"We can count!"

Today, boys and girls, we're going to hear a story about a land far, far away on the other side of the world.

But you're going to know these people, and you're going to meet these people, and here's how the story goes.

In the aftermath of World War II, Southeast Asia

was catapulted into the 20th century.

Now, in the map behind me, this is Asia.

Right here, this big, massive land.

South is down, and east is this way.

So we're talking about there's a whole bunch of countries down here.

Southeast Asia.

In fact, we're going to show you a picture.

Can you see?

It's a land with very diverse geography, and they grow plants.

Those are rice paddies growing up in the mountains.

Pretty amazing, right?

Whoa!

Okay, back to the story.

As technology improved, along came radio communication to the masses.

One such station was called the Far East Broadcasting Company.

If you put all those letters together, it's F-E-B-C.

And this radio station began producing multiple foreign language programs, which aired on short rave from a studio in Asia.

High up in a remote mountain region, the chieftain of an isolated indigenous tribe heard a gospel program and was intrigued.

This was different.

Daily, for several months, he listened intently.

Unaware, unanswered questions plagued him.

This was new information.

No one knew how to send a letter back then, so the chief finally decided to send a delegation across the mountain to go find that man who speaks on the air.

Three days later, when a strange entourage appeared at the local post office of the capital city,

The postal worker could give no information.

“I don't know where the guy is on the radio.”

But he directed them instead to a religious leader in the area who agreed to travel the three days back up into the mountain to answer the chief's questions.

The chief listened politely to this stranger and then dismissed him.

“Sorry, that is not what the man on the radio said!” he exclaimed emphatically.

Back down the mountain, the delegation went with no idea how to find this mystical voice on the radio.

So they sat at the post office and watched until one particular postal box owner came to collect his mail.

Imagine his delight to hear about an unbelieving chief.

So this guy on the radio, he now hears, “What are you guys here for?”

“We want to hear the man on the radio.”

“Oh, that's me.”

“Okay, great.”

Imagine his delight to hear about an unbelieving chief who had questions about this one named Jesus.

A three-day trek back up into the mountains with two other national pastors was rewarded.

“That's it!”

the chief exclaimed as he heard the salvation story once again from the man on the radio, in person this time.

That day the chief believed and was baptized and declared his entire village would now be followers of the Jesus.

Fifteen years passed with no other outside influence except the Daily Gospel Radio program

transformed that village.

Opium cultivation stopped.

Tea and corn grew instead.

Some villagers learned to read and write because they now love words.

Later, they helped develop a written language for their indigenous dialect.

In the 1970s, many wars developed in the Southeast Asia region.

The chief's son—this is the chief who called up the man on the radio—the chief's son, John, now an adult, joined his nation's army and fought against rebel forces until God reminded him of his true calling.

He changed directions and began studying in a local Bible college in his own country.

When communist guerrillas overran the capital, John and his newly married wife fled into the jungle and built their first home made of branches and blue plastic sheeting in a refugee camp of a neighboring nation.

Miraculously, several years later, the couple was relocated to the West through a U.S.-sponsored refugee program.

However, John's plan to re-enter Bible college was tabled.

When God directed FEBC, that's the original radio that he heard on the air, his grandpa heard on the air, to hire John to develop a daily gospel radio broadcast in his native language, the first of its kind in the world.

It was déjà vu as John utilized his knowledge of tribal legends and animist religious beliefs to persuade his listeners that indeed, Jesus was God the King and God the Deliverer.

Years passed.

John faithfully expounded the scriptures on the radio with limited response.

He had no idea who was listening or what they were thinking.

Except, occasionally, a few letters came in.

Every once in a while, a cassette tape would come from a villager who could not read or write.

And these letters would say that they expressed faith in Christ.

This alone gave John encouragement to continue his radio ministry.

Then, in the year 1990, …

A large package from the mountain arrived at the FEBC Broadcasting Headquarters.

