Latest / Fulfilled with Rebecca Sheehan / No Alphabet. No Bible. Until They Came. | Ep. 15

Transcript

No Alphabet. No Bible. Until They Came. | Ep. 15 · Fulfilled with Rebecca Sheehan

0:09
SPEAKER_02: Hey everybody, welcome to Fulfilled.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Rebecca Sheehan.
0:14
I am so excited for today's episode because when I first heard
0:18
about what our guest
0:19
SPEAKER_02: did to spread the gospel,
0:20
SPEAKER_02: I did a double take.
0:22
Brooks Bueser has lived a life that honestly sounds like a
0:25
modern missionary epic.
0:27
He went from a comfortable career in finance to the dense
0:31
jungles of Papua New Guinea,
0:33
where he and his wife translated the Bible for a remote tribal
0:36
group that had never
0:37
SPEAKER_02: even had a written language before.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: Let that sink in.
0:42
Translated the Bible into a language that had never even been
0:46
written down before.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: It's incredible.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: Today,
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Brooks leads Radius International,
0:52
a group that trains and equips missionaries to bring the gospel
0:55
to some of the
0:55
SPEAKER_02: world's most unreached groups of people.
0:58
SPEAKER_02: And most recently,
1:00
he joined Christian leaders from around the globe to
1:02
commemorate the 1700th
1:04
anniversary of the Nicene Creed at the very same site where the
1:08
Council of Nicaea
1:09
SPEAKER_02: took place in 325 AD.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: Brooks, I can't wait to dig into all of this with you.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Good to be on your show, Rebecca.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for inviting me.
1:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, happy to have you here.
1:23
SPEAKER_02: So, Brooks, you have an incredible story, as I just mentioned.
1:26
How did you go from the world of finance to translating the
1:30
Bible for a remote tribal group?
1:32
SPEAKER_02: And what initially stirred your heart towards missions?
1:35
SPEAKER_02: Like, was there a defining moment or was it more of a gradual call?
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: So my story kind of began a lot earlier when I was raised overseas.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: I went to a British boarding school growing up.
1:48
I learned how to play rugby and cricket before American
1:51
football and baseball.
1:52
So I had an appetite for what it was the Lord was doing in
1:56
foreign lands and then
1:58
SPEAKER_00: came back to the United States,
2:00
SPEAKER_00: got a degree,
2:01
SPEAKER_00: met my wife in college,
2:02
SPEAKER_00: was really just blessed to
2:05
find my way into a good job that I rose through the ladder
2:08
fairly quickly.
2:09
I'm really thankful that the college that I went to gave us a
2:13
real thirst for the word.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: I would say I got my missionary call through reading our Bible,
2:17
SPEAKER_00: myself and my wife together,
2:19
SPEAKER_00: passages like Matthew 28,
2:21
SPEAKER_00: 16 through 20,
2:22
SPEAKER_00: most people know that,
2:23
SPEAKER_00: but Romans 10,
2:24
SPEAKER_00: 13 through 15,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: how are they gonna hear unless someone preaches to them?
2:28
SPEAKER_00: And then Romans 15 is kind of startling in that Paul says,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: there's no more work for me to do in these regions
2:34
SPEAKER_00: and he presses on where no foundation has been laid.
2:37
And it was kind of something that we would talk about a lot
2:41
when we had a full
2:42
SPEAKER_00: garage of toys and a few other things.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And my wife was driving a great car,
2:47
SPEAKER_00: and we were looking at great houses in San Diego,
2:49
SPEAKER_00: California.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And
2:50
is this what our life is going to be kind of remembered for is
2:53
this going to be the
2:54
sum total of what we did and i think that drove us with the
2:58
scriptures kind of in
3:00
the back as the undergirding premise drove us to wanting to do
3:04
something more than
3:05
just what we saw a lot of our friends going after but we were
3:09
blessed to be in a
3:09
great church that taught the bible and really kind of
3:12
encouraged us that if the
3:14
SPEAKER_00: lord is opening these doors you guys should walk through those so
3:17
SPEAKER_00: It's not a very glamorous missions call, but that was kind of ours.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: Weren't your parents missionaries in New Guinea as well?
3:24
SPEAKER_02: So you had some experience in that part of the world?
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I definitely had experience in that part of the world.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: When I came back,
3:31
I was pretty set on joining the Marine Corps and my dad wanted
3:34
me to go to college
3:36
SPEAKER_00: instead.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: And missions was not really in my picture.
3:39
And my wife,
3:41
by God's grace,
3:42
we both,
3:43
again,
3:44
kept thinking about what would this look like?
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And we went back to visit my folks twice during that time.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: I think that was catalytic as well.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: was seeing what was being done there,
3:54
SPEAKER_00: the church that was in process in that part of New Guinea.
3:58
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about Papua New Guinea.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: It's in a pretty remote part of the world, just north of Australia.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: Is it developed at all or mostly tribal?
4:07
SPEAKER_00: It's mostly tribal.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: There's some major cities,
4:10
but the distinction that New Guinea has and the reason that
4:13
they love Americans so
4:14
SPEAKER_00: much is because in World War II,
4:16
SPEAKER_00: this is where Douglas MacArthur turned back the Japanese.
4:19
This was kind of the turning point of the war in the Pacific
4:23
centered around Papua New Guinea.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a fond general national memory of Americans.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: That helps in many ways.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: But the country itself, it's got two major distinctives.
