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Before
we ever left home to go to Amsterdam we were furnished a list of
workshops which would be available to us. Each participant was to
select seven. When we arrived we received a sheet showing our
selections and the locations of each. There were about 110 in all
but several of them required more than one room and several
teachers. The instructors were to be experts in their various
fields. All of the workshops given in English were translated
simultaneously into Portuguese, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin
Chinese, German, Spanish and Arabic, making ten languages in which
each session of special interest was given.
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The
translators, who were very adept, occupied booths at the top of the
seats in the rear of the auditorium. Each listener was furnished
earphones connected to a little black container which he clamped on
his coat. By turning a little dial he could easily arrive at the
language he understood and could follow right along with the
speaker. When I listened to the workshop in “Evangelistic
Preaching Among Displaced Persons” I could easily understand
the Russian, Yugoslavian, Czech and East German speakers. One of the
interesting things to me was to meet men and women who could
converse in as many as seven different tongues. There were many who
spoke three languages fluently.
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There
was hardly a theme I could think of which was not discussed. The
workshops covered everything from the use of sophisticated media to
the evangelist’s study life, and his relationship to resistant
people and to difficult areas. It was a hard task to select the
seven that you wanted to participate in. The one on Buddhism was
taught by Tissa Weerasingha, the one on Hindu by Anand Chaudhari of
Rajasthan Bible Institute, the one on Jews by Susan Perlman, of Jews
for Jesus; the one on Muslims by Dr. Akbar Abdul-Hagg. Even the
names sounded as if they were made for the themes. I attended the
one on Marxism which lasted almost three hours and featured sixteen
men —everyone from the Metropolitan of Russian Orthodoxy, and
the Patriarch of the Armenian Orthodox Church, to the Baptist
leaders in places like Cuba and Yugoslavia. The first two were in
direct contrast to the others. They were attired in robes hung with
gold chains and other glittering ornaments. During the question
period the exiles who were present and no longer afraid, held the
feet of the prelates to the fire. It was interesting and
informative.
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Before
I left home I prayed that I might be enlightened in at least two
areas. Saint Louis is a university city. Last year I spent time at
the International House at Washington University. One day I met a
number of young engineering students. All of them were Muslims. I
learned they were from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Oman. I felt at a
distinct loss in trying to converse with them, although they all
seemed anxious to talk. They spoke English rather fluently. I had
never read the Koran, and knew little about its origin. I felt at
some disadvantage.
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Several
years ago I was invited to speak at Washington University on a
special occasion. The Student Communist League was holding a
memorial service for the Chinese leader Mao Tsetung, who had
recently died. The Christians on campus decided to take advantage of
the opportunity. They posted a number of notices advertising the
difference between a dead leader and his little red book and the
living Lord and his little black book. I was invited to be the
speaker and to answer questions. The meeting hall was decidedly too
small and was full for the occasion. At the time I resolved that I
would learn more about Marxism, both as a theory and as a way of
life.
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It
seemed to me that the International Convention was an answer to my
longings, I would be thrown into the company of former Muslims and
Marxists and I could learn what operated to cause them to change and
to become Christians. By keeping my eyes and ears open I could learn
a lot in a few days. With the increasing wealth of oil-rich nations
there was a growing demand for young engineers and architects. I
wanted to know why Marxism and the Muslim faith had spread so
rapidly over so much of the earth’s surface. They constituted
foes we had to meet in hand-to-hand combat.
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It
turned out that my prayers were answered in ways that were beyond
me. I had arranged for an aisle seat on the plane as usual. A young
man of 35 sat next to me. Before we got off the ground I learned
that he was bound for the Convention in Amsterdam. We were hardly
under way until he confided in me that he was a college youth worker
for Jesus, specializing in the Islamic Religion. He had been born in
the Near east. He and his family now lived in Scotland. For several
hours he talked and I listened. It was a course in just what I had
prayed for and I wasn’t even near Amsterdam yet.
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To
cap the climax one of the first persons I met in Amsterdam was a
young man from near the Pakistani border in India. He had been
reared in a Muslim home. He had learned about Jesus from a wandering
native missionary, a man who held meetings in the open air because
every place else was closed to him. He sat under a tree and told the
young man about God’s love as manifested in Jesus. It struck a
responsive chord. The young man had been imprisoned and threatened
with mutilation and death because of his faith in our Lord. He told
me that six people, including himself, were taking the message to
villages and were being heard. He further told me that the other
five were also at the convention. He found them and brought them to
meet me. We visited several days and talked for hours. We asked
questions of one another as though it was our last hope of learning.
And all of the time I was regretting I had grown so old before we
met. It was refreshing and stimulating.
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I
thought I learned something else from these men and others with whom
I talked and that was that it was far better to learn from the lips
of those who had experienced a thing personally than to learn by
reading a book. One might gain a knowledge of doctrines and beliefs
but these are always lived out in a cultural context. If we can
learn about the culture as well as the pattern of belief we have
gone a long way toward solving some of the difficulties of a
changing way of life. It is not just minds that are altered by the
Good News. That is why the convention was so precious to me. I
resolved not to waste a minute of it but to contact someone every
opportunity. It was easy to do.
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The
very first workshop I attended was very enlightening. It was titled
“How To use Apologetics in a Non-Christian Religious
Background.” It was conducted by Dr. Ravi Zacharias, Director
of the Chair of Evangelism and Contemporary Thought at Alliance
Theological Seminary, Nyack, New York. Dr. Zacharias was born in
India. He was thoroughly familiar with Hindu and Muslim thought
patterns and was an authority on Buddhism. I listened to him for an
hour, taking notes as he talked. He then received written questions
from his audience. The burden of his talk was that apologetics could
not be used in India as in America. One had to adapt his methods to
suit the climate in which he was laboring, but one should never
water down the word of the Lord.
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I
found myself profiting greatly from the seven workshops which I
selected and they were invaluable to me. One of them was on inner
city evangelism. Oak Hill Chapel had just leased a storefront on a
corner in the inner city before I went over. Perhaps it was the
lectureship which emboldened eight of us to go on the street taking
the gospel and handing out literature to those who came by. We were
so thrilled by what we did that we resolved to do it every month.
The reception we had gave us courage. The people we talked with were
like hungry men and women being handed parcels of food.