Christians back home truly have no idea what it’s like to be among a people that have no Christian presence.
Darkness is a strange thing. As I pen that sentence, I realize that I need to amend it. It should be; “Darkness isn’t a thing.” It’s the privation of light. In scientific terms, you measure lumens and photons when you measure light. There is no measurement for darkness. Yet, we naturally can tell if a room is darker than another room.
The same is true of spiritual darkness. It may be difficult to nail a down a definition because spiritual darkness is simply the privation of God’s light. Places where Christ has not been named have a degree of darkness that those who live in the shadow of Christendom cannot fathom. We need more missionaries sent to places of deep spiritual darkness even if they may not appear to be the darkest.
It is a missionary’s job to go into those dark parts of our world and proclaim that the light has come. There are many places that all would agree fit the definition of “dark” and there are places that missionaries struggle to convince their supporters of the worthiness of their service there. Regardless of how dark a place seems, the only true measure is how much of God’s light is present. Just as no other measurement besides lumens can be used for light; no other measurement for God’s Light can be used besides the number of those who know and worship our Lord Jesus.
We have an excellent example in John the Baptist. His life and ministry was the shining (no pun intended) example of the light being brought into deep spiritual darkness. The prophecy from Zechariah concerning his life says,
Luke 1:76-79
“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
John’s role was to be the forerunner before Christ. To prepare the way for Christ. Isn’t that what missionaries do when we go into the world and proclaim Christ? We make the way straight for the Lord to do His work in the hearts of those to whom we preach. We ourselves are not the light that saves but we carry that light with us.
I have been to some of the darkest places on this Earth. Christians back home truly have no idea what it’s like to be among a people that have no Christian presence. That isn’t a knock on anyone’s character but rather a statement of objective fact. Many western Christians have not left their home city let alone their home country before. That’s why I’m such a huge proponent of short term mission trips. A missionary candidate’s first exposure to the lost world should not be their first long term assignment.
My dream is that Silk Road Mission would be a great way to carefully expose missionary candidates to that darkness in a controlled and responsible way. I wish to do that through yearly short term trips and mid term internships. Eventually, I’d like to recruit and send our first long term missionaries. That will take time, of course. So please pray for us as we work towards sending missionaries to the Silk Road!
Back to John the Baptist, what do you see when you examine his life? It’s a life of suffering, wilderness living, and eventual death by beheading. Despite that, Christ says in Matthew 11:11, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
This Christmas, while you’re celebrating the birth of our Lord, remember John the Baptist as well. He was one of the first to bear the light of Christ that we often flippantly bear now. We ought to try and emulate his life, his work, and his efforts to bring true light into a dark world. There should not exist any place in the whole world where darkness reigns. Our role as missionaries is to shine our little lights into that darkness and bring the hope we have found in Christ to the lost and hopeless. Onwards to the edge of darkness we go.
That’s all for now travelers. See you next time!
Kenneth See
SRM Founder