This article was originally written by Ram Swarup and reproduced on ‘vigilonline.com’
A review article of ‘SEVEN HUNDRED PLANS TO EVANGELIZE THE WORLD: THE RISE OF A GLOBAL EVANGELIZATION MOVEMENT by DAVID B. BARRATT and JAMES W.’
1. This volume surveys 788 most important evangelizing Plans which relate to the Great Commission- the command that Jehovah gave through the mouth of His only Begotten Son, Jesus, to the believers ‘go and make disciples of all nations (Mt. 28.19, 20). If there was also a command to improve their morals, it was neglected, but the one to preach and recruit more followers for their God was rather taken in earnest. They promised Him to make “all the peoples of the earth know Him and fear Him.” (2 Chr. 6.33)
2. This survey is a statistical marvel, a worthy sequel to the WORLD CHRISTIAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA (reviewed in the TIMES OF INDIA, JULY 14, 1985), by David Barrett, an outstanding statistician-evangelist and senior author of this volume under review. Quite in the spirit of the book, the two authors are introduced as Missionaries who ‘have been involved in some 36 (10%) of all the 358 global plans between 1953 and 1988.’
3. This book is divided into 4 parts and 28 Chapters: it includes ‘10 Appendices, 27 Tables and Diagrams and a Bibliography’, a selection of original and significant writings, classics and other benchmark items on the subject of world evangelization.
4. The book does not include all the plans, but only a fraction of them representing merely ‘the tip of the iceberg’. It however includes the plans best known for their global significance and, as we approach modern times, most central plans of major Christian denominations or missions each having over 5000 foreign missionary personnel. The authors analyze these plans using 15 variables.
5. The biblical story of God creating the world out of Chaos proves to the authors that He is a God of order, of planning, of strategy. Similarly, the biblical observation that the ‘very hairs of your head are numbered’ proves that God is also a great enumerator. The authors do no more than imitate their God’s skill and audit for us how His Great Commission has been followed by the believers.
6. Christianity has passed through sixty-six generations but for the best part of its existence the Great Command has been neglected. ‘Disobeying the Great Commission: 59 Neglected Generations’, has a separate Chapter on it. During this while, there were only 2.6 plans per generation. But with the 19th century began the era of ‘five aware generations’. During this time which also coincides with the heydays of Western Imperialism, the number of global plans per generation rose to 28. But the most ‘aware’ and the richest in planning is the present century (20th century). During its first decade, the figure was 69 plans per generation, 321 during the 1970s and the going rate is 1200 global plans per generation.
7. In earlier centuries most global plans came from countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then the shift took place to Europe, Russia and North America. Since A.D. 1900, the U.S. has alone provided 247 global plans.
8. But while the plans have been abundant, their failures have been no less impressive. The book includes a Chapter, ‘A Catalogue of Woes’, which enumerates ‘340 reasons for 534 failed global plans.’ The reasons include such items as ‘ecclesiastical crime’, ‘ecclesiastical gangsterism’, ‘offering tempting inducements’, the ‘use of laundered money’, ‘mass religious espionage’, ‘imperialism’, ‘terrorism’, etc.
9. Such reasons suggest as if these plans depended for their success on Christians being better than they were. But this is pure assumption. In fact, the reasons cited for their failure are often also reasons for their success. There could easily be a Chapter on ‘X-NUMBER OF REASONS FOR SUCCESSFUL Y-NUMBER OF PLANS’ and these would have rightly included imperialism, terrorism, coups, arrogance etc. These indeed are cited when the authors discuss ‘Evolution of a Global Evangelical Movement’ and name individually 304 years of evangelical significance.
For example, they mention A.D. 323 for ‘attempts to spread the Gospel by Law and Authority’ by Constantine; or cite C 780 for ‘forced baptism of Saxon race by Charlemagne, 4500 executed in one day for resisting, thousands more deported’; or A.D. 1523, when the ‘Spanish monarch orders Cortes to enforce mass conversion of American Indians – – – in Mexico, Franciscans baptize over a million in 7 years, with at times 14,000 a day – – -C 1550, 800,00 Peruvian Amerindians confirmed by one Archbishop of Lima.’
RESOURCES
1. Next to political power in importance are money and propaganda. The authors tell us about the resources at the command of Christian Churches. They tell us that today it costs ‘145 billion dollars to operate global Christianity’; it commands 4.1 million full-time Christian workers, runs 13,000 major libraries, publishes 22,000 periodicals, issues 4 billion tracts a year, operates 1,800 Christian Radio/T.V. Stations.
2. Missionary activity is a major plank of organized Christianity. At present 4,000 Mission Agencies operate a huge apparatus of Christian world mission manned by 262,300 missionaries costing 8 billion dollars annually. Every year, there are 10,000 new books/articles on foreign evangelization alone. The authors give an interesting estimate and tell us that Christianity has expended on its missionary activities a ‘total of 160 million-worker years on earth over these 20 centuries’. But since a missionary does not live by God alone, it has cost the Church exchequer ‘somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 billion dollars’, or about 2,200 dollars per year per missionary.
3.From time to time special plans have also been drawn for evangelizing the world. On 788 of them surveyed here, 10 million worker-years and 45 billion dollars have already been expended. Right away there are 387 global plans at work and 254 of them are making progress. One hundred fifty-five of these plans are called ‘massive’, defined as those which each expends ’10,000 worker-years, or over 10 million dollars a year, for an average of 10 years’. There are still bigger plans, 33 of them called gigantic ‘gigaplan’, each with over 100,000 worker-years, or 100 million dollars a year, or a total of 1 billion dollars over the years of the plan’s life’. The biggest current ‘gigaplan’ is spending 550 million dollars a year on its missionary work.
