Dr. Gary Maxey: Much, pastor Latham. And it is an honor. It's a privilege to be here today at Sam Jones Methodist Church. Greetings from Nigeria. Verse 14 that we just heard, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
I want to talk to us about reaping the end time harvest. And I do say, by the way, I told pastor Latham already that it is cruel and unusual punishment to ask an African missionary or preacher to preach only 20 minutes. I I, I'm normally given 90 minutes, but, here we are. Let's see what we can do. Alright?
And as he has shared, I have the privilege of having been a missionary over the past half century and 42 years in Nigeria, and, that's that's just a great privilege. Our task right from day 1 in Nigeria has been to train leaders for the church, And so we've been engaged in the formation of 2, bible colleges or seminaries there, and currently West Africa Theological Seminary, the largest nondenominational seminary in all of West Africa, perhaps even on the continent. And then, I'm there also as a Methodist, in fact, a 7th generation Methodist. My direct ancestor, Edward Maxey, was a lay pastor in the New York City Methodist Chapel in 17/71 when they welcomed Francis Asbury. John Wesley's emissary to America eventually became, as we now honor him, the father of American Methodism.
And so across those generations, I've had the privilege of coming from a long line of men of the cloth, so to speak. But, I'm here today to, first of all, talk about this passage that has been read to us by pastor Latham. If you're familiar with the gospels, you know that the gospel of Matthew stands out in that it revolves around But then, we are reading this morning from the, the Olivet Discourse, called that because this is the sermon of Jesus in Matthew 24 and 25 as he sat on the Mount of Olives and talked to his disciples about end times. And the background, as we heard, was that Jesus had been with his disciples on the temple mount. That, of course, was a place of great pride for the Jewish people, the greatest wonder of which was Herod's temple.
And we see the picture there of the disciples appealing to Jesus to take some time and look around and just enjoy the pride of being Jews. And Jesus responds rather shockingly by saying, look. You see all of these things? This this temple is going to be torn down, and not one stone will remain on another. You know, it's like me standing in front of the White House and say, you know what?
All of this is gonna go up in smoke pretty quick. And what I see in my own mind's eye is that the disciples are just stunned into silence as Jesus shares the shocking news, and they rather sheepishly perhaps follow him as he leaves the temple mount, goes down across the Kidron Brook, and ends up sitting down on the Mount of Olives on the opposite slope. And that is when the disciples now having, regained their voices, they say, tell us when is this going to happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world. And it is with those words that Jesus launches into what we now call the olivette discord. Now it's fascinating that Jesus did not immediately answer their questions.
Rather, as we've heard, he launched into a rather dismal account of things to come, including wars and rumors of wars and famines and earthquakes and, lack of love. And, you know, it's one of the most negative passages in the new testament. And it is only after that that he launches into an answer to their question. Now you and I know something that the disciples did not know, and that is that there was going to be an intervening period of at least 2000 years. And by the way, those those years have been characterized by wars and rumors of wars and fam everything that Jesus described.
And yet right in the middle of this passage is one of the most bright, one of the most encouraging, one of the most hopeful verses in the new testament, and that is verse number 14. Jesus said this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. And, this morning, we have reason to think and believe and understand that you and I may be living in end times indeed. One of the questions that was on the minds of the disciples then, and which has been there across the years and is here even today is when will Jesus come back? He has promised to come back.
When is that going to happen? And it is important to note that in chapters 2425, 5 good times, Jesus says emphatically, nobody knows. Nobody knows the day or the hour when the son of man will return. And in the face of that, that that that 5 times repeated statement of Jesus, I find it absolutely amazing that across the years, people have never stopped trying to make merchandise out of predicting when the end will come. Predicting when Jesus will come back.
When will be the end of the world? In fact, I had an interesting incident that happened to me many years ago in 1988. In June or July of that year, I happened to be back in the US. And, at my father's home, the phone rang, and it was a friend of mine. I didn't know him well, but he was a friend.
And he said, Gary, look, I I I've got a book that I wanna send to you. In fact, I wanna send 500 copies of this book. People need to read this in Nigeria. I want you to send it to Nigerian. He said the name of the book is 88 reasons why Jesus Christ will come back in 1988.
