Alert; Soul harvesting in Africa is almost over now. They will focus only on Asia and in India. ALERT.
Arun Shourie
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The Church had but to get established and it became obsessed with numbers — with the number of souls it had, to use the term so favoured by churchmen, “harvested” for Jesus. Numbers remain its singular obsession today. The impulse is not just its own history in this regard. The impulse is not just its character — it is, after all, primarily an organization, and therefore like all organizations it is obsessed with its market-share.
To a very large extent, the impulse is commercial. The Church is a big business. Evangelization is big business. And this business depends on that “harvesting” of souls. You just have to scan American church publications, or those of Europe, to see that one of the main grounds on which believers are induced to donate funds to the church is that the money is needed for the harvesting work. But even in that, there is now a problem. In Europe as well as in the US, the Church is in serious trouble. Attendance in Rome itself has fallen to just three percent of the number of nominal believers — in Rome, the very seat of the Vatican. With this shriveling, has come another problem: the church has been having greater and greater difficulties in recruiting priests, nuns, and others to man the churches. The need for focusing on countries such as India has therefore tripled.
Missionary publications bear ample testimony to this focus : they are full of targets, of detailed plans, of marketing strategies by which the harvest here is to be multiplied : a church to be “planted” in every village, a Bible to be placed in every pair of hands, lists and characteristics of “people-groups” which are to be targetted — women, scheduled castes, and, most of all, tribals; the beliefs and characteristics of each target-group which can be used to enter the group, the beliefs which are liable to be hindrances and how these may be transformed into aids.
“The majority Meiti are Hindu,” notes Operation World, and points to what may be used to wean them away: “nationalism is lowering commitment to Hinduism”. As a rule, evangelists denounce nationalism, how are they looking hopefully at nationalism among the Meiti? you may wonder — that is because, in this instance, by “nationalism” they mean feeling for the tribal identity as against their focus on what they share with the rest of the country! Meghalaya: already 57 percent Christian, the focus has now to be on “the less reached” — “Some of the smaller tribes — notably the Hajong, Mikir and others — have been less responsive and remain entrenched in their animism. The Hindu minority has been little affected by the gospel.” Mizoram : already 85 percent Christian; focus has to be on “the less reached” — and there is a sign of hope, “The Buddhist Chakmas are being intensively evangelised by Mizo, and churches are multiplying,” followed by the next target-group in bold type, “The Bangladeshi refugees and the Hindu population are needy.” The beam of hope from Nagaland: “Missionary vision blossomed as a result of revival. Christians made a solemn covenant in 1980 to live for, and further, world evangelization. They are trusting God that 10,000 missionaries will be sent from Nagaland….” A minor footnote: Operation World is published by one of the most active missionary publication houses — its name? Om Publishing, Carlisle, UK!
Even minor outfits garner literally millions through this harvesting business. Taken as a whole the enterprise is being conducted on a scale we just cannot imagine. As the late Ram Swarup had pointed out, even fifteen years ago, the Mission Handbook, North American Ministries Overseas had put the number of missionaries raking in the harvest at around a quarter million. Even then it had put the expenditure on such activity at around one and a half billion dollars. Of course, it had exhorted the faithful to dole out much more: “it costs money to stay in business,” it had said with fetching frankness! One of the ways for these missionaries to get their flock to cough up money has been to paint our people and country in gory colours — this has not changed one bit since the 19th century. Starving, sunk in superstition, crushed under the heels of high-caste Hindus, in the grip of Satan himself — hence the urgent duty to save them, and for that send your donation to…”The Indian sub-continent, with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture,” Ram Swarup quoted from the Texas-based Gospel for Asia. “India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people…. are literally living a cosmic lie. Could Satan have devised a perfect system for causing misery?”
