Teachinghearts |
The Challenge of the Great Commission
"Explore the Word. Change the World"
| Statistics: Time: 80 minutes Print: 22 pages 28 pages (Landscape) |
The Mission
In the Great Commission and in the prophecies, Jesus said that "the gospel must be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations - and then the end will come". Matthew 24: 14; Matthew 28: 19
In the last days, prophecy predicts the spread of this gospel.
And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to
those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people. (Revelation 14: 6)
We have several barriers to meeting this challenge. But God is providing a way to meet them.
- Language. With over 6,500 languages the task seems impossible.
Each aspect of a language poses a unique set of problems.
This confines us to producing material by population size.
- Spoken Language. There is a problem with dialects, pronunciation and the availability of qualified people to teach the gospel.
Also, a single written word can have several meanings depending on the tone used to pronounce the word.
- Written Language. There are about 32 active scripts in the world.
Among these there are three distinct methods for forming ideas.
- Alphabets and Abjads. Use alphabets (consonants and vowels) to represent sounds. Abjad systems use consonants only. The ancient Hebrews used this method.
The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters, the English have 26.
- Syllabaries. A separate symbol for each syllable of a language.
- Logographic Scripts. Symbols which represent words. The Chinese have 50,000 symbols.
This fact causes the written Chinese to be understood by many, while the spoken language is different.
- Computer Language. This presents another set of challenges.
While the Latin scripts are displayed as they appear in a file. Other scripts look different for each character set.
Therefore, the writer has to be familiar with two languages.
For example, on the screen the word for Russian is
.
But in the file it looks this different for every character set.
- Population. With an estimated population of 6,233,821,945 in 2002 and an annual growth rate of 1.3%, 80 million people are added to the planet each year.
This makes it less likely that the church can reach each individual one at a time.
- Religion. Countries in the resistant belt do not welcome Christianity.
- Conversion Laws. They restrict missionary activity.
The Resistant Belt (The 10/40 Window)
This is a region that is located between ten degrees north and forty degrees north of the equator.
66% of the population lives in this region. An estimated 95% are not evangelized. Some have never heard the gospel.