stoned, thronged & balaam's error
Greetings Remnant Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, dear friends, and to whomever else may stumble upon this post. Grace, mercy, and peace be with you from the One True God. Job, in his misery, pled for help in the face of his “arm-chair quarterback” friends: “O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbor” (Job 16:21). Praise God, there is One to plead on our behalf before the Almighty: Jesus the Christ, who “is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Amen, Hallelujah! Fall upon Him today. As we say in Nepali: “aru kesaimaa mukhti chaina” (i.e. there is salvation in none other).
Wow! My last post, transcribed more than a month ago, highlighted the work up in the Mt. Everest Region AND anticipated the coming of my dear brother, Shawn Holes (a.k.a. Shawn the Baptist), to Nepal for five weeks of intense Gospel labor. Well, those five weeks have come and gone, and Brother Shawn has safely returned to his family in Idaho. And frankly, in terms of recap, I don’t even know where to begin . . .
NOTE: If you don’t feel like reading one of my characteristically long posts and are more of a visual aid person, just scroll to the bottom. A series of videos I put together from our time with Shawn may tell a better story.
I must say that Shawn’s presence and partnership were a true blessing for me, my family, and Ricky. While he was here, much transpired for the Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ, but not without some trial and tribulation. Perhaps you have already heard, but the very first place we all went to preach together was Ratna Park, a place Bishnu and I have targeted many times over the years. That Sunday afternoon, I began preaching in Nepali while Shawn, Ricky, and Bishnu started distributing tracts. A large crowd formed to listen, but soon thereafter and upon my quotation of John 14:6, a couple of angry Hindus set the heretofore attentive multitude into an uproar, just like the Jews did with Paul in Lystra, Thessalonica, and Jerusalem. It became a mob scene so quickly. They started throwing rocks at us; I watched as monsters of iniquity literally tore apart trees and park benches and then rushed upon us with tree limbs, boards, and whatever they could lay their hands upon. “Uproar” would be an understatement. As we packed up and tried to escape, Ricky and I got pummeled and beaten trying to protect the others. People were screaming: “Kill them, we have to kill them.” Ratna Park only has one entry/exit point, and it’s very narrow. We bolted for that exit as the mob made chase. Stones were flying everywhere and the tables and stations of innocent peddlers were overturned and trampled. At the last minute, as we tried to squeeze through the gate, armed police showed up (a miracle in Nepal) to stem the tide. They pulled us into a nearby gated and barred police headquarters and tended to our wounds, hiding us until the mob dispersed. It never did; angry men crowded the gate and started demanding that the police release us to them. Eventually, they snuck Ricky, Shawn, and me out inside an armed police van that whisked us away from the scene. Shortly thereafter, a riot broke out at the police station as the mob demanded that Bishnu be released to them. Fortunately, the police helped him secure our motorbike from outside, and he made a clean getaway out the back entrance to the dismay of the horde. Needless to say, we have not returned to Ratna Park, though I greatly desire to do so (i.e. as Paul did concerning Jerusalem). The Lord was very good to us that day; and He used Ricky to literally save my life and the Nepali armed police to save all of our lives. Thank God that Shawn and Bishnu were not injured. As for Ricky and me, we still bear a few marks of the Lord Jesus in our bodies, but nothing serious. It could have been much worse. As I have labored for the Gospel over the years, I have been assaulted a few times, but nothing like this. My 20+ years of martial arts training didn’t count for much in those moments as more than 200 people ran upon us with all manner of crude weaponry. Nevertheless, the LORD was our rock, fortress, and deliverer; Psalm 18 was lived out before our eyes as God used the characteristically corrupt, careless, and LATE ON THE SCENE armed police to intervene at just the right moment. Amen.