Nothing gets the faithful to dip into their pockets as atrocity stories. Missionary publications and Internet sites are predictably full of these : “Christian suffering in India is the worst in India in 50 years,” a site informed potential donors through the Internet in a dispatch by the Editors of Religion Today, dated 30 November 1998 — that is, even before the current series of fabrications began to be put out. “Mobs of religious fanatics have attacked churches and Christian schools, dispersed outdoor gospel meetings, and beaten evangelists in dozens of incidents this year,” it proclaimed. “Oppression is widespread,” it said, sourcing it to “a person with contacts.” Churches have been burned, an orthodox school attacked for not teaching Sanskrit, tractors, and crowbars used in an attack… The Government deliberately taking no action… Hence “the workers pray to God for their protection. They ‘take the threats before the Lord in fasting prayer and ask Him to protect them.’ Christians have been beaten, tortured with razor blades, and thrown from a speeding train, and 6 to 12 per year are martyred, he said.” Who said? The very same propagandist-editor who has been in the forefront of spreading concoctions like “Jhabua re-enacted in Jhajjar”.
But not just atrocity stories — if they were all, they could well drain potential donors of enthusiasm, “What’s the use?” they could conclude. And so, triumph-in-face-of-atrocity, atrocity-as-a-reflection-of-triumph stories too: the same site, in the same story, “…Hundreds of tribal people in a section of northern India are becoming Christians through the efforts of evangelists” — notice the unverifiable locale: “a section of northern India”! Next, “The area is known for violent tribal clashes” — that to redouble the admiration for the evangelists: they are doing the Lord’s work in spite of the risks the area poses. “‘It is the greatest revival we know of at this time,’ he said. ‘You don’t get this kind of revival without persecution, and bloodshed, and martyrdom. One comes with the other.'”
Conclusion : give because India is in the grip of Satan; give because with its billion people India represents such a vast opportunity to save souls for the Lord; give because Christians are being cut up with razor blades there; give because in spite of this, in fact, because of this bloodshed, the harvest is multiplying by the hour…. And as in every advertising campaign, a certificate from a satisfied consumer! “Dr. Donald McGavran made the following observation about the ECI [the Evangelical Church of India],” notes a related site on the Internet. “‘The fascinating story of the unique church planting ministry of ECI in India must be told everywhere in the pessimistic missionary world. What Dr. Sargunam and his colleagues have achieved during the last two decades affirms that the Lord of the harvest is at work in several parts of India. I have been in a few of these churches and watched the number of baptisms. I commend Christians everywhere to support and claim a share in this tremendous victory and help many more thousands to be disciplined and Churches multiplied until Christ returns.'”
The site of AD2000 Mission informs donors, Vasanthraj Albert of the Church Growth Research Center in Madras, states, ‘I believe that India today is on the map for the global church.’ And Peter Wagner, coordinator for the AD2000 United Prayer Mobilization Network observes, ‘Of all the nations in the world, India has the highest potential of fruitful investment of evangelistic effort at this time. It is the place to invest time, energy and resources.'”
Organizations upon organizations. Targets upon targets : for “200 people-groups”, for “50 languages”, for “50 urban areas”, for “200 geographical districts.” How their mouths water at the sight of “unreached peoples”: “Remarkably this [the unreached of India] is 30% of the world’s unreached peoples. The goal is to plant churches in all the remaining 500,000 villages and several thousand not evangelized segments of the 300 largest cities in India. To achieve these goals, delegates have agreed to cooperate with the India Mission Association, which networks to place an evangelist in every postal code area.”
“Calcutta is an amazing testimony to the power of prayer,” the site of the AD2000 movement reports. An estimated 35 million focused on Calcutta one day, it says. This was followed by a month of on-site prayer. “That month of prayer enhanced the Mission Calcutta 2000 Network, whose aim is to establish a church in every one of the city’s 93 postal zones by the end of the year 2000. Great progress has been made. Thirty zones that did not have a church now have one. Today only 30 other zones remain untouched.”