4. “We are told that though the Church had ‘always had enormous resources’, they did not always avail. Sometimes even well-endowed plans came to nothing. For example, in 1918, 336 million dollars were raised and then the plan was destroyed within a week. More recently, a gigaplan which raised 150 million dollars a year collapse (did it?) in 1988 in a sex and management scandal which involved top evangelists. The reference is to Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart of the Assemblies of God.”
UNREACHED PEOPLE
1. “ But in spite of this massive effort, there are still ‘unreached people’, places where the missionaries have not reached or where they have not succeeded. All these people have been ‘segmentized’ into ‘bite-sized chunks’ which number 3000. They are placed under 5000 missionaries of special caliber and training, well versed in research, logistics, briefing, monitoring, analyzing and coordinating, and modern communication techniques.
2. “The greatest difficulty the missions are facing today is that they are being denied a free run in many areas and face resistance from traditional religions or competing ideologies or NATIONALIST SOURCES. The authors say that until A.D. 1900, ‘virtually every country was open to foreign missionaries of one tradition or another’, but at present, ‘some 65 countries are closed— – with three more closing their doors every year’. But the missionaries have risen to the occasion and in order to overcome these difficulties.
As the authors put it, in situations where their basic rights as Christian missionaries have been denied, they ‘HAVE NOT HESITATED TO OPERATE ILLEGALLY, OR SECRETLY’, as all history shows. The EVANGELICAL MISSIONARIES QUARTERLY justifies the subterfuge required of covert missionaries thus: ‘GOD DOES NOT LIE, BUT HE DOES KEEP SECRETS’. TRANSLATED INTO THE ETHICAL CODE OF HIS FOLLOWERS, THIS ATTRIBUTE OF JEHOVAH MEANS: ‘ ASK NO QUESTIONS AND YOU WILL BE TOLD NO LIES.’
SECRET APPARATUS
1. “Missionaries to these areas or ‘TARGET COUNTRIES’ are divided into various kinds: TENTMAKER, RESIDENTIAL, CLANDESTINE, MOLE, TOURIST, COURIER, SMUGGLER AND NON-RESIDENTIAL. Each category has a defined status and role. Advantage is taken of the fact that even a country most restrictive of missionaries maintains a variety of contacts with the West- commercial, diplomatic, technical, tourist. Thus men are sent out to these semi-closed countries who openly work in a secular job as technicians, diplomats or social workers but also secrertly belong to a missionary agency. Such men are called ‘TENTMAKERS’, a la St. PAUL, who earned his bread by ‘tentmaking’ but voluntarily worked as a missionary. This channel is highly organized. For example, ‘TENTMAKERS INTERNATIONAL, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, a Missionary body, runs a ‘TENTMAKER PLACEMENT NETWORK’, working closely with private and social agencies. It has a list of 15,000 secular jobs for which it recruits ‘tentmakers.’
2. The ‘CLANDESTINE’ is a full time missionary ‘who operates illegally’. In restricted countries, ‘much ministry is carried in this way’, the authors tell us. The ‘MOLE’, a word used in certain Intelligence Services, is another such type. He is a ‘part time Christian worker, an illegal residential alien’. A ‘COURIER’ is a ‘visitor from abroad who illegally carries messages to, from, and between local Christians and CLANDESTINE workers’. ‘TOURISTS’ also come in handy for this purpose. Every year more than 100 million Christian foreigners enter these restricted countries, and hundreds of them ‘are persuaded to act as COURIERS by Western Agencies’, the authors tell us. Another category is ‘SMUGGLER’, A ‘FULL TIME PROFESSIONAL AND SEASONED CHRISTIAN WORKER WHO OPERATES ILLEGALLY AS AN ITINERANT’. One of the most famous of them is Brother Andre author of the best-seller, ‘GOD’S SMUGGLER.’
3. “These foreign types have their local counterparts which include categories like ‘UNREGISTERED’, ‘UNDERGROUNDER’, ‘MESSENGER’, ‘GUERRILLA’. For example, an ‘UNDERGROUNDER’ is the citizen equivalent of the foreign ‘MOLE’, a ‘MESSENGER’ of the alien ‘COURIER’. ‘Huge underground evangelizing networks exist operated by MESSENGERS utilizing solely word of mouth- no letters, no writing, no telephone’, the authors reveal. They also tell us that ‘AROUND THE WORLD ARE MANY THOUSAND GUERRILLAS’, a category parallel to foreign ‘SMUGGLERS’.”
MARTYRS
Sometimes these underhand workers are apprehended and punished; then they join the roaster of ‘MARTYRS’, who currently number 230,000 a year according to our authors. Two such ‘MOLES’ or ‘SMUGGLERS’ were apprehended in Nepal in December 1988. They were Mervyn Budd, 22, a Canadian, and McBride, 33, an American, both working for the U.S.-based Missionary organization, called ‘OPERATION MOBILIZATION’. As soon as the news of their arrest was splashed over the world, other sentiments and forces came into play.
People forgot to inquire who these two men were and only remembered that they had their ‘CIVIL RIGHTS’. Jack Anderson wrote in his weekly column: ‘Imagine being thrown in jail for selling religious literature’, making McBride’s activity as innocent as that. He told us how American Congressmen like Robert Walker and Senators Richard Lugar and Clairborne Pell took an active interest and ‘PUT PRESSURE ON THE NEPALESE GOVERNMENT’. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL WAS ALSO ACTIVE.
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