William Carey University Chapel
September 7, 2016
Jerry and Bobbye Rankin
Jerry: It is always a joy to be on campus at William Carey University. Having served as missionaries for 40 years, including 17 as president of the International Mission Board, we have had an amazing global overview of how God is at work in the world today. That tenure, including extensive involvement in India, provided opportunities to spend the night In William Carey’s home in Serempore on a number of occasions.
I would like to focus your attention on one verse of Scripture that would characterize the work of William Carey as well as the contemporary situation in which you find yourselves as students. In Joshua 3:4, the Children of Israel are being prepared to cross the Jordan River and claim possession of the Promised Land. They had been delivered from bondage in Egypt; they had had seen the provision, protection and guidance of God through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. But Joshua says in this verse, “You have not passed this way before.” They were beginning a new era as the people of God, embarking on a new experience.
When William Carey went to India in 1793, global missions had languished for 1400 years. The church had lost the vision of discipling the nations, but that changed when Carey, burdened by an awareness of a lost world, launched the modern missionary movement that continues to thrive today.
This verse would apply to many of you who are beginning a new experience as college students. You no longer have a teacher who gives daily homework assignments, and you are overwhelmed to receive a syllabus outlining a semester of work in multiple subjects. You no longer have your mother looking over your should admonishing you to make your bed, do your homework and wear clean clothes. You find you are on your own in terms of responsibility and personal discipline. “You have not passed this way before!”
Such was our experience in going to Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, as missionaries years ago. Enthusiastic and confident of our call, but naive in leaving the rural provincialism of Mississippi, we encountered masses of people, were isolated from the supportive fellowship of family and friends, and disillusioned when we did not find a ready response to our witness. ”We had not passed this way before.”
Bobbye: Indonesia became our home in spite of those initial challenges of people everywhere, the poverty, the heat of the tropics, austere living conditions, the lack of basic commodities, and spicy food that would make your hottest tex-mex seem bland. Trying to communicate in a new language brought frequent experiences of humiliation and embarrassment.
Whenever Jerry needed something and called me—”BOBBYE”—our Indonesian household helpers and neighbors would look horrified. It was only later that we learned “babi” was the word for pig. This American calling his wife a pig was bad enough, but of course pork is considered taboo in Muslim cultures. TRULY, WE HAD NOT PASSED THIS WAY BEFORE!
Jerry: I hope you understand and appreciate the legacy of your name—William Carey University. Like Carey, who was compelled by a vision, this institution is driven by a vision to make an impact on the world and our society through those educated in an environment devoted to academic excellence, practical training and spiritual growth.
Carey had an awesome conviction of the providence of God in spite of his own limitations. But in faithful obedience he opened new frontiers compelled by the maxim, “Attempt great things for God, Expect great things from God!” We were not unaware of our own personal limitations and inadequacy, but each of us had a strong conviction of God’s call when we left for the mission field.
Bobbye: As a young girl in my rural Lincoln County community, I became involved in GA’s when a lady came to our church who had an aunt who was a missionary in China. As she told stories of her experiences, I became aware of people who had never heard of Jesus. I remember sitting in the limbs of a magnolia tree in my front yard memorizing the GA watchword:
“Knowing that countless people grope in darkness, and giving attention to His command, I assert my allegiance to Jesus Christ, to His church and its activities. Attempting with God’s help to abide in him through prayer, to advance in wisdom through Bible study, to acknowledge my stewardship of time, money and personality, and to adorn myself with obedience to the Great Commission.”
I had no comprehension of what “countless people groping in darkness” meant—I mean, we could count the people in my community and knew their name—but I began to realize there were multitudes for whom Jesus died who did not know Him, and that had something to do with His purpose for my life.
Jerry: Although I heard many missionaries speak in our church as a boy, it was actually in a Junior High geography class that I identify my first awareness of God’s call. We were studying the people of Asia. I was overwhelmed with the the massive population and realized hundreds of millions of people were living a lifetime, dying and going to hell, not because they had rejected Jesus but because they had never heard of Him and never had a chance to be saved. I remember thinking, “Why don’t more missionaries go so everyone can have an opportunity to hear of Jesus.” It was as if God reflected that thought back into my heart to realized there was the potential in my life of taking the gospel to those who had never heard.
We saw God work in amazing ways throughout 23 years in Indonesia, India, and Southeast Asia as churches were planted, believers baptized and discipled, leaders trained and the gospel planted in places never before touched with the gospel. It still amazes me to think of Muslims coming to faith in Christ in spite of being disowned by their family, ostracized by their community, even their lives threatened; there is no explanation except the power of God that indwells the message of the gospel.
In my years of working in India, I often recalled the testimony of Dr. Jasper McPhail, our first Southern Baptist missionary there. He was a cardio-vascular surgeon and because of his credentials was able to receive a visa for the first time. People were incredulous that he would leave a successful and lucrative medical practice to go as missionary to India. He was often asked, “Don’t you realized what you are giving up; don’t you realize what you are sacrificing?” Dr. McPhail always replied, “I gave up my life to do God’s will when I accepted Him as my Savior. To sacrifice means to give up that which is of value. The greatest value in my life is obedience to God’s will. How could I consider it a sacrifice to go to India for Christ when He considered it a privilege to go to Calvary for me?”
Our years on the mission field never ceased to be a learning experience in which God was teaching us, but we look back on that and realized three things we learned—(1) the reliability of God’s word, (2) the reality of God’s power, and (3) the resources of God’s grace.