4:35
One is that it has the most languages of any country on the
4:39
face of the earth.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: There's no country that has more languages and cultures than
4:43
SPEAKER_00: And two, it's got such rough geography.
4:46
It dissects those peoples so small into smaller groups that
4:51
eventually formed their
4:52
SPEAKER_00: own languages and broke away.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of cannibalism.
4:55
It's still in the Amazon and in pockets in the Congo and in
4:59
Papua New Guinea that
5:00
you'll find people that are still completely cut off from the
5:03
outside world.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's a very unique country.
5:07
Hard to imagine in today's day and age being completely cut off
5:10
from the outside world.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: So how did you find the Yembe Yembe people?
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Well,
5:15
the Yembe's had seen what had happened among a neighboring
5:20
language group when
5:21
SPEAKER_00: missionaries moved in about 13 years earlier.
5:24
There's this other group called the Basodio people,
5:28
and they had watched what had happened.
5:30
And once they saw when missionaries came in,
5:33
they brought some medicine and their baby's
5:35
SPEAKER_00: stopped dying at the rate that they were dying.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: They built an airfield and some talk,
5:40
SPEAKER_00: they didn't know how to describe this,
5:41
but there was some talk that landed in the village and it
5:44
totally changed the
5:45
SPEAKER_00: village.
5:46
And so they didn't know what that was,
5:48
but they said,
5:49
we want all of that.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: We want the medicine.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: We want the airfield.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: We want whatever happened to that village.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: We see it as a real good thing.
5:56
And so they started sending out ambassadors every year to go
6:01
out to the coastal town
6:03
that was on the coast where the mission headquarters were
6:05
asking,
6:05
would you send someone to us?
6:07
SPEAKER_00: And so for seven years, they sent someone.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So when we arrived in country,
6:12
they were part of five language groups that were doing this on
6:16
a regular basis.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And so they were actually our second choice,
6:19
SPEAKER_00: but God in his mysterious providence,
6:21
we were guided on actually the day of our first survey to end
6:25
up going to Yembe
6:26
SPEAKER_00: Yembe.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: So
6:27
SPEAKER_00: That's the history of how we ended up there.
6:29
But yeah,
6:29
really God orchestrated the events that ended up landing us
6:32
there.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: I love that they actually sought out missionaries and the gospel message,
6:37
SPEAKER_02: even though they had no idea what it was yet.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the Yembees, they were dominant, hostile people.
6:44
They had cannibalized neighboring groups all the way up until
6:47
about the 1960s.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: But by the time we got there in the 2000s,
6:52
SPEAKER_00: 2004 exactly,
6:54
SPEAKER_00: they had had repeated exposure to the outside world.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: But they're...
6:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
7:00
SPEAKER_00: there were little kids there all the way up until about 10,
7:03
SPEAKER_00: 12 years old that had never seen someone from the outside.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And it was a strange thing stepping into their world.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: It was like stepping back maybe 500 years in time.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: Cannot imagine.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: OK, and I have to say the cannibal part would have definitely scared me.
7:21
But what was their belief system or worldview like before
7:25
Christianity entered the
7:26
SPEAKER_02: picture or some talk,
7:28
SPEAKER_02: as they called it?
7:29
Yeah,
7:30
the Yembe's believed in what we would call animism,
7:33
so the spirit worlds.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: They believed that inanimate objects,
7:37
SPEAKER_00: the river,
7:38
SPEAKER_00: rocks,
7:39
SPEAKER_00: stones,
7:40
SPEAKER_00: your fingernails,
7:41
SPEAKER_00: they all had spirit power to them.
7:43
And so the Yembe's entire world was pursuing how to appease
7:48
those spirits.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: If their children were sick, if their crops were failing...
7:53
SPEAKER_00: If a man couldn't hunt wild boar and he just wasn't able to get one,
7:57
SPEAKER_00: he had done something to disturb the balance in the spirit world.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: And so they're in this constant struggle to try and appease the spirits.
8:04
And it was really just,
8:07
it was brutal,
8:08
especially on the members of society that were weakest.
8:12
Women in particular had really strict diets and it led to a lot
8:16
of them being anemic.
8:17
So we lost a lot of them in the early days to childbirth
8:20
because they just...
8:21
didn't have a lot of meat in their diet,
8:24
what would happen at night when the moon was not out.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: It was just a really, it was a way for Satan to keep them in bondage.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: It was a really brutal belief system.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And it's very common.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Animism is a very dominant religion around the world.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: It takes on different forms.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to pin down.
8:40
But most language groups that are not Christian or are not
8:45
hardline Muslim,
8:46
they have some mixture of animism that's worked their way into
8:49
their belief system.
8:51
SPEAKER_02: So what was the process of introducing the gospel?
8:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was years in the making, right?
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
8:57
SPEAKER_00: it was rather lengthy because,
8:59
SPEAKER_00: one,
9:00
SPEAKER_00: we wanted to make sure that we were going after a church being planted,
9:03
SPEAKER_00: not just gospel proclamation.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: And so if a church was going to be planted,
9:07
SPEAKER_00: they had to know how to read the scriptures,
9:10
SPEAKER_00: and they had to have their own scriptures.
9:12
And so what that meant was we did about two years of language
9:14
study to where we could
9:16
SPEAKER_00: be really fluent in their language.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: We would know how to tell jokes.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: We would know how to use all of the different aspects of their language,
9:24
SPEAKER_00: from nuance to humor to making complex points.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: What was the genre that a leader speaks in, all of those things.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Then the Yembes didn't have a written alphabet.
