bibles and books that have come through and gone after this mission thing. Do you still need more? Yes, we do. The church in Africa is growing so fast, we cannot keep up with providing enough literature for the many people being born and born again. There's a battle going on.