Thereafter, we battled some fear and discouragement and were forced to deal with a few arm-chair quarterbacks, but nonetheless, after the manner of the disciples in Acts 4, we resolved not to ask for deliverance from persecution but for boldness in the face of it. Many of you joined us in praying for this. Thank-you; your prayers were heard. The very next day, we went right back out, this time to a sacred site in Tibetan Buddhism during a Buddhist festival and to Thamel, a sacred site in Nepal’s Religion of Tourism. In both places, the Gospel was preached as I hobbled with a cane, and many materials were distributed in Nepali, Tibetan, and English. From that point on, we hit the ground running. Over the next five weeks, approximately 20,000 pieces of Gospel literature would be distributed in Nepal and India; and the Word of God would be preached in the open-air with a “half-mile hailer” in plazas, from atop buses, to public school assemblies, at busy intersections, on university campuses, on top of unfinished pedestrian bridges, from mountain ridges overlooking unreached villages, outside religious shrines, on metro trains, and even from a boat on Fewa Lake.
In Nepal, we spent a week training and laboring with a local brother in a remote area of the Lamjung District, hiking many miles through unreached villages under the shadows of the Lamjung and Annapurna Himalaya. I’ll never forget standing atop ridges and preaching with that hailer to the villages below; you could see the people come out to listen and hear the words of Scripture bouncing off the mountains. And Shawn did all of this only six months after having a heart stint surgically implanted. We also targeted Tribhuvan University, the tourist districts of Kathmandu & Pokhara, the wicked Shivaratri festival that literally celebrates the “birth” of Satan, and a few Kathmandu suburbs.
The Lord also allowed Ricky, Shawn, and me to travel down to India, where we targeted two predominantly English-speaking cities: Delhi in the north, and Bangalore in the south. Over a period of two days, 2,500 pieces of Gospel material were distributed in Delhi and the Word of God was preached open-air in numerous venues. There, we were joined by a bold young lady (a former Hindu disowned by her high-caste, well-to-do family) and a Bangladeshi pastor (a former Muslim) whom the Lord put into our paths. We deemed ourselves TEAM JESUS and overtly rejoiced in the fellowship and partnership. The young lady (for security reasons, I will not mention her name) was learned in the laws of the land and had no fear in confronting the police on occasions when they tried to silence us. She also proved valuable serving as a Hindi translator to our English preaching in neighborhoods with few English speakers. Our Bangladeshi brother was a tract-distribution machine and very helpful in witnessing to the Muslims. We preached on the Delhi Metro trains, at the India gate, outside the huge railway station, in the heart of Paharganj (i.e. hippie-pot smoker-eurotrash-ville), at tourist spots, and outside a huge Hindu Temple. The police harassed us a few times, but nothing serious. In fact, the level of corruption in the Delhi Police Force is so high that it renders them largely harmless. When they kicked us out of a place, believe me, there were a thousand more venues from which we could choose. Moreover, they always took their time getting to the scene, so by the time we were forced out, the Gospel had already been preached and lots of tracts had been distributed.
After Delhi, it was four whole days on the streets of Bangalore in Southern India’s radical Hindu state of Karnataka (a large city where 90% of the population can speak and understand English). There, we also partnered with some solid local brethren. One couple, both educated in the United States, had 4,000 Gospel tracts printed for us at no charge and then came out on the streets with us one day. They were a real blessing. Then, there was the head chaplain at the large Baptist hospital who was so encouraged by our boldness that he took us out to his village area one evening (80km northeast of Bangalore). There, people came out into the streets in two different villages as the local believers sang hymns and we preached as a local pastor translated into Kannada. The next morning, our chaplain friend insisted that I come and preach to all his chaplains at the Baptist hospital, to rebuke them for their paranoid fear and to exhort them to be bold in the face of persecution. By God’s grace, I did what he said, and it was well-received. In Bangalore, we targeted Christ University, a large Catholic institution and were kicked off the campus for sharing CHRIST with CHRIST University students. Nonetheless, we repositioned just outside the only gate, and many students heard and received tracts on two different occasions. The campus security tried to get the police to make us leave, but because we were on a public sidewalk, the police never did anything. We also targeted the city railway and bus stations. Police ran us out of both places, but not before many, many, many Gospel tracts went out. The Brigade Street tourist hotspot, a couple of Muslim neighborhoods, and the vicinity of St. John’s Medical College are a few of the other places that the Word was proclaimed. All in all, over a four-day period, 5,000 pieces of Gospel material were distributed in Bangalore. Soli Deo Gloria.
