“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”
The year was 1923 (around the same time as Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in Germany that landed him in jail for 9 months) and it was the end of a tortuous dry season in a rural part of Northwest CAMBODIA: four farmers from a small village walked about 5 miles to the market town of Battambang to check out rumors of a tall white man who had shown up speaking in public about a living Creator God and about someone named "Jesus" dying on a cross for the Cambodian people.
These men found the preacher in the public square, listened for a while, and received some Gospel tracts in their language from his hands. After asking a few additional questions, the preacher invited these four men back to his home for a meal. Upon their departure that evening, the street preacher handed them a Gospel of Luke translated into the Khmer language.
Little did that preacher know: this seemingly insignificant event, you know the "ineffective" means of sharing the Gospel as claimed by so many who boast to know better . . . this little encounter would mark the beginning of a great watershed in the history of the Cambodian people. Not long thereafter, these village farmers had planted a church and were willing to lose everything for the sake of the Gospel. They suffered much persecution from the Buddhists over the following years but remained steadfast and sowed the Gospel into a new generation that would be ready to face and endure a horrible persecution that would come almost 50 years later in the form of the Communist Khmer Rouge (not very much unlike what we see from the left in America today). The Cambodian church would endure and still does to this day . . . and it all goes back to a street preacher handing out tracts in a public market and a few men curious about some rumors.
I am reminded of what Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 11:1-6. Sow your seed, and withhold not your hand even when it is late in the evening. For you never know how it may prosper or how the LORD will use it.
My friends, during these dark and vexing days of America's end where evil seems to triumph on every side, PICK UP A GOOD MISSIONARY BIOGRAPHY FROM MANY YEARS AGO, or a written testimony of the power of the persecuted church in some foreign land. You will draw strength and encouragement from it, you will draw strength to endure unto the end. THEN, KEEP SOWING SEEDS OF THE GOSPEL. You never know how the LORD might use it, like small tiny pebbles that soon become a great avalanche. The Khmer Rouge are long gone, but the church they tried to stamp out in Cambodia endures to this day. I tramped around Cambodia years ago by myself (not very smart), and there were Christians there who came to my aid. I have walked the Killing Fields and picked up human bones still protruding from the dirt. I have smelled the stench of death that still lingered many years later in the hollowed out and haunted block buildings of the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng concentration camp. In these things, the evil did not triumph, and the faithful churches endured.
Be strengthened this day my brethren! If the Khmer Rouge couldn't silence the Christian voice in Cambodia, the evil in the country won't be able to silence us. Give me liberty or give me death! Either way, I will still preach the Gospel. Will you?