9:34
So we had to develop an alphabet for them to read and write for
9:37
the first time.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And the alphabet and that whole level of education,
9:41
SPEAKER_00: just starting to learn to read and write,
9:44
SPEAKER_00: that was world transforming.
9:46
And even most of the Yembe men didn't believe that women could
9:50
read and write.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: They just didn't think they had the brainpower.
9:53
And then when we had an all-female class that my wife led and
9:58
the females are
9:59
starting to learn to read and write and then they get fairly
10:01
fast and then some of
10:03
SPEAKER_00: them get faster than most of the men.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: These were just world-changing things that were coming into their world.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And then finally,
10:11
SPEAKER_00: when we had all of these readers,
10:13
SPEAKER_00: about two and a half years into it,
10:15
we started into the teaching and we started in Genesis and
10:18
walking them through the
10:19
SPEAKER_00: character of this God who was so different than their God.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: So it was a long process,
10:24
SPEAKER_00: but if you're going to build for the long term,
10:26
SPEAKER_00: it tends to be a little bit more lengthy.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: That is so incredible,
10:30
especially that they didn't have a written language when you
10:33
got there and you had
10:34
SPEAKER_02: the patience and perseverance to develop that for them.
10:37
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
10:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
10:40
I've got pictures of the first literacy classes and some of
10:43
them had been to town
10:44
SPEAKER_00: and they'd seen pen and pencils.
10:45
But there was a handful that holding a pencil for the first
10:48
time in their life and
10:49
putting up a chalkboard and were writing out the symbols of
10:52
their language.
10:53
And they had no verb for reading just because it didn't exist
10:57
in their culture.
10:58
And so the Yembes,
10:59
when they talk about reading,
11:00
they say the paper talks.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how to listen to the paper?
11:03
SPEAKER_00: That's their way of phrasing reading.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: What did that experience mean to you?
11:09
SPEAKER_02: hearing them read out loud for the first time.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
11:13
SPEAKER_00: Rebecca,
11:13
it was like nothing else to walk through the village at night
11:17
and to know,
11:18
SPEAKER_00: okay,
11:18
SPEAKER_00: that house has somebody who's in the literacy class,
11:20
SPEAKER_00: that house has somebody who's graduated,
11:22
SPEAKER_00: and to hear them practicing their reading.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: It was like we hadn't gotten to the gospel yet,
11:28
SPEAKER_00: but the foundation for the gospel coming was starting to be there.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: And as we would start working our way through Genesis,
11:36
exodus and then eventually get to the new testament there's it
11:40
was an incredible
11:41
feeling to walk through and to hear them reading the book of
11:44
luke to hear them
11:45
reading the story of jesus healing the man that's sitting
11:50
beside the roadside and
11:51
he's blind there's just it's an incredible feeling it feels
11:54
literally like you're
11:55
crossing into new territory because you know never in the
11:59
history of the world have
12:01
SPEAKER_00: these people heard this message before
12:04
SPEAKER_02: Why do you feel it's so important to be able to read Scripture,
12:07
SPEAKER_02: not just hear it being preached to you?
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
12:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that very act of reading,
12:12
SPEAKER_00: I think,
12:13
SPEAKER_00: comes back to us from God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: When God gives the Ten Commandments,
12:18
SPEAKER_00: he gives them in written form,
12:20
SPEAKER_00: and he says,
12:20
SPEAKER_00: write these things down.
12:22
The Israelites,
12:23
the people of God throughout the Old Testament,
12:25
were always known—
12:27
SPEAKER_00: as the people who could read, who would write these things down.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And when the law is rediscovered again,
12:33
SPEAKER_00: and it's read publicly,
12:35
SPEAKER_00: this is the mark of the people of God.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: There's an education that comes with Christianity.
12:41
And one of the unique things that I thought was really special
12:45
was that the Yembe's
12:46
SPEAKER_00: who didn't end up getting saved still call Christianity,
12:50
SPEAKER_00: it's the thinking man's religion,
12:51
SPEAKER_00: because you have to read to be a Christian in Yembe Yembe.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that our God,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: when we get to Revelation,
12:57
SPEAKER_00: and he says,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to write your name on a white stone,
13:01
SPEAKER_00: our God is a writing God,
13:02
SPEAKER_00: and he's always used the written medium.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk a little bit about that foundation you established.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: How much of the tribe became Christian?
13:11
SPEAKER_02: And now that you're not there anymore, have they kept it going?
13:15
SPEAKER_00: When we finished the teaching,
13:16
we had about a thousand people a day that were coming out for
13:19
the teaching.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: That's incredible.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was, I mean, my voice was shot because there was no microphones.
13:26
We had little recording devices and there's five different
13:29
parts to the village.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Maybe take the recording devices to the people that couldn't come.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: But
13:36
SPEAKER_00: The village at the end of that,
13:37
SPEAKER_00: about a thousand people,
13:39
SPEAKER_00: maybe 50 to 60,
13:41
SPEAKER_00: we believe,
13:41
SPEAKER_00: understood the gospel.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: But how those 50 to 60 lived,
13:46
SPEAKER_00: and especially how they died,
13:48
just kept drawing more and more people over the next eight
13:51
years to the church.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: And the church today is about 450, 500 strong.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: It's not quite half the village.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a little less than half.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that it's a strong contingent.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Most of the leaders, I was shocked.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: So my wife and I go back every year to check on the church.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: We see this as kind of like a Pauline model.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: He plants churches, but he doesn't just leave them.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: He goes back and checks on them.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: Do you write them letters like Paul did too?
14:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: I write letters,
14:19
but I tend to want to give them in person just because
14:22
sometimes they can get
14:23
SPEAKER_00: twisted.
14:24
But to go back and just to see them,
14:27
all of the village leaders are Christians.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: They only respect Christians when it comes to adjudicating court cases,
14:34
SPEAKER_00: to be the government reps,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: all of those types of positions.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And nobody even noticed it.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: It was just coming in this last April and seeing it,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: it was like,
14:42
SPEAKER_00: wow,
14:42
SPEAKER_00: what God has done,
14:43
SPEAKER_00: the leadership of the village really is in Christian hands.
14:47
It seems inevitable that the church will then keep growing and
14:52
spreading.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
14:53
it was a kind grace to meet all of the young believers that I
14:57
had no hand in
14:58
SPEAKER_00: leading to Christ.
15:00
And then to see there's about 22 men that are in the elder
15:03
deacon training class to see them.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: And about three quarters of them, I had no hand in leading to Christ.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: They were all led by the church and they're part of the church process.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just meeting these guys and talking to them.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And I've had very little in discipling them.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: That's a wonderful encouragement.
15:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
15:22
SPEAKER_02: that must have been one of the greatest moments,
15:25
SPEAKER_02: just seeing the church being perpetuated without you there.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: I think John says it best when he says,
15:32
I have no greater joy than to know that my children are walking
15:35
in the truth of the
15:36
SPEAKER_00: gospel.
15:36
And just these aren't our physical children,
15:38
even though we were adopted into clans.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
15:41
So I have my sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles over
15:45
there and my son does
15:46
SPEAKER_00: as well and all that.
15:47
But there are spiritual children in many ways,
15:49
just to see them walking with the truth.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: That's an incredible gift.
15:54
For people listening who are curious about this,
15:57
how did you actually translate the Bible?
15:59
SPEAKER_02: Like,
15:59
what was the process of translating God's word into a language
16:03
that had never been
16:04
SPEAKER_02: written down before?
16:05
SPEAKER_02: I know I keep repeating that, but I just find that so incredible.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
16:09
SPEAKER_00: so without getting too technical,
16:11
the Bible translation process is still the same all the way
16:15
from Martin Luther and
16:16
SPEAKER_00: William Tyndale's time till today.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: You're looking at what was the author's original intent,
16:22
SPEAKER_00: and you're taking what was originally put down by the biblical authors,
16:27
SPEAKER_00: and you're trying to take that meaning,
16:29
SPEAKER_00: and you're trying to put it into the meaning.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: of this people who has never seen a sheep in their life,
16:34
SPEAKER_00: no idea what a wilderness is because it's all jungle.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: They have no places where the jungle doesn't just grow wildly good.
16:41
And putting that whole structure into words so that you don't
16:46
use the meaning of
16:47
SPEAKER_00: what the author has,
16:47
SPEAKER_00: but you also are teaching concepts sometimes.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: And so...
16:51
All of that's just a lengthy process of making sure that it's
16:55
representative of
16:56
SPEAKER_00: what the authors put down,
16:57
SPEAKER_00: but it also sounds like how a Yenby Yenby would say it.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: That's a huge process.
17:01
So it's kind of meaning and also making sure that it's accurate
17:05
to the original.
17:06
So how did you overcome the challenge of translating the
17:09
concepts of sheet and wilderness?
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I did three pre-translation booklets.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: One of them was called Flies Are Your Enemies.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: That was a health booklet.
17:20
There's a lot less pressure when you're translating something
17:23
that's not scripture.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: If you mess it up, the consequences aren't near as severe.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: We also did a book called Customs of the Jews.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: And then we also did Animals of the Bible.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And so just, they would have some background.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: And we're going through the reading classes.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: The first time that they're getting their literacy courses,
17:40
SPEAKER_00: kind of legs underneath them.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: Those were the booklets that they would read at night.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: So they're getting some of the precursor information,
17:47
SPEAKER_00: camel,
17:48
SPEAKER_00: how big is a camel,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: what sheep look like,
17:52
SPEAKER_00: why the Jews would wear long,
17:53
SPEAKER_00: flowing clothes.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Again, these barely wear shorts.
17:56
And so to have people with these robes and cloaks and girding
18:00
up your loins to run,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: and it's just like,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: these are all foreign things.
18:04
So you have to do a lot of teaching on,
18:05
okay,
18:06
this is where this talk comes from.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come from America.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: It didn't come from Russia.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: It comes from this little country called Israel.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: And that country, this is how they live.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: This was many, many, many moons ago.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: I think that's really important for us, too.
18:19
We just get so much more out of the Bible when we can
18:22
understand the cultural and
18:23
SPEAKER_02: historical context of when that particular passage was written.
18:28
SPEAKER_02: We are just able to grasp and soak in God's Word that much deeper.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: Your good Bible teachers will help you understand.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: Here's what was going on.
18:40
Here's why this was either inflammatory when Jesus claims to be
18:44
the son of God,
18:44
SPEAKER_00: why that was so hostile.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: See the mind of the Pharisees, the Sadducees.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's this hermeneutical maxim that context is king.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: If you understand the context of the passage.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: You're really going to have a huge leg up in understanding the passage.
18:59
So same thing for people locked in the middle of the jungle in
19:02
Papua New Guinea.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: If they understand the context, then the truth can come alive.
