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When I was in the Army, we were expected to be doing something (all the time) that was relevant to our mission, given to us from our Commanding General.
What Must Be Done?
Focusing Assets on God's Mission
by David Parker 
When I was in the Army, we were expected to be doing something (all the time) that was relevant to our mission, given to us from our Commanding General. In other words, if they walked up any time of the day or week, and caught us engaged in something that didn’t contribute to what they said our mission was – then we were in hot water – we were going to get hammered. Obviously, our mission was the Commanding General’s mission. They were never satisfied with busy work; they wanted us to be doing things which contributed to the revealed objective.
The revealed objective is Revelation 7:9-10, “After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” God set the precedent on the day of Pentecost for what He wants to see happen. He had divinely orchestrated the gathering of peoples from approximately sixteen different regions, representing various languages (Acts 2:6-12). God wants all the peoples of the world to hear the Gospel in their mother tongues (their heart languages).
The Master’s Mission (Matthew 28:18-20 and Revelation 7:9-10) and current world language statistics (see below) should affect how we operate. In light of this information, we must ask ourselves some penetrating questions.
1) Do we believe that some from every people (family, tribe, tongue, and nation) will, one day, be represented in heaven around the throne of God among the redeemed?
2) Should this in some way affect how we do missions?
3) Do we believe that in order for this to happen then that all people will need (require) a Bible in their mother tongue (a Bible in their heart language)? Or, to put it another way, can they be saved without having God’s Word in some form in their language?
4) How should this belief drive (or affect) the behavior of our mission? If we believe that all people need a Bible because all people will have some representatives among the redeemed, should we be doing something toward that glorious goal?
5) Shouldn’t we be identifying languages without any portion of Scripture?
6) Shouldn’t we be identifying peoples without any church or Gospel-preaching missionary?
7) Shouldn’t we be focusing information-gathering efforts, surveys, and prayer efforts to bring the attention of our future missionaries to bear upon a most worthy and biblical objective?
8) Shouldn’t our training of missionaries be tailored to equip them to meet this need?
The commission and the circumstances are compelling - we must make it a matter of serious prayer and further involvement to contribute to this biblically-revealed, God-glorifying objective by supplying the message and the messenger for all of these people and language groups. Better yet, we would be obedient, strategic, smart, and effective to expend all remaining resources on this obvious omission!
World Language Statistics (2007) 6.5 billion people in the world 6912 living languages 2286 languages have no Bible portion 196,000,000 people without a Bible portion (representing the 2286 Bible-less languages) 80% of these Bible-less peoples represent the three areas of greatest need for Bible translation (Central Africa/Nigeria; Mainland and Southeast Asia; and Indonesia and the Pacific Islands).*
About every two weeks another language becomes extinct.**
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *WBT, http://www.wycliffe.org/About/Statistics.aspx
**LLI, http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/langhotspots/intro.html
and http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/langhotspots/fastfacts.html David Parker |