And Calcutta isn’t the only target, it says. “Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh is Hinduism’s holiest city, with thousands of temples centering on the worship of Shiva, an idol whose symbol is the phallus. Many consider this city the very seat of Satan. Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges at Varanasi washes away all sins. A number of Christian workers took up the burden of prayer for this city and in prayer-walks boldly declared before the idols, ‘You are not a living god.’ One year later it was discovered that church planting works had opened up in sixty villages around Varanasi over that past year, with 300 baptisms reported.” “An intensive training program has been implemented to teach people to practice intercession for the target units,” it records. “An experienced prayer warrior from Africa, Dr. Zachariah Fomum, has played a key role in this training for prayer… India is ready and waiting.”
One of the difficulties has been that India is “like an intricate mosaic,” the site says. At last, the barrier is being breached. “Much progress has been made in the last few years to ‘spy out the land and its inhabitants’ and to give an accurate and up-to-date picture of the challenges and the opportunities,” it reports. “The Indian Missions Association, in partnership with Gospel for Asia, has researched and published very informative and accurate books on what has been done so far and the work yet to be done to complete the task of evangelization within India. They have defined the work according to language groups, PIN (Zip) codes, and unreached people groups in the country….” The work of others is contributing to the same cause — hence, the Anthropological Survey of India is completing and publishing its “People of India Project”. Invaluably helpful data…
And that too testifies to God’s plan! “Perhaps never before has this kind of information on India been so carefully surveyed, prepared, well-published and distributed. In this the North India-Hindi Belt is unique. We do not believe it is accidental. God is allowing us to ‘spy out the land’ that we might go in and claim both it and its inhabitants for Him.”
A dozen things can be said of this nonsense. For the moment ponder just two :
* How does all this feverish harvesting compare with what the Supreme Court has laid down as the law of the country?
* When the Church sets out to convert on such a scale when its little agents go about “boldly declaring before the idols” their calumnies, is it at all possible that the targeted society will not react?
This obsession with body-counts is ruinous — not the least for the church itself: it has already drained it of all spirituality, exactly as Gandhiji had warned it would. And even by itself, it is bound to ignite a mighty reaction. But there is another feature which is even more certain to stoke reaction, an even mightier reaction than this obsession — it is to this feature that we shall turn.
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Joshua Project: Mapping the World
Focusing on ethnicity, the project maintains a database of “unreached peoples” listed by country and language. As of 2010, they list 9,803 ethnic groups.
These are further divided into 16,350 peoples-by-countries, counting national minorities individually for each of 236 countries, of which 6,642 are classified as “unreached peoples”.
Asia
Each country’s groups or tribes are mapped
For detail info also visit
Asia Harvest 1 | Hindubauddhikakshatriya
Asia Harvest 2 | Hindubauddhikakshatriya
India:: Joshua Project-
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No Conversion Retweeted John Piper
Every HINDU in INDIA is target !! @SushmaSwaraj @KirenRijiju
7 million Sunar people in India await gospel workers sent through our prayers. http://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/18150/IN …
Foreign Missionaries
No Conversion Retweeted Bogda Every HINDU is a target for Christian Missionaries
Praying for the Bharbhunja unreached people http://www.globalprayerdigest.org/index.php/issue/day/bharbhunja-people1/ … @FrontierV_GPD @GPDKid
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No Conversion Retweeted TweetPray
Dhanka in India
The Rawat folk of India worship what is not God. But the gospel of Jesus is the power of God for them. If they hear. http://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/17954/IN …
Rawat in India
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Every Hindu is a target
Unreached people are real people. #missions #ethnos360
किसी भी हिन्दू को नहीं छोड़ा इन इसाई मिशनरी ने सबके पीछे हाथ धो कर पड़े है !!!
Unreached People Group: Kinnaura in India. Joshua Project. | World Missions |
Unreached People Group: Kinnaura in India. Joshua Project. | World Missions |
देवभूमि हिमाचल में इसाई मिशनरी , कोशिश कर रहे हैं .. की यहाँ भी हिन्दुओं को इसाई बनाया जाये …
How Lingayat are targeted …by Christian missionaries
Gospel multiplies among India’s Lingayat people so much that coordinators may leave
No Conversion @noconversion1 day ago
Reached of the day
What happened to Chakma …. @SushmaSwaraj @HMOIndia are doing nothing
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