19:06
So there's an awesome 30-minute documentary chronicling your
19:10
time with the Yembe
19:10
SPEAKER_02: Yembe,
19:11
SPEAKER_02: and it showed how you got there.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: What was it?
19:14
SPEAKER_02: A plane ride, then a canoe, and then a five-hour hike?
19:18
yeah so it was just a little over five hours you would have to
19:22
get in a dugout
19:23
canoe that was about 30 maybe 40 feet long and it had an
19:27
outboard motor on the back
19:29
and that was our only means of transportation for about a year
19:33
and a half to two
19:34
years when we first moved in there um it was too long for
19:38
supply runs so our
19:40
SPEAKER_00: mission would send over a small cessna airplane
19:43
SPEAKER_00: And it would take the doors off before they took off from the base.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: And we would have supplies and they'd fly over and heavy stuff would have
19:50
SPEAKER_00: parachutes,
19:50
SPEAKER_00: but everything else they would shove out.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: It was like,
19:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say Swiss family Robinson,
19:55
SPEAKER_00: but I mean,
19:55
SPEAKER_00: we were green before it was cool.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: We had solar panels and batteries and that's how we lived out there.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: There's no roads, there's no radios.
20:03
We had a two-way radio that we would hook up to solar panels to
20:07
let our mission
20:07
SPEAKER_00: agency know that we were
20:09
alive and doing well and those types of things and get a little
20:12
bit of fellowship
20:12
SPEAKER_00: in the English language.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was a very isolated experience.
20:16
But that motor canoe was our only viable means in and out for
20:19
the first few years.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: I cannot imagine.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: So did you and your wife ever look at each other like, what are we doing?
20:27
We could be back in San Diego in a nice climate-controlled
20:30
home,
20:31
new cars...
20:33
yeah you know what that happened more often i mean we would we
20:36
would sit one of our
20:37
funnest games was to sit at night and to say okay if we were in
20:40
san diego where
20:41
would we go to dinner and describe in detail okay we're going
20:45
first to this place
20:46
for appetizers we're going to get sushi because my wife and i
20:50
if you've ever met my
20:51
SPEAKER_00: wife she's
20:52
SPEAKER_00: a valley girl from California.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: She is not like some mountain mama.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: We are not campers.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: We don't go to the outdoors for fun.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: We like sushi.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: We like smog.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: We like the city.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: We are not outdoor people.
21:03
And so we would talk about the grade of sushi and just daydream
21:08
about the foods
21:09
SPEAKER_00: that we would have.
21:09
And then when we'd come back to San Diego every three or four
21:12
years,
21:12
it was just like this rush.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Costco would blow our mind.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: The amount of things at Costco that you would just fantasize about.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Anyways, yeah, we would talk about that often.
21:22
SPEAKER_02: but of course bringing the gospel to such a remote part of the world.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: I'd say well worth it.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
21:28
No,
21:29
it was,
21:30
we would never trade those 13 years of what God had us do
21:33
there.
21:34
I remember the day that we left leaving that final time and
21:38
thinking if the plane
21:39
SPEAKER_00: went down right now and we didn't live through that,
21:42
SPEAKER_00: I could die very happy.
21:44
Just,
21:44
I feel like I've done something with my life that will be
21:47
measured in eternity.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: And that's, that's just sleep.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: That's satisfaction.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: That's fulfillment you can't buy.
21:55
Let's transition to what you're doing now,
21:57
your work with Radius International.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
22:00
so Radius is a training school that trains missionaries to go
22:04
to what we like to
22:05
SPEAKER_00: call the last unreached language gleeps.
22:07
Language is something we can see through scripture from the
22:10
Tower of Babel to
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Pentecost to the end at Revelation 5,
22:14
SPEAKER_00: 9.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Then he says that a tribe, language, people, and nation will be there.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: It's this objective metric.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And so we're training people how to get to those places,
22:23
SPEAKER_00: kind of like the MB&Bs,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: and how to plant churches that by God's grace will outlive all of us.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: That's the hope because...
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Converts just by the human life cycle don't last longer than 80,
22:34
SPEAKER_00: 90 years,
22:35
SPEAKER_00: but churches,
22:36
SPEAKER_00: if they're planted well,
22:38
if they are really deeply rooted in the scriptures and they
22:40
have good teachers,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: they'll last for generations.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And so that's our school.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a few different branches to it.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: The English speaking branch is down just across the border in Mexico.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: We think it's better to train North Americans
22:53
SPEAKER_00: In a cross-cultural context,
22:55
SPEAKER_00: if they're going to go cross-cultural,
22:57
SPEAKER_00: there's a Mandarin-speaking branch,
22:58
SPEAKER_00: there's a Hindi branch,
23:00
SPEAKER_00: and we're about to open one in Africa.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: So there's no school like it that we've found anywhere in the world.
23:06
SPEAKER_00: Most people call it the Navy SEALs of missionary training.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: There's early morning workouts.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Healthy missionaries last longer.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: We take away the Internet the second day that they're on campus.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: Their reading ability goes through their ways.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: a lot of good aspects to it that helped train people well.
23:24
So was this your brainchild or something you sort of fell into
23:27
because it resonated
23:28
SPEAKER_02: with your Yemba Yemba experience?
23:31
SPEAKER_00: No, it had started five years before I came back from New Guinea.
23:36
And so I was asked just because of my finance backgrounds and
23:39
church planning
23:40
SPEAKER_00: background,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: if I would step into the leadership of it.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: I did six months as a teacher and my wife and I were just like,
23:46
where else are we going to replicate ourselves in a better way
23:49
than in this school?