I could go on and on, my dear friends, for like John the Apostle, “I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee: But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face” (III John 13-14).
Praise God for Shawn Holes, Ricky Springer, Bishnu Shrestha, Brother Laxmi, Lamjung John, the young lady and Bangaldeshi pastor in Delhi, our Indian brethren in Bangalore, and for the beating Ricky and I took in Ratna Park. God obviously used all the people and the aforementioned persecution for his glory. Think about it: Our very last outing with Shawn, we were literally THRONGED by students near Tribhuvan University as we shared Christ and answered their questions about the Bible. Many people heard that day. Our first outing together, we were STONED; our last, we were THRONGED. Trust me, God had a plan in all of it, and He knew I needed a good beating to get me off my rear end and provoke some boldness in my spirit for the Gospel.
Believe it or not, I can even thank God for all the arm-chair quarterbacks and “missions strategists” who bombarded us with their broken-record platitudes and cliches these past weeks. Oh, the cliches and terminology are so predictable: “you’re being ineffective and turning people away from the Gospel [II Corinthians 13:8 plainly declares that this isn’t possible] . . . you need to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves [translation = paranoid like deer and ashamed like red-handed criminals] . . . we’ll have to pick up the pieces when you leave [pieces of what?] . . . your actions are making it hard on all the other Christians, you are going to get all the missionaries kicked out [to be expected from those who have made missions their career instead of following a call] . . . you shouldn’t preach around religious sites [John 12:43] . . . the government is watching you [typical hyperbole from those who fancy themselves “.007 missionary agents”]. . . blah, blah, blah.” One man, supposedly my friend, responded to me with the following Facebook message immediately after the beating we took in Ratna Park (Note: no encouragement, no inquiry as to our injuries, no offer to pray for us, and a lot of presumptuous accusation):
For the love of God stop acting like a fighter cock whenever preaching, and stop preaching in other peoples' temples and stupas and temple courtyards. Your acting like you WANT people to hate you. There are plenty of public places to preach. Use those. Preach with love and respect and people will pick up those vibes. If we preach with a strife, anger and provoking attitude, people will pick up on it. We can't be preaching to Hindus and Buddhists (especially not in this ‘indirect’ culture) in the same way we preach to reprobate Americans who've rejected the gospel all their life.
In typical Error of Balaam fashion (cf. Jude 11), the persecution was the preacher’s fault; and the accusations were riddled with assumptions not rooted in reality. Nevertheless, thanks brother, thanks to all you arm-chair QB’s for the processed, vomit-inducing sophistry. You only strengthened our resolve to be bold and increased our rejoicing when the Sovereign Hand of Providence clearly demonstrated your remonstrations to be false.
