I write this immediately after my return from Singapore, where I attended the Asia-South Pacific Congress on Evangelism sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It was a moving experience to watch the eleven hundred delegates sing together, worship together, and discuss the mission of the Church together.
While passing through some of Asia’s great cities I was struck by the stark contrast between the affluent and the underprivileged. Some live in tin-walled shacks and others in splendid modern homes; some wear fine clothes and ride in chauffeur-driven cars while others perform the hardest menial labor without the help of Western mechanical gadgetry; some eat well and enjoy excellent health while many others live marginally and have a high incidence of tuberculosis; some children are neat and cleanly dressed while others are dirty, scabby, and shabbily garbed. This is Asia.
The white man’s future in the missionary dimension is bleak. The day may not be far away when few of them will be left in Asia. Asian Christians are optimistic, however, and feel that their day has come. Indeed, the decline of the West and its decaying faith may mean that Asians will be bringing the Gospel to Europe and America in reversal of the traditional missionary pattern.
The word has come that Billy Graham will spend Christmas with our servicemen in Viet Nam. He deserves our prayers.