23:51
Can you just describe the landscape globally in terms of where
23:55
are these unreached
23:56
SPEAKER_02: language groups and are there a lot of them?
23:59
SPEAKER_00: There's these minority groups in China,
24:02
SPEAKER_00: India,
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Indonesia,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Papua New Guinea,
24:06
SPEAKER_00: that still,
24:06
SPEAKER_00: they don't have any church or any gospel in their entire language.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: That's something that should,
24:12
SPEAKER_00: it should really weigh heavy on the people of God,
24:15
SPEAKER_00: because that cannot be something that we just,
24:20
SPEAKER_00: we overlook that somehow somebody from that language can go north,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: south,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: east,
24:25
SPEAKER_00: west,
24:25
SPEAKER_00: anywhere within their language,
24:26
SPEAKER_00: and nobody knows the name of Christ.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: That's a shocking thing in 2025.
24:30
So are there other missionaries like you working right now to
24:35
translate the Bible
24:36
SPEAKER_02: into certain languages for the first time?
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: There's,
24:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
24:41
SPEAKER_00: I remember the,
24:42
SPEAKER_00: uh,
24:43
there was a celebration in our mission leadership when we
24:45
finished the translation
24:46
SPEAKER_00: said,
24:47
SPEAKER_00: you guys are the most recent additions to the line of John Wakely.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: I think Martin Luther at William Tyndale.
24:54
And there's been by God's grace,
24:56
many other people that have joined that line since us.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: They're just usually in quiet corners of the earth,
25:02
SPEAKER_00: working really slowly,
25:04
SPEAKER_00: but just continuing to be patient and to stay at the plow,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: just continuing to do this job.
25:10
And not a lot of them will have movies or books written about
25:13
them,
25:13
probably none of them.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: But someday,
25:16
SPEAKER_00: ideally,
25:17
SPEAKER_00: glory in what God says,
25:18
SPEAKER_00: that someday the first will be last and the last will be first.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And some of these unheralded,
25:23
really just heroes of the faith will get their dear on that
25:26
great day of reckoning.
25:28
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: And that reminded me,
25:30
I want to play a little clip from the ceremony at the end of
25:33
your documentary when
25:34
you officially presented the Bible to the Yembe Yembe in their
25:38
own language.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: Let's take a look at this.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: I love that so much.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: So is that a hymn that they created?
26:05
SPEAKER_00: That one was adapted from a national hymn.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: So they adapted it and it was remarkable to us.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a musically inclined guy,
26:13
SPEAKER_00: but by God's grace,
26:15
SPEAKER_00: my coworker,
26:15
SPEAKER_00: he,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: they showed a picture of him just very briefly there.
26:19
He worked for MTV before he got saved and he was remarkably
26:24
talented in music.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: They wrote their own hymns at the beginning,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: and he would help them,
26:29
SPEAKER_00: and he taught them how to play the guitar and a few other things.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: And so,
26:32
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
26:33
much of our church and its musical ability and its worship in
26:36
music is due to Tim
26:38
SPEAKER_00: Chantere.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: Love that.
26:40
Yet another example of God using people past brokenness and all
26:45
for his glory.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: I know, the benefits of MTV.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about going from MTV to the jungles of New Guinea.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: How do you,
26:56
SPEAKER_02: in your Navy SEAL intensity program,
26:59
SPEAKER_02: prepare people for the cost,
27:01
SPEAKER_02: both practical and spiritual,
27:03
SPEAKER_02: of going where the gospel has never been preached before?
27:07
Yeah,
27:08
the cost,
27:09
I mean,
27:09
and I think this is something that Jesus spoke of quite often.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Whoever doesn't pick up their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
27:17
And I think to take the gospel to where only the enemy holds
27:21
sway is going to be very costly.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: We have a class that we teach at Radius called The Theology of Suffering,
27:28
SPEAKER_00: and we walk through the lives of Adoniram Judson,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: who lost two of his wives,
27:33
SPEAKER_00: six of his kids.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: John G. Payton lost his first wife, lost his son.
27:39
William Tyndale,
27:40
who was burned at the stake,
27:42
and then they poured gunpowder
27:44
SPEAKER_00: down him just to make sure that there was no parts left of him.
27:48
There's a great cost to taking the gospel and the Word of God
27:51
where it's never been before.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: But I think,
27:54
SPEAKER_00: one,
27:54
SPEAKER_00: we draw encouragement from that our God has promised us in Matthew 28,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: 20,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be with you to the very end of the age.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: You don't go by yourself.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: You go in the power of God.
28:04
And our God knows that he has sheep in different sheep pens,
28:08
and they too will hear his voice.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And there's going to be one flock and one shepherd someday.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: And we draw strength from previous missionaries who have gone before.
28:17
And so we walk patiently through that theology of suffering and
28:20
what it might be
28:21
SPEAKER_00: like to catch malaria for the fifth time,
28:24
SPEAKER_00: the seventh time.
28:25
I remember when my wife caught it for the fifth time and it was
28:29
just,
28:29
it's a hard disease.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not easy to shake.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: And then we both got boils,
28:35
tropical boils are some of the most painful things I think that
28:38
are out there.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And yet through those sufferings,
28:42
SPEAKER_00: the Yembe Yembe's came to believe that whatever you guys came to do,
28:45
it's obviously important because you would go through this
28:49
because you didn't get
28:50
SPEAKER_00: back on the airplane and head back to your home country.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: We know you could, but you stayed because something is more important.
