DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT:
Stories of gospel advance in the world’s
difficult places
By Tim Keesee
Crossway. 240 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 433 540 691
I believe it was a recent advertisement for a famous Christian newspaper that posed the question: ‘How are we informing ourselves of the most important thing happening in the world today?’.
And while I would not want to undermine the claims of that particular publication, it was this very thought that was most prominent as I read this travelogue of a mission mobiliser visiting and encouraging missionaries and the local churches that they are in partnership with.
The book reproduces Tim Keesee’s travel journal of the last few years, detailing mar-velous stories of gospel transformation in the way of the cross in some of the most difficult places in the world today. As Justin Taylor promises in the foreword to the book, we are given ‘front-row seats’ to what our crucified yet risen Saviour is doing in the world, from the former Soviet republics to the Balkans, from China to Southeast Asia and onward into Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, to the Horn of Africa and Egypt and even in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Evidence that grace abounds
God is at work amidst and through sorrow, bringing people from every tribe, tongue and nation to the kingdom of his Son. If you need to see evidence that where sin abounds grace abounds all the more, read this book. If you need to have your eyes fixed on what is unseen in our world today, read this book. If you need to be re-energised in the reality of God’s people carrying around in their bodies the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in their bodies, read this book.
But the book should come with a warning: it may be a travelogue, but it is not written for tourists; it is not written to satisfy the curiosity of the comfortable. The work it wants to get done, in a very understated way, is to speak gently to our consciences about our heart for mission and even more pointedly to ask, am I living for the city that is to come? Keesee manages this not only by telling the stories of those today who are doing just that, but through interweaving snapshots from the past of ambassadors of the cross who despite great difficulties have seen God open doors for the gospel to go forth.
We are quick to see obstacles to the gospel in our own day and our own situation and consequently we are tempted to hedge our bets between this material world and the next. This book reminds us that the resurrected Lord Jesus knows how to move the stone that we might see his glory. As Paul encourages Timothy, it is Jesus who has destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel and so spurs us on to endure suffering for the gospel by the power of God (2Timothy 1.8-10).