Inside was a sheaf of papers with 30,000 names individually written, along with a letter of explanation.

Please include all these names in the Lamb's Book of Life.

You know, the one you talked about when you explained to us the Book of Revelation on the radio.

John was astounded.

Unbeknownst to him, an old man had heard someone speaking in his native dialect on the radio.

He was so excited that he called together his entire village to listen.

In the following days, he proceeded to walk to 18 more isolated, faraway villages.

Now, how close to you is the next town?

Did you want to walk to that town?

Now, count

18 towns.

This man walked to 18 more isolated villages high up in the mountains in order to tune their radios so that all the villagers could hear this daily broadcast.

Eventually, a council of elders was called to discuss the new information.

It was decided that the tribe must either option one, accept the new teaching

or option two, never listen again to that program on the radio.

After many hours of intense debate, the leaders chose to destroy … all of their ancestral gods, their idols, and instead follow Jesus.

When John preached about the Lamb's Book of Life, the villagers decided that their names needed to be included in that book too.

We have been walking all over the mountain to take a census, that means you ask people a question, of believers.

And we are excited to find believers in every village, even though there have never been any missionaries or evangelists in this region.

All the tribal people have been listening to the radio program, and 300,000 more names are coming in from our census.

These are people who listened and responded.

The radio broadcast leaders were stunned.

An estimated 500,000 people from this tribe lived in the mountains of this tightly restricted country.

Was it possible that more than half had come to faith in Jesus by just listening to the radio?

The following week, John directed a question to the tribal leaders listening to his broadcast.

Is it possible that a comma may have been misplaced in that number? 300,000?

One month later, an indignant answer was received by mail, “Sir, it is true that we are only tribal people, but we can count!”

Still in disbelief, John received confirmation of mass conversions from another unlikely source.

Indeed, a local newspaper from the capital city reported the following, in essence,

“The enemies have made up some sort of a king, a one Jesus.

Of course there is no substance to this God.

But foreign radio stations broadcasting in our tribal dialect have convinced our people to leave their household spirits.

We have to worship the household spirit and instead worship this heavenly spirit.

The movement has started in an influential city in September and has been a widespread trend.

[Here, the government estimates 250,000 had converted to Christianity.]

The tribal people are selling their animals even to buy a radio to listen to this voice of some foreign god.

This is a well-known scheme of our enemies to take advantage of certain traits of our tribal people and oppose a revolutionary regime.”

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It has been 33 years since God opened the eyes of this tribal people in this restricted country and brought them from darkness into the knowledge of His light.

Jesus is the Light of the gospel.

Today, this tribe is still persecuted.

In several countries in Southeast Asia, unsaved family members and communist officials try to pressure them to recant, give up Christ, return to your ancestral spirit worship.

Their homes are regularly ransacked.

Their livestock, their crops, their fields, their tools are seized by government and militia.

Their electricity cut.

Their animist relatives drive them from the villages.

Medical care, birth registration, and even burying rights are withheld as leverage to turn away from Christ.

Appeals to government authorities fall on deaf ears.

As officials compete for the honor of enforcing a Christian-Free Zone in their districts, despite the harshest of treatment, almost none of these precious believers revert to the old way of life.

Please note, Christians have been believing Satan's lie that Christianity has been ineffective and that the world is hardened or closed off to the gospel.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

Sensitive hearts are still hungry to hear the true, clear, simple Bible answer for salvation.

Your gifts supporting Christian Radio International broadcasts onto five continents, including unreached people groups.

Thank you for your continual prayers and faithful contributions.

Doesn't it make you want to be on the radio?

Don't you want to produce faithful, consistent Bible truth content and broadcast it boldly everywhere while you can for decades so that one old man will hear and say, my people need this truth.

And he will go tune the radios of the hearts of all of his like-minded compadres

and have a great influence to get people to Jesus and through Jesus to heaven, to eternal life.