28:57
I think it's through the suffering of God's people that many
29:00
times the gospel is
29:01
most advanced because it shows the value of the message and the
29:05
messenger is
29:06
SPEAKER_00: willing to take on a lot of pain for the sake of the message.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: I think something a lot of Americans struggle with,
29:12
SPEAKER_02: myself included if I'm being honest before God,
29:16
SPEAKER_02: is a real fear of discomfort.
29:18
So that really puts into perspective what it takes to go into
29:22
the jungle and
29:22
approach a group of potentially hostile natives who'd never
29:26
even heard the name of
29:27
SPEAKER_02: Jesus before.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, there's different challenges.
29:31
I'm sitting here in San Diego and I'm just looking across the
29:34
street and I'm
29:35
SPEAKER_00: preaching next Sunday at my church and I want so badly.
29:38
I've gotten two of my neighbors to come to church before and
29:42
we're trying to find
29:43
SPEAKER_00: creative ways,
29:43
SPEAKER_00: but there's different types of challenges.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think...
29:47
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: The American mindset is so averse to suffering and discomfort.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: It's not a good thing.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think someday that may be reversed.
29:56
But right now that tends to be one of the unspoken idols in the
29:59
American church.
30:01
So before we run out of time,
30:03
I'd love to talk about where you traveled to a few weekends
30:06
ago.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: the official commemoration of the Council of Nicaea,
30:11
SPEAKER_02: 1700 years later,
30:12
at the actual site where the original council happened in
30:16
modern-day Turkey.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: And I have to say,
30:18
SPEAKER_02: since I'm a new Christian,
30:19
SPEAKER_02: I get especially nerdy about Christian history,
30:21
so when I realized that this year was the 1700th anniversary of
30:25
the Nicene Creed,
30:27
SPEAKER_02: I was like,
30:27
SPEAKER_02: oh my gosh,
30:28
SPEAKER_02: I have to include this in one of my episodes this year.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a treat.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: I've been to Istanbul one other time.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: We landed and they took us on a tour the next day.
30:39
And we went to the actual site where the basilica where they
30:44
actually came together
30:45
SPEAKER_00: is underwater.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: It's about 100 meters out in the water.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:48
the city where they came in and the gates where most likely
30:51
Athanasius and some of
30:52
these other guys that defended the faith made sure that Christ
30:56
was given his due in
30:58
SPEAKER_00: that he was equal in substance of the father,
31:01
SPEAKER_00: that he was not some offspring of the father,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: was not equal in glory.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: He was begotten.
31:07
And to hear Kevin DeYoung and to hear Ligon Duncan and some of
31:11
these other brothers
31:12
SPEAKER_00: speak so clearly on the history of what came to be and how
31:15
God in his mysterious providence 1,700 years ago preserved the
31:20
faith once for all
31:21
SPEAKER_00: delivered to the saints.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And he preserved it through these councils and these creeds.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: And I love the fact that you love the history of it.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: I think without the history of it,
31:30
good pastors and good missionaries can go sideways if they
31:33
don't understand.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: why the Nicene Creed,
31:37
SPEAKER_00: why the Apostles' Creed,
31:39
SPEAKER_00: why these things are so substantial to the Christian faith,
31:42
SPEAKER_00: what they mean,
31:42
SPEAKER_00: what they were fighting against.
31:44
If we don't have a good,
31:45
solid Trinitarian theology,
31:48
we can unintentionally create heresy.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And just to see that sight,
31:52
SPEAKER_00: I had the privilege of giving a small address on the third article,
31:56
SPEAKER_00: For Us and Our Salvation,
31:58
SPEAKER_00: how Christ,
31:59
SPEAKER_00: for us and our salvation,
32:01
SPEAKER_00: came down,
32:01
SPEAKER_00: was born of a virgin,
32:03
SPEAKER_00: suffered and died,
32:05
SPEAKER_00: went to hell to preach to those that are there,
32:08
SPEAKER_00: and then came back and was resurrected,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: and then was ascended to the Father,
32:12
SPEAKER_00: and there he rules and reigns.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And just the implications for that in global missions,
32:17
SPEAKER_00: that it is truly for us and all of the us,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: not just Turkish speakers,
32:22
SPEAKER_00: not just English speakers,
32:24
SPEAKER_00: but for all peoples and all languages,
32:26
SPEAKER_00: he came and he became flesh on our behalf.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a remarkable thing to think through.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: But it was just a remarkable thing that you could get 500,
32:35
I think it's probably 550 people together to celebrate a
32:39
document that was put
32:40
SPEAKER_00: together 1,700 years ago,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: and that it still has relevance to us today.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think you know the maximum.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: We're doomed to repeat heretical mistakes if we don't remember them.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: why these documents were put together.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: And so it was a great thing to not only see English speakers,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: but to see,
33:00
SPEAKER_00: I think there was something like 48 countries represented there.
33:05
It's kind of amazing to think about how Christianity is
33:08
literally worldwide now,
33:10
SPEAKER_02: fulfilling that prophecy to Abraham so long ago.
33:14
Back at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD,
33:16
there were,
33:17
what,
33:17
around 250,
33:17
maybe 300 bishops?
33:21
SPEAKER_02: And they came from all across the Roman Empire, even beyond.
