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Every Tribe, People, Nation

“Crammed in an SUV with five other people, my fanny was sore, my legs cramped, and my lungs gasping. Our eyes were in awe at the beauty of God’s creation all around for miles on end, but our hearts were grieving at the equally vast ignorance of God’s love that also enveloped us—in fact, the overt worship of spirits who despise Him.

Tibet.

Passes 16,500 feet high were cluttered with the confetti of hundreds of prayer flags to appease demons. Eagles glided effortlessly on currents of mountain air so clean—and thin—that I could easily make out the horns on a yak miles away grazing on a hillside. Dirt roads wrinkled with ruts just like the faces of the old women who plodded them while incessantly manipulating prayer beads.

And the profoundest sight of all: four pilgrims strung out along the shoulder of the road alternately standing and then prostrating themselves each step like human caterpillars, literally inching their way to Lhasa a thousand miles away across the mountains.

If only they knew that all they were accomplishing was to provide entertainment for amused demons! If only they knew that Jesus has already walked to Via Dolorosa for them, carrying the cross to impart his spiritual merit on their behalf! I hopped out of the SUV to give one of them an Mp3 player containing gospel material in Kham.

Such is the pitiful lot of unreached peoples. 850,000 of these Eastern Kham have never once heard the gospel. Why? 16,500 foot-high passes, demon worship, thin air, dirt roads, politics, language, airfare — these souls are inconvenient.

Obstacles must be overcome! God promised Abraham in Genesis 12 that all nations would be blessed through him; David in Psalm 22 knew ‘All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all families of the nations will bow down before him.’

The elders around the throne in Revelation 5 worship, saying “with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” So there must be Eastern Kham worshipping before the throne with us in eternity! And Pumi, Salars, Hui, Dongxiang, and Hu and every other of the over 200 unreached people groups of China.

Inconvenient? The cross was “inconvenient.” Chinese or Westerners, all of us are commanded by the only true and living God to partner in sacrifice until His “final solution” is achieved:

‘And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come’ (Matthew 24:14).”