And, I thought for a moment, I don't there's no way I want 500 copies of a book I've never even seen. I said, look. Send me one copy. And sure enough, he sent it, and then several days later, I was there again, when it came in the mail. And and exactly like he said, 88 reasons why Jesus Christ will come back in 1988, attested by the following 88 reasons.
And I started reading down through those reasons, and the phone rang again, the same guy. This time he said, look, I wanna send you a 1,000 copies. People are getting saved that are reading this book, and, you know, I didn't know what to say. And I don't know whether it was God or the devil that put the answer in my head, but I said, look, I got a problem. If you send those books to me, I don't think there's enough time for them to reach Nigeria before September 12.
And, if your book is right, it'll be too late by then. And if it's wrong, nobody will wanna read it. Well, you see the point I'm making is that nobody knows, and yet if you ask me when will Jesus come back, I will say, I'll tell you a verse in the bible that I think will give you the best possible answer. And that's the very verse that we're talking about this morning. When would Jesus come back?
The scripture says this gospel of the kingdom is gonna be preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations, and then then the end will come. What does that mean? You know, look I think if we could get into that verse and tear it apart and understand all of those words, I think we could have an even better understanding. For example, the word preach. Jesus said this gospel is gonna be preached in all the world.
Well, how do you know? How do you know when the Bible has been preached among a given people around the world? And the experts don't even agree on this. David Barrett said that you can say the gospel has been preached wherever there has been an understandable hearing of the gospel. Sounds okay, and on the basis of that, Barrett said, there's probably 15,000 people groups around the world that have not had that preaching.
Ralph Winter, doctor Ralph Winter disagreed. He said, no. You can't really say that the gospel has been preached among a given people unless there's been the establishment of at least one viable new testament church that can now preach to the rest of those people. And and on the basis of that, Wynter said there are still at least 5,000 such people groups that have not had the establishment of a church. Well, look, I don't think you and I can solve that disagreement, but think of another word there.
Jesus said this gospel will be preached as a witness to all nations, all nations. What is a nation anyway? How many nations are there in the world? Well, if we would go to the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, they could probably tell us what a nation is, and I I've never done it, but I think it was sound something like a nation is a geopolitical entity that has been carved out of the land mass of the world that either is or could be potentially a member of the United Nations, some 200 of them. But that's almost certainly not the kind of definition that Jesus was using as a testimony to all nations, and the word that is translated in the Greek new testament is the word ethne nation, from which we get our word ethnic, and it refers not to a geopolitical entity, but to an ethnic entity, a a a what we call a tribe in Africa.
A an ethnic or a group that speaks the same language and has the same culture. And I can tell you that even in the case of Nigeria, which we sometimes call the giant of Africa because it is truly not only the most populous country on the continent, but it is number 5 in the whole world, headed to number 3 by the middle of the century, only behind India and China at that point. But Nigeria, which is a member of the United Nations, has within it between 45100 nations, ethnic ethnic groups, languages. And among them, by the way, we are aware that there are still somewhere around 15 of those nations among whom there is not one single known, born again believer. In other words, there is a task that is still to be accomplished.
And that task, by the way, is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he gave his great commission to the disciples in Matthew 28. He said that go and make disciples of all nations. That's the mandate. And I'm happy to say that I'm convinced that you and I are living in end times because we are nearing the completion of that goal, and God has put within our hands tools that were not available even a 100 years ago. Think about the rapid translation of the bible into the languages of the world.
We now have the bible or at least a portion of the bible available in the mother tongue of 98% of global population. Professor Laman Sanneh of Yale University, one of the most well known Africans in academia here in America once said that the single biggest factor in the growth of Christianity in Africa has been the translation of the bible into native languages, and I think he was correct. But think also of travel. You and I can travel the globe. Within 24 hours, we can virtually be to any other point on the globe, and yet in the former years, think just a 150 years ago of a man like Hudson Taylor who became famous for his evangelization within China on his first trip, 1856, took him 6 long months to go from South Hampton, England just to the coast of China.