All sarcasm aside, I am deeply troubled and do weep for what I am seeing with missionaries and missions organizations here in this part of the world, undoubtedly the fruit of what has likewise infested the churches in Europe and America. The Bibles calls it the Way of Cain, the Error of Balaam, and the Gainsaying of Korah (Jude 11): i.e. ignoring the clear revelation of God in favor of philosophic PRAGMATISM. The simple preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the bold evangelism modeled for us in the Book of Acts as the key to planting New Testament churches, and labor motivated by the glory of God and obedience to the Word while comfortably resting in the Sovereign Hand of Providence . . . these things have been supplanted by humanistic underpinnings, complex platforms, ridiculous amounts of “surveying”, the communication of watered-down truth, paranoid fear, and so-called strategies that serve more to protect careers and give the appearance of service than to actually carry out the Great Commission of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (cf. Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; John 20:21; Acts 1:8). And from these things, I have actually seen a disdain develop from foreign missionaries for the bold preaching of the Gospel and those who labor therein. Truly, the Error of Balaam (Jude 11) then leads to the Way of Balaam (II Peter 2:15 - pursuing a career in missions instead of a divine call) and eventually the deadly Doctrine of Balaam (Revelation 2:14 - using the wicked ways of the world to achieve one’s own end in ministry). And, this downward spiral is happening all around us, in the churches and on the mission field. When the Apostle Paul spoke of a “falling away first” in II Thessalonians, he wasn’t exaggerating. Friends, we must repent of these things, stop fearing man, and start fearing God--trusting in the simple promises of His Word in terms of effective mission strategy (cf. I Corinthians 1:18,21; II Corinthians 4:13; I Peter 3:14-15; Jude 22-23; and the entire Book of Acts, the account of how the earliest Christians understood and carried out the Great Commission).
Oh, there is so much fear of man, fear of foreign governments, fear of persecution out here. Listen, if you are living in such abject fear while calling yourself a missionary, or even a Christian for that matter, SHAME ON YOU. Go read II Timothy 1:7-8, and obey what you read. And, quit passing your fear on to the local believers. It’s that simple! After all, it is the WICKED who "flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion" (Proverbs 28:1).
Recently, in a context where we were laboring to preach the Gospel with boldness and distribute all the materials that had been provided to us by other believers, a long-term and well-respected missionary doctor made contact with us over the telephone; and despite knowing nothing about us, he proceeded to rake us over the coals for preaching in the open-air, for distributing Gospel tracts, and for doing these things alongside local believers. Every cliche I have ever heard from the textbook of postmodern missiology was thrown our way during that ten minutes of conversation. This man got so angry because we were preaching the Gospel. We politely informed him that we did not agree with his conclusions, did not share his fear, and were not in any way under his authority. The conversation ended better than expected, but still, the disdain from a fellow missionary was astonishing. Just the other day, a silver-haired British man stopped his vehicle right in front of us as Ricky and I were preaching at a plaza in Kathmandu with a huge wooden cross. He started screaming about how he has been in Nepal for 30+ years (indicating thereby that he was some sort of missionary with an aid organization) and that we were breaking the law “by proselytizing on tourist visas” (again, a whole mess of assumptions). This jerk even got the traffic police involved to try and stop us. He, a missionary, hated the preaching of the Gospel so much that he was easily driven to persecute those who were endeavoring to do what he most likely came here to do in the first place. Again, the Error of Balaam quickly leads to the Way of Balaam and the Doctrine of Balaam. Interestingly, the police officer approached and ordered me to turn off the microphone and leave the premises. I curtly replied, “No thanks, Nepal is a democracy now.” I then continued preaching. The flustered old aid worker got back into his traffic-blocking jeep and drove away. The police officer shrugged her shoulders and walked off. And, the preaching continued unabated until the Gospel message had been clearly communicated to those standing by.
