Family Praise Fellowship  A/G

MonBy Dr. Paul & Jean Klahr

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Unknown

Eight young ladies, who were students, in the rural area of Japan, heard there was a foreigner in town and wanted to see him. They came to the house where I was staying. As I entered the room, they were embarrassed. In typical Japanese reaction they giggled and their hands covered their mouths.

After introductions, I asked if they knew who Jesus was? There was no answer to the question. Finally one of the girls spoke and said, "I think he is the new American Ambassador to Japan."

My heart was crushed because of the lack of the knowledge of Christ among these young ladies. My heart was also stirred as I realized that I would be telling the story of Jesus Christ, for the first time to these young ladies.

I thought of the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill. Acts 17:23 "For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."

I spoke to them about the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and then I prayed that God would open their hearts to receive Christ, who overcame death and is ever living to make intercession for us.

It would have been useless to talk of repentance from sin. They would not have understood the meaning of the word. Wrong doing to them was not living up to the code of their community. But death, all of them knew about death. It is the great unknown to the multitudes without Christ. It is an unknown that is feared.

A seed was planted, they prayed, was there a harvest? Only God knows. However, the knowledge that death, the great unknown, has now been conquered by Christ, will remain. I prayed that the Holy Spirit will take that hope and use it as a stepping stone to take them from the unknown to assurance in Christ.