News from Bearing Precious Seed Global

Most of the unreached people groups of the world can be found in the 1040 (ten forty) Window. The 1040 window is an imaginary box drawn from 100 North to 400 North Parallels from just west of Africa to east of Japan.   If we extend this to 100 South we include even more unreached peoples. Nearly all the peoples who live in this large area are Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or Animist. It should be obvious that these people think very differently than Westerners. Their backgrounds and training are different. Their basic views of the world are radically different than those in the West. We must not think that we can present the gospel to them using the same methods as we use with an American.   They are liable to think that Jesus is nothing more than a Western Guru. They need more explanation before they can understand the Gospel.

The Parable of the Sower (Mt. 4) illustrates this. In the parable some of the gospel seed fell on thorny ground, some on stony ground, and some on good ground. Only the seed that fell on good ground yielded fruit. The 1040 Window is full of hearts that are thorny or stony ground. Perhaps this is why the gospel has been so slow to catch on in the Far East. How, then, can we reach them. The answer is simple, but the process to implement the solution is not. The answer to reaching them is to turn their hearts into good ground. Any farmer knows that before you can grow a good crop you have to prepare the soil. You remove stones, bushes, and trees. You plow or till the land, and you fertilize. After this, as Paul said in 1 Cor. 3, we must sow. Even then, the word must be watered after being sowed.    Therefore, in some circumstances there is a lot of work to do to lay a foundation for the gospel.

In Western Europe and the Americas we have had centuries of preparation to understand the gospel. We have been taught that the Bible is God's word. We have an understanding of God as being a distinct person separate from the world and the universe, an individual as we are individuals. We are familiar with the concept of creation and of a Creator.   In the 1040 Window Muslims have a similar concept of God, but many other peoples do not. As stated above, Buddhists have no concept of God at all. They especially have no concept of a Creator.   Other religions see things in a variety of ways. There is a reason why the Bible starts out with "In the beginning God..." and not with "The generations of Jesus Christ..."   A people must have a basic concept of the Creator God before they can understand who the Lord Jesus Christ is. In future articles we will examine some of the 1040 Window religions from the stand point of "preparing the ground."