Bobbye: After our first year of language study, we moved to our assignment in East Java, excited about reaching the Madurese people in our area. Our family began to have staph infections in which boils broke out all over our body. We noticed a boil on the forehead of our 2-year-old son with a red streak going to his eye. Sensing the danger of this, we left immediately to drive to our mission hospital five hours away. His head was swollen and we were told later that the infection was draining into his brain; if we had not gotten him there that night he would have died.
When we got home Jerry and I both came down with dengue fever. We were in bed with excruciating pain and burning with fever when a phone call came from our mission administrator to tell us my parents had been in an automobile accident; my dad had been killed and my mother was in critical condition. I was able to go the states a few weeks later and my mom survived. Through all of this we felt so isolated and forsaken but through it discovered the depth and sufficiency of God’s grace as we had never known—something we had to learn to equip us for persevering through 40 years of missionary service.
Jerry: We had no idea that God would move us into a role of regional leadership and then as president of the International Mission Board for 17 years. We had not passed this way before, but saw the reality of God’s power and providence in unprecedented global advance. Researchers agree that the greatest advance in global evangelization occurred in the last decade of the 20th century. In fact, more was done in those ten years than all the previous 200 years of modern missions combined since William Carey went to India. However, the last decade of the 20th century pales in comparison to what God is doing to fulfill His mission since we entered the 21st century. Baptisms of new converts went from 200,000 to more than 600,000 each year, the number of new churches planted around the world from 4,000 to more than 24,000 annually, and since the year 2000 AD an average of more than one hundred unreached people groups are being engaged with a Christian witness each year. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, missionaries swept into Eastern Europe, and an unprecedented harvest emerged in China, we recognized that the one remaining formidable barrier to global evangelization was the Muslim world. Now God is using the turmoil and terrorist activity to create disillusionment among Muslims, and there have been more than 70 people movements to Christ in recent years among Muslim background believers.
Bobbye: Much like William Carey could not have anticipated what would grow out of his obedience to God’s call over the next 200 years, we could never have anticipated how we have seen God work:
• I visited house churches in China and saw the vibrancy of faith that was multiplying in spite of persecution and government restrictions. Researchers there report as many as 20,000 new believers are coming to faith in Jesus Christ everyday.
• It was beyond belief as we traveled for ten days on a tour of Iran, and everyday God did something to reveal how he was at work.
• In the hardcore Muslim country of Algeria we worshipped with a vibrant congregation of Kabyl Berber Arabs who had seen 200 churches started.
• In Yemen, a seedbed of Muslim terrorists, we grieved over three missionaries murdered at our Baptist hospital there, and then saw many Yemeni Arabs openly become followers of Christ.
• Our faith was strengthened in visits with Cuban Baptists, still suffering under restrictions by their socialist government. Undeterred in their witness, they are on track to reach 100,000 house churches sharing the gospel in every village and community.
• And one of our greatest thrills has been to visit our daughter and her family—including three of our grandchildren—who have served in Central Asia for 15 years, a stronghold of darkness where people had never heard the name of Jesus, and see the power of the gospel drawing people into God’s kingdom.
Jerry: Yet there is still the challenge of those who have never heard the gospel today. Researchers tell us there more more than 3,000 ethic-linguistic people groups—with a population of 1.2 billion—who have not heard the name of Jesus. There are no churches, no known Christians, no Bibles in their language, and no missionary is yet to engage them with a Christian witness. This must have been the realization that compelled William Carey to go to the spiritually dark, impoverished peoples of India.
However, when I see how God is working in our world today, I think of the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:14 where He said, “The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a witness to every nation and then the end will come.” For the last six to eight years before my retirement, I would tell new missionaries being commissioned that I believed we were sending them out to be the last generation of missionaries. God is moving through global events—war and ethnic violence, political disruption, economic uncertainty, natural disasters—to turn the hearts of people to a search for something that will give hope and security, something that can be found only in Jesus Christ. “We have not passed this way before!”
What would it mean to you to realize you may be the last generation before Christ returns. I’m sure many of you, as I did as a student, realize God has a plan and purpose for your life. I often prayed, “God, what is your will for my life?” I heard a speaker point out that such a prayer was somewhat egotistical. What we should be praying is, “God, what is your will (period).” Then when we understand God’s will, we know that His plan and purpose for us is in the context of His will.
Often someone will respond to a message on missions by saying, “Dr. Rankin, I would be willing to go as a missionary, but God has not called me.” I have never figured out how to respond to that tactfully. Here is a God who wants the world to know Him, and a Christian who says he is willing to go, but blames God for why he doesn’t go—because God has not called Him. We need to understand the call of God is to the church, His people, and no one is exempt. He wants us to find our place in fulfilling His mission.
Bobbye mentioned one of the fascinating experiences we had during our tenure was to go to Iran. We were amazed to find on our itinerary the tomb of Esther and Mordecai. In visiting that sight in Hamadan we were reminded of how Esther found herself queen of Persia, and when a conspiracy arose to destroy her people, she intervened at risk of her life and the people of God were saved. We are all familiar with the verse in Esther 4:14 when Mordecai is appealing to Esther to go into the king and intercede for her people:
“Who knows but you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this!”
When you came to faith in Jesus Christ, you were born into the kingdom of God. We have been taught to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Are you willing for God’s kingdom to come on earth by allowing His will to be done in your life. “We have come into the kingdom for such a time as this.”
Created: September 30, 2016 Updated: September 30, 2016