33:25
So I just love that this commemoration sort of echoes that same
33:29
global scale and unity.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
33:32
one of the addresses pointed out how Constantine brought all of
33:36
these Christians
33:37
SPEAKER_00: together and the different parts that they were coming from.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: And not only that,
33:43
SPEAKER_00: but think of all of the inquisitions,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: the pain that they had gone through prior to Constantine.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Some of them came missing eyes, missing ears, fingers, and just...
33:54
SPEAKER_00: These saints,
33:54
they said that those who had those disfigurements were held in
33:58
highest honor
33:59
because of them holding to the faith to get to that point where
34:03
the reprieve was
34:04
SPEAKER_00: brought about by Constantine and when he became Christian.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And then as he starts to bring all of the churches,
34:12
SPEAKER_00: we know it at that time,
34:13
SPEAKER_00: the East and the West,
34:14
SPEAKER_00: primarily the Latin speakers,
34:15
SPEAKER_00: the Greek speakers,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: all of them together.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: It was a remarkable time.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: It was very universal in scope.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sounds like an incredible experience.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Such a historic thing.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: I won't be alive in 300 years,
34:27
SPEAKER_00: but the one in 2000,
34:30
2000 year celebration will be quite something that 1700 was
34:33
still pretty good.
34:35
So wrapping up for anyone listening who's been feeling a pull
34:39
toward missions,
34:41
SPEAKER_02: what's a first step that you'd encourage them to take?
34:44
And how do they know if they have what it takes for your Navy
34:48
SEAL caliber missions?
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so two things that I would recommend.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: If you're thinking about missions, number one, let your pastors know.
34:58
The good missionaries are usually the ones that are rooted well
35:02
in their local church.
35:03
If you're not a part of your local church and if you're not
35:06
sharing your faith here,
35:08
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't change magically by a plane flight.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Like you want to be one of those people that the pastors go,
35:13
SPEAKER_00: if we lose her,
35:15
SPEAKER_00: if we lose him,
35:16
SPEAKER_00: that's going to be a great loss.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Those are the types of people that should be going to the mission field.
35:20
This was an error that has kind of made its way into
35:24
evangelical Christendom.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: that the weird people go into missions.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: We would never make her a greeter.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: She's pretty strange, but let's send her to Indonesia.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: That'd be perfect.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: That's a really bad idea.
35:34
So we want to send our best people to the field and the best
35:37
people are faithful church members.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And then the second thing is read good missionary biographies.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: They have a way of transmitting story,
35:46
transmitting some of the character of these individuals that
35:50
very few other things
35:51
SPEAKER_00: do.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I would read, I think the best biography
35:54
SPEAKER_00: A missions biography is To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: It's the story of Adoniram Judson.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: I would read Beauty for Ashes by Ian Murray.
36:03
It's the story of Amy Carmichael and the orphanage that she set
36:06
up and the
36:07
SPEAKER_00: thousands of kids that she ended up saving from sex trafficking,
36:11
SPEAKER_00: and they would become Christians,
36:13
SPEAKER_00: and eventually they would spread the gospel in that area of India.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: Those types of stories tend to galvanize.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: So faithful church membership, read Christian biographies.
36:23
And then just pray,
36:24
man,
36:24
that the Lord would give you clear paths and walk through those
36:27
doors.
36:28
Sometimes people like to pray for open doors,
36:30
but they don't walk through them.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God closes doors too.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: And so if he doesn't have you going into missions,
36:35
SPEAKER_00: he can close those doors just as easily as he opens them.
36:40
So I like to end each episode by asking my interviewee for a
36:44
Bible verse.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: I know you mentioned several throughout our conversation,
36:48
but is there one that's been particularly impactful for you
36:52
when it comes to your
36:54
SPEAKER_02: time in New Guinea or work now with Radius International?
36:59
oh man i would probably go to first corinthians 121 it
37:05
specifically goes um for
37:07
since in the wisdom of god the world through his wisdom did not
37:12
know him god was
37:13
pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save
37:17
those who believe jews
37:19
demand science and greeks look for wisdom but we preach christ
37:22
crucified a
37:23
stumbling block to jews and foolishness to gentiles but to
37:26
those whom god has
37:27
SPEAKER_00: called
37:28
SPEAKER_00: Christ, the wisdom of God, and the power of God.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: Just this idea that through the preached Word of God,
37:34
SPEAKER_00: through the preached Word of Christ,
37:37
SPEAKER_00: men are saved.
37:38
And that's a remarkable truth that should just humble us all
37:42
and give us all
37:42
SPEAKER_00: incredible joy that God saves sinners.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's me, that's you, that's everybody on this podcast who believes
37:50
has repented and turned to christ and that that's that's
37:53
something that's very dear
37:54
to me because it it works in the english-speaking world and it
37:57
works in the mbmb
37:58
world as well well that is a great note to end on brooke spuser
38:05
thank you so much
38:06
for joining us on this episode of fulfilled today and for all
38:10
you've done to spread
38:11
the gospel around the globe to the far reaches of humanity it's
38:15
truly incredible
38:17
And thanks to all of you,
38:19
our amazing viewers and listeners for tuning in.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: And truly your support means so much to me.
38:25
SPEAKER_02: So if you enjoyed this episode,
38:27
SPEAKER_02: please subscribe on YouTube,
38:30
SPEAKER_02: Apple Podcasts,
38:31
SPEAKER_02: Spotify,
38:32
SPEAKER_02: Substack,
38:32
SPEAKER_02: wherever you listen to Fulfilled.
38:36
Stay inspired,
38:37
keep trusting in God's plan for your life,
38:41
and we'll see you next time.