Thankfully, there are some who have only found themselves stuck in the Error of Balaam and have not yet down-spiraled into the Way and Doctrine of Balaam like the man mentioned above. There is hope for you; God can and still use you mightily if you will repent, stop being ruled by fear, and return to the simple biblical strategy of proclaiming repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Stop obsessing with “church planting” at the expense of bold evangelism; stop thinking that God needs you or your organization to “plant churches.” Any church planting strategy not constructed on a foundation of bold evangelism (bold evangelism can take many forms, but the message is the same) is a house built on sand: it is the Way of Cain, the Error of Balaam, the Gainsaying of Korah. Trust me, when the Word is preached and distributed, and when we are obedient to the simple exhortations of Holy Scripture, resting in the Sovereign Hand of Providence and motivated more by the glory of God than the response of man: God will plant His churches, real churches populated by genuine born-again disciples who will go out and make more disciples. How do I know this? I have seen it with my own eyes:
A year or so prior to our recent outreach with Brother John (a Nepali believer that Bishnu trained and sent to Bible college) in the Lamjung District, Bishnu had similarly preached and distributed copies of God's Word in that area. There, a woman came to the Lord. On our journey, we sought this woman out, only to discover that God had used her to lead others to Christ; and a small church fellowship had begun (i.e. without the white man's programs) in one of the unreached villages we aimed to target. As a result, after overnighting in this woman's home and seeing the new believers already about the work of sharing Christ, we supplied them with materials for distribution and decided to move on to target Purankot, a village with zero believers beyond the ridge. Friends, that’s church-planting the Biblical way. God did it; our Gordian strategies didn’t. The same thing happened out in the remote Baitadi District as a result of Bishnu’s bold preaching and baptism of 30 people in the nearby river. Soli Deo Gloria. Please pray for both of these fellowships, that the Lord will send them dedicated and godly pastors to shepherd them. I am working on Lamjung John; I think the Baitadi believers need his boldness and leadership; and it would be very inexpensive to support him living out there.
So many missions and church-planting strategies are a convoluted Gordian Knot. Just the other day, Ricky was corresponding with a young missionary that he had met here in Kathmandu. Upon inquiry, this person described her game plan:
I’m working out some logistical stuff. Not only are we about to shift our strategic focus but I'm trying to work on a proposal for integrating an anti sex-trafficking measure into our team strategy.
Can someone please translate this for me into understandable English? My friends, there is way too much strategizing, way too much surveying, far too many logistics, and too many meetings going on the in world of evangelical missions. But, there is not enough Gospel proclamation. God, help us. As for sex-trafficking, it’s a problem in Nepal; but the answer is Jesus Christ and His Gospel, not some proposal or “raising awareness.”
The only way out of this Gordian Knot, the only solution, is to cut the knot to pieces with a sword as did Alexander the Great when confronted with the great riddle. Spiritually speaking, this means to REPENT and to cast the Gordian man-centered strategies aside.
A.W. Tozer touched on this whole matter, and I love what he had to say:
Remember, missionaries, you can never produce anything better than you are yourself. The Bible says, ‘Let it bring forth after its kind.’ Send a missionary over there with a cheap concept of God and his head filled with jingly choruses, and that's the kind of Christianity he will produce over there. All he will be doing is transplanting a degenerate Christianity on a foreign shore. More than missionaries, we need a reformation of the whole Church of Christ in America. When that comes, then we will get more missionaries and their quality will be higher and the result will be that they will produce a higher type of Christian. Some of you might say, "Mr. Tozer, this sounds strange. I never heard of it. Aren't all Christians alike?" No. Not all Christians are alike. Some bring forth 30-fold, some 60-fold, and some 100-fold. And some shine like the stars in heaven--some big, some little, and some you have to take a telescope to see.
If we will not listen, if reformation does not come, I fear all will end up so immersed in the Doctrine of Balaam that we’ll actually think we are doing Jesus Christ service by looking like the article linked below:
Rick Warren Builds Bridge to Muslims - Orange County Register
Shame on that wicked man; he thinks he does God service but is really an ENEMY of the Gospel. God forbid that I, my missionary friends, and the Remnant Body of Jesus Christ should follow suit. Please forgive me if this diatribe seems long-winded and out-of-place. My heart is truly burdened regarding the state of the churches and the state of missions both here in South Asia and on my own home turf. I genuinely desire to see repentance in my own life and in the lives of others who have fallen prey, whether permanently or at times, to pragmatism in ministry--the dangerous Way of Cain, Error of Balaam, and Gainsaying of Korah. To follow pragmatism is to reject the Word of God. Interestingly, the Greek word translated “gainsaying” in Jude 11 is “antilogia” which literally means “against the Word.” Are our mission strategies against the Word? If so, we must repent and go back to the drawing board with a Bible in our hand, humility in our heart, steadfastness in our spirit, the fear of man squashed under the heel of our boot, and the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ on the tip of our tongue. LORD JESUS, please forgive me for ever thinking that I have a better way than what You have ordained to carry the Gospel throughout the world:
For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (I Corinthians 1:21).
