Whether saints go out to other parts of the town, nation, continent as missionaries or stay at home, all saints as we earlier saw are missionaries. We have been saved and left here for a specific purpose and that purpose is to be involved in soul winning for the Lord. Each one of us would have gone to heaven the very day he was saved were it not for the obligation in joy, of having to stay and depopulate hell to the advantage of heaven. Let no one be as mad as to think that missionaries are those who go out of this nation. There are local, national and international missionaries. Men are dying in their thousands everyday into a Christless eternity. It’s is our responsibility to do everything possible; to sacrifice everything possible in order to help rescue the situation.
We must invest our all into the Gospel. Let us set ourselves free from the third world mentality that tends only toward receiving. The people that make up the developing countries only tend to beg from those that make up developed countries. In this line, Africans mostly think of receiving from Europe, the United States and so on. They do not think that they can give. A missionary friend of mine once provocatively said to me, “The first words that an African child is heard to utter are ‘Give me.’ We are called a beggar continent. We are a beggar continent.
Most of our problems come from the fact that we fold our arms and only expect whites to give us what we need. There is a receiver mentality. And such a mentality is always criticising the white man. It says, “he robbed us in slavery. He robbed us in colonialism. He is continuing to rob us in neo-colonialism.” No, the problem is us. Look at countries that were formerly like us. As soon as they were delivered from that satanic mentality, they started knowing progress. Look at the progress countries like China, Taiwan and Korea (North and South) are making. May we get delivered from an evil mentality. The more we receive, the poorer we become. Even the Lord Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” We are born in political and administrative contexts that are essentially pagan. We must not continue to languish in such contexts. We must confront the fact that giving is God’s vision and that in the spiritual context, God calls us to give. It is for this reason that we cooperate with God to send out missionaries. It is for this reason that we must not disobey the scriptures which command us to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20).
We are a rich people. God says so and we know it. We would like to take the example of India. There is poverty there, but the worst is spiritual poverty. Every twenty- four hours, 25,000 Indians perish into a Christless eternity. Every blessed twenty- four hours, 25,000 Indians are guaranteed a place in the lake of fire. Imagine the number of Indians already in the lake of fire since the Gospel started being preached in the first century. I was in Bombay sometimes ago, and one thing that struck me there were the great crowds of people that filled the streets, the houses and everywhere. At the airport one had to squeeze his way through the thick crowd. It was not that there was an occasion that day that necessitated the participation of so many people. It is but normal there. At every time of the day, there always crowds like the one I saw spread all over the land. The question is, “What are we doing to stop such throngs from going to the lake of fire?”
If we do not toil and toil, stripping ourselves of every luxury, the blood of these Indians will be upon us. And so will be the blood of the 5.5 billion that populate Planet Earth. The bottom quarters of India with about 240,000 people each present a poorer and miserable situation than anywhere here in Cameroon. In such quarters, 240,000 people earn less than or equal to 180 francs CFA each month. There are about 400,000 children on the streets of India without parents. They are chronic vagabonds some of whom do not even know whence they came nor whither they are heading to. These children are not only without parents and a home, but also without God. I was arrested by these facts and I realised to my utter dismay that I was a criminal to be living so much at ease while millions for whom I could have sacrificed perish day by day. I realised that if I sacrificed more these millions would have been saved. My wife and I then decided to do something about it. We told ourselves, “Were we to live ten times better than the Indians and be twenty times wealthier than they, it would be catastrophic.” We decided on three things:
- The first thing is that we raised our giving to the Lord from 84% to 90%. Whether the ten percent left was going to be enough for my family and I did not bother us. We only knew that something had to be done in the direction of rescuing perishing men. Something had to be done for the Indians. We thought of the following statistics: a) 25,000 men perishing every twenty-four hours without Christ; b) 250,000 men perishing every ten days without Christ; c) 1,000,000 men perishing every forty days without Christ. Every forty days, the flames of eternal destruction open up and swallow a million Indians! Some of them would have been saved had we done something about it.
- The second thing is that we put the Mercedes Benz 240 D we had on sale. The money got from the sale of this car was intended to be used in the battle to save some Indians. I knew for sure that even if I were never again to have a car in my whole life; and even if I were to go on foot the rest of my life, it would be nothing compared with the twenty- five thousand people who perish each day without Christ in India. They not only perish without Christ for such language can be very subtle. They perish without having every heard the Gospel. There are 631.949 villages in India and there are 600,000 of them that have no Christian witness. The Indians who are in these villages have no hope beyond the grave. They have no hope because they do not have Christ. There is not even a bit of hope outside Christ. Either they hear the Gospel and be saved or perish eternally.
- We also decided that everything we had which could absolutely not be kept was to be sold and the money invested in soul winning for the Lord Jesus. Keeping any of these things would be blocking men from going to heaven. Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:14-15 saying, “ I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish: so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” I, who am saved, am a debtor to every man in this city, nation and continent. I am a debtor to everyone India, China, Russia, Hong Kong and Britain. I am under obligation to everybody on Planet Earth. I owe them the gospel of Jesus Christ. I owe them the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Way of Salvation and the Way of Life. I need to raise a big wall to hinder their going to hell.
- Unless every barrier I can put up to block men from going to hell be put up;
- Unless every barrier I can put up to block the way to hell from men be put up;
- Unless I give all that I can give; unless I pour out all that I can pour out;
I would be the most-wicked man on earth for knowing the way to heaven but letting sinners go to hell. Could any act be as wicked? Could there be any greater crime against humanity? Could there be any greater horror than that a man should allow a precious creature of God who could be saved to go to hell? Should we allow men to perish without Christ so that from the lake of fire they cry accusing us? Far from it! Would we want to hear people crying from hell as the Lord Jesus did on the Cross when He cried unto the Father, “My God, My God, why hath thou forsaken me?” Would we afford to hear such cries that will be of course without answer? God forbid!
Excerpt from: A Missionary Life and a Missionary Heart – Z.T. Fomum