About a year after Ben first came to Asia, I was talking to him on the phone, and he asked me what I thought of some of the things that were happening in the news. I told him that I had not thought about it, but it didn’t look like that big of a deal, and he told me that things looked a lot different from the other side of the world. That puzzled me at the time, but recently I find myself feeling the same way.

During the last year, almost all of the other missionaries have had the opportunity to go back to America for short furloughs. When they come back, I hang on their every word. I want to know how things are at home, but mostly I want to know how Americans are thinking about the things that I read about on the news every day.

Here, Roy and I have very little reading material…by American standards….but we have a lot of Spirit of Prophecy books, and also our bibles. Since we are teaching the children about church history, and prophecy, and how to have a real relationship with God, we spend a lot of time looking into those books, and we can’t help but notice what God said was going to happen right before He comes back. Then, I get on my trusty computer and read the news, and I find all that God said was going to happen is happening right now! I am excited! I hear the footsteps of Jesus approaching! It leads us to examine our lives and gives us a desire to work for others more than ever before.

Yesterday I excitedly asked Maria, since she just came back from over there, about how things are there. Are the Christians excited about what they see happening? Are they motivated to do more for Jesus? What do they think? Her response was pretty sobering to me. She said that when you are over there, it does not seem like such a big deal. People are busy with their lives, they still have all the luxuries of life, and they are busy pursuing their dreams. It just doesn’t seem like people even see what is happening right before their eyes, or if they do they don’t seem to get real excited about it.

I hate to say it, but I was the same way. Riches and luxury kind of blind people to the signs of the times. People live very extravagantly in America, but they don’t know it. I can remember, much to my sorrow and shame, that I used to use ziplock bags only once and then throw them away! That may seem like no big deal to you, but when you live in a ziplock deprived country, it is a big deal, and enough to cause you to shed a few tears! I now realize that I wasted a LOT of money that I should have been storing up in heaven. If you could see how excited front line missionaries can get over even one ziplock bag, you might view things from a different perspective.  (ziplocks are just an example….I wasted more money than that on extravagant food…)

I am beginning to think that the reason Jesus gave the great commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel was mostly for our sakes. I think that he knew that our fully stocked pantries, our nice cars, and our comfortable homes would separate us from Him. It leads us to be selfish, and selfish people will not be in heaven. Don’t worry, I am not preaching. I simply want to share with you what I see from the other side of the world in the hopes that I can stir a few more people into action. Help is needed here, and in a million other places in this world. We could sit back and think that radio or television is going to finish the work, but it cannot. Only people who do what Jesus said to do can finish the work. Yes, those other things can help, but there is no replacement for dedicated missionaries going into all the world and preaching the gospel to a world that is in real trouble right now.