Please continue to pray for us in the coming days. We still have another three months before the expiration of our visas require us to leave Nepal and return to the United States. We continue to walk the cross around Ring Road in Kathmandu, to preach and distribute Gospel literature in a variety of venues, and Bishnu and I are diligently laboring to make needful revision to our translation of John and complete work on the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of Hebrews. It is my earnest desire to have all of these rolling off the printing presses before we depart Nepal in May, thereby leaving Bishnu and his team with a healthy supply of Scripture portions for their continued work. In fact, Project Jagerna has set a lofty goal: the printing and distribution of 100,000 Nepali Scripture portions in 2012. As of now, we have distributed a mere 4,200 in the Kathmandu Valley, Pokhara, and the SoluKhumbu and Lamjung Districts. There is much more work to be done. If we could get 50,000 out before leaving in May, I believe Bishnu and his team could realistically reach 100,000 by the end of the year. Of course, the Lord will have to provide funds for printing, but we know He never guides where He does not provide.
In a couple of weeks, Ricky and I will traveling down to a closed South Asian country to help train some new believers in the village; and we anticipate a few days distributing material and proclaiming Christ on the streets of the capital city, an urban jungle of nearly fifteen million people. I have had the privilege of being in this very poverty-striken place twice before, and twice, I have been told by local police that I was under arrest. Both times, however, the Lord delivered us. Pray for us as we work with some local believers and long-term laborers who are anything but what I described above. Folks, where we are headed is a hellhole where a lot of people need to hear about Jesus. Pray for us; security considerations prevent me from going into any additional detail.
There’s one final request of a more specific nature. Brother John, the local believer we partnered with out in the Lamjung District is in desperate need of a 1/2-mile hailer so that he can continue to preach to the unreached villages from the hilltops. The hailer that Shawn brought to us has proved an indispensable tool, but it was damaged in the Ratna Park attack, the first time we used it, and it is unreliable for continued use in the village. It is virtually impossible to find a quality portable amplifier in South Asia, especially one as sturdy and clear as the hailer. When preaching from hilltops, clarity and sound quality is a must. In actuality, I would like to have three such half-mile hailers brought over here - one for Lamjung John, one for Bishnu and his preaching team here in Kathmandu, and one for a couple of sound street preachers we met in Delhi, India. Not only do we need the hailers, we need someone to carry them over here. And, we not only need hands to transport hailers, we need the same hands to help us distribute Gospel materials and take the message to the streets while we still have opportunity here in Nepal. Someone, please pray about coming over to help us, or one of you churches, please consider sending a team over to labor with us. Transporting three 1/2-mile hailers, helping us in the streets, and carrying some English and Nepali materials (i.e. stuff we can print a lot cheaper here than in the States) back to America for use on the university campuses in the Fall would go a long way in furthering the Gospel of Jesus Christ both here and back home. To reach our goal of distributing 100,000 Scripture portions in 2012, we are going to need help. In terms of housing, it will be provided upon arrival. In fact, our domicile in Kathmandu is such that we could even house a team. Don’t miss an opportunity to come to the ends of the earth and be a part of a real mission trip in a place that is an incredible training ground for evangelism. Just so you know, we won’t be digging any wells, building any greenhouses, or holding any sports camps. The last thing Nepal needs is more humanitarian aid; and the villagers already know how to take animal and human dung and convert it into an endless supply of cooking gas, so I don’t think they need our help in areas of agriculture that we spoiled Americans know little about anyway. No, if you come, we will be preaching the Gospel and distributing loads of Scripture portions. Nepal needs Jesus; it needs the Gospel before the open doors slam shut. And believe me, that’s coming. See you in Kathmandu.
For the Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ,
The Boyd Family & Ricky Springer