His vision was for the interior of China. Can you imagine what Hudson Taylor would think if we could bring him here today and say, guess what mister Taylor, you can go to China in a single day. I think he would shake his head in total unbelief. But I'm here also to say that at West Africa Theological Seminary within Nigeria, we are reaching out to the unreached. Every year, we send out from within our own student body.
We send out missionaries to unreached areas in the country, not funded from any penny outside. We deliberately do it from within the seminar. We wanna demonstrate that they can do it themselves, and they do reach out. And then one of the most exciting things recently has been what has happened with the global Methodist church. You know, let me just back up an inch or 2 and say that over the past, close to 10 years, we have been focusing on Northeastern Nigeria over a 1000 miles from where we are, where we have what we call the persecuted church.
Churches that have been absolutely devastated by Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorists. It's difficult for us to imagine what has happened there, where in the middle of the night, motorcycle groups of Boko Haram come in and wipe out entire villages and kill everybody possible. It's hard for us to imagine that. It's hard for us to imagine a church like the church of the brethren located in that part of the country that has had over 1,006 100 churches burned to the ground. Thousands of both pastors and members murdered for no other reason than that they are Christian.
Tens of thousands of refugees. And that's why we began to reach out to that part of the country and say we want to help you by bringing in and training more pastors. Thank God the church remains vibrant, and among them is the Global Methodist Church, which is located in that section and a little bit more to the south of the Islamic devastation. And, in 1923, the Evangelical United Brethren Church began missions in that part and eventually became a part of the United Methodist Church after the merger of the EUB and the Methodists. And today we have 30 global Methodist pastors under training at seminary.
35 more are coming in by January. We have promised that within the next 12 months, we will have at least a 100 of them. Why? Because we want to see them encouraged, lifted up, the spiritual life of the church enhanced. God is good to us.
God has given us opportunities that I could never have dreamed seeing even in our own day. When I think about that, I think about this very scripture, and that is that God has given us, including Sam Jones Methodist Church, the privilege of engaging in the end time harvest. It is amazing to me that the newly elected bishop in Nigeria, bishop John Penaauto, is also now the bishop of North Georgia Global Methodist Church. That's amazing to me. And, pray for, bishop Penaauto that God will give him the wisdom and the strength to know how to carry that out.
It's very exciting, and I've known him well for 10 years. He's a man of God. He is a man who has a passion for the growth of the church, and he's a man who is working very, very closely in partnership with us. You say, how how can Sam Jones Methodist Church be a part of all of this? Well, good news.
Number 1. Number 1 absolutely is through prayer. You know, I learned many years ago, people don't pray about things they don't know about. Does that make sense? They they don't give money to something they've never heard of before.
And so, become informed but then pray, pray, pray. I don't know how many times over the past decades my wife and I have looked at each other as we have seen an absolute miracle from God and we've said somebody is praying. Somebody is offering prayers. In August of 18 1989, I was a caught accosted by armed robbers. They grabbed my car keys.
They flew open the doors of the car, told my 2 boys to get out, and then began firing their guns. 1 on the left, 1 on the right, beat me bloody, and then pulled the trigger on their guns sitting there in my car. And I watched the fire come out of the muzzle. I heard the noise, and the thought that went through you know, it happens so rapidly. You don't even have time to be scared.
I just thought in a kind of a matter of fact way, this is how my life ends. But you know what? They missed. No bullet entered my body. They beat me senseless and I, staggered home from there.
They stole the car and all of that. But those are the kinds of occasions where my wife and I say, look, that was only possible because somebody was praying. Someone was calling on God, and so that's number 1. Number 2, you can come alongside some of those global Methodist pastors that we're reaching out to and helping them, making it possible them for them to be there. Why is this important?
I think it's important precisely because of what Jesus said. This gospel of the kingdom is gonna be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Let's be involved with it, shall we? Let's pray. Let's pray.
Father in heaven, what a privilege, what a joy it is to be called children of God, and what an opportunity we have to be partners with people thousands of miles away, 6000 miles away, and to know that your spirit is moving there and moving here, and that together we can partner to see the end time harvest for your glory. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. God