Two Special Works Closing Together

Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan

     Ramadan 2015 is ending.  In less than 24 hours the sun will go down again (in this part of the world) and the last day of fasting will be broken by joyful celebration throughout the night. Another year of Ramadan has passed. Another desperate attempt by Muslims worldwide to suffer and pray hoping it will be enough to wash their sins away.  But sadly, it will never remove the stain from the human heart.  Only the precious blood of Jesus can do that.

     We are meeting around a table not to gorge ourselves on food to celebrate the effectiveness of our suffering. We meet around a table called the Lord's Table, or the Holy Communion table. And we only eat a morsel of bread without leaven and a sip of the fruit of the vine. We do this in remembrance of the work of Jesus on Calvary -- not our work of fasting. In all of our suffering, we could never earn what He freely has given. We who were separated and alienated are made nigh by the blood of the Lamb.

     Thank you so much to those who joined with us for this special Ramadan prayer vigil. According to our calendar of daily focus, Friday is our final day of fasting as we seek God to move among Muslims. This final focus is upon the need for God to raise up more witnesses who will invest their lives in reaching Muslims with the Gospel. Of course, the costs may be very high. But as we remember Jesus' sacrifice upon the cross, we realize that no price can be too high to pay for all He has done for us.

     I ask you to please pray for me during this week. I will be spending the week among many Muslims. I have been specially invited to visit with an Ismaili Muslim. God has built a special relationship between us. Pray for anointing and conviction to open his eyes to see the truth of the Gospel.

     Also, I hope to be meeting with a Christian brother who may be able to translate some of our tracts into Urdu, the majority language of Muslims in India and a large portion of Pakistan. If God allows, I would be thrilled to see the literature published in this extremely important language spoken by nearly 65 million people in this regional area. Please ask God to direct me in the choice of the tract that would best be suited for this language group and religious group.

     

Hindu Pushkaram (Holy Festival)

     Today, Thursday, in India, the brethren completed the huge outreach during the Hindu Holy Festival on a major river in South India.  Let me give you a little of the story:

     As you know if you read this blog and our emails, we started with what I thought was a huge plan of printing 1/2 million Telugu language tracts in order to distribute among the millions of pilgrims who would converge on the area in mid-July. God began to move and the tracts went to work even at the beginning of the year. We saw large numbers of salvations and great testimonies of what God was doing.

     Soon the word had spread and we were asked to publish in the language of Oriya. We translated and printed 300,000 in that language for distribution in our neighboring state and also added 200,000 in Hindi spoken in Northern India. The closer we came to Pushkaram, the more Telugu tracts we had to reprint.  And today we have completed a project that was an incredible journey of faith for me.  Today we finished distribution of 1.4 million tracts n Telugu and the 200,000 tracts in Hindi were distributed at the train station to the hundreds of thousands of people arriving from North India. 

     Without any doubt, the word has gone to every border of the nation! How amazing and exciting it has been to see God provide in such a tremendous way! I want to thank each one who gave so sacrificially to see this effort accomplished before Pushkaram time. The number of souls saved will never be known until we get to Heaven. Thousands have pray with the brothers and sisters personally and thousands of phone calls have come either testifying of salvation or asking more about Jesus!  Hallelujah!

     The literature work continues to spread. The brethren in the area where I worked for the last 4 years are now stirred with what they are seeing and have caught a vision to work. Yesterday and today I printed 110,000 for this local area. Tomorrow I will deliver the last of those into the hands of the brethren. Please pray that God will strengthen their hearts to face the task that is ahead.

     May God bless you as you pray for the ministry in India and around the world. God is working mightily to prepare a spotless Bride for His soon coming. Let us all be faithful so that we might be part of that Bride of Christ!

Beyond Frontiers