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The American poet/songwriter Paul Simon wrote about the way human life goes. He described it like this:

Slip sliding away...

Something like a fifth of the world's people are Chinese. Woven into the fabric of the largest population on earth is the rich thread of China's ethnic minorities, numbering more than 100 million people. They are vastly outnumbered by the majority 1.2 billion Han Chinese.

'Operation World' has proved a great help in stimulating prayer for world-wide mission. But there is another book, 'Operation China', by New Zealander Paul Hattaway, published by Piquant, which introduces the reader to these hidden minority peoples within China. They account for only 6.7% of China's population, but they inhabit 62.5% of the territory.

2002 is the 50th anniversary of the death, in April 1952, of Samuel Marinus Zwemer. Though unknown outside specialist missionary circles, he was widely acknowledged in his lifetime as the world's foremost authority on all matters relating to Christian witness to Islam.

This reputation emerged from a 50-year career involving pioneer missionary work, literature propagation and advocacy work on behalf of mission to Muslims and finally a career in teaching and writing on missionary theology and practice.

Over the summer months many missions and gospel events are going on all over the country. One such outreach by students from Cardiff University went on into July and took place in the Rhondda Valley.

Wales has seen great days for the gospel in years gone by, but now things are different. For some time students from Cardiff Christian Union have had a burden to evangelise the valleys of South Wales and have set up a group called Revive to reach out. During term time a number of them go up to the valleys each week to work in youth clubs based in local churches in the area.

Francis Schaeffer brought a prophetic message to the church over 30 years ago about the sanctity of human life. Dr. Robert W. Evans's forthcoming book 'The Descent of Dignity' revisits the message that Schaeffer implored us to hear.

JC: You describe Francis Schaeffer in your book as your unseen friend. Tell us about his influence on you.

One year ago Claire Osborne walked into the Quinta Centre a confident graduate. She was looking forward to a year on the UCCF Relay programme 'meeting students for coffee and loving people'. All her illusions were soon to be shattered. The reality was that she was to be stretched and challenged more than she could ever have imagined.

'Relay' began as a response to UCCF's desire to put more people on the ground to work among students and to invest in and develop student leaders. It is now an established one-year training and discipleship training programme that has placed almost 400 recent graduates with Christian Unions across the country.

When Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer arrived in Afghanistan, they had come to help bring a better life and a little hope to some of the poorest and most oppressed people in the world.

Within a few months, their lives were thrown into chaos as they became pawns in historic international events. They were arrested by the ruling Taliban government for teaching about Christianity to the people with whom they worked. In the middle of their trial, the events of September 11 2001 led to the international war on terrorism, with the Taliban a primary target.

Surely we must stand amazed at the comparative lack of prayer in the British churches.

Think about our nation at present. Family breakdown is rife. Street crime is at record levels. Our media is awash with pornography. There is abortion on demand. Drugs are easily available. The churches are dwindling. Islamic extremism is on the rise. I can imagine the Lord Jesus standing at the door of many a church prayer meeting and thinking to himself: 'What has to happen to this country before my people will come and take prayer seriously?'

It was in a small student room late one night at Reading University in 1974 that the Holy Spirit whispered to me: 'You must become like a child' (Matthew 18.3).

As I asked God to be my Father, my searchings for truth and reality were finally over, I was born again, I realised that the Lord had died to save me and my life as a true Christian started. I was 18 and in my first year studying Psychology and Linguistics.

The value of churches having regular visiting teams going out with the gospel cannot be over-emphasised.

It is effective and not as difficult as many believe. Through visiting we meet people of all age-groups, and, given time and patience, we can gain their confidence and forge friendships with those who are interested to look into the Christian faith. Contact will be made with hundreds who do not attend church services.

During one of his lectures on apocalyptic literature this year at Word Alive, Don Carson explained how we can be diverted from the gospel by what may have been good experiences in our lives.

For a year of my degree I exchanged Irn Bru, ceilidhs, and a campus of 6,000 students for ice hockey, two feet of snow, and being one of 37,000 students at the University of Alberta. I also left behind a thriving Christian Union that packed in a good 200 each Friday night. In Canada, I didn't meet one Christian student.

This summer, thousands of students will be heading overseas on exchange schemes or as part of their degree. For the Christians who are leaving this can be a make-or-break experience. They often depart as unprepared missionaries, who struggle to find a church or Christian students they can meet with. Too many feel isolated and doubt their faith, or compromise their integrity.

Culloden Battlefield is where the last battle was fought on British soil, between the armies of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Hanoverian Duke of Cumberland in 1746.

In 2002 the modern housing estates of Smithton and Culloden in Inverness are the scene of another struggle which has nothing to do with flesh and blood!

The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (the CICCU) reached its 125th anniversary on March 9. Bob Horn, EN's former editor and recently retired as UCCF's General Secretary, was asked to speak on that occasion.

I owe a huge personal debt to God for the CICCU. Before I started at Cambridge, I was a Christian, but only half-committed and very uncertain whether I would stand for Christ.

From 400 students in a ballroom at Durham University to a lunch-hour presentation in a Further Education college in north London, students across the UK have been confronted with the gospel in this year's mission season.

The style of mission and individual events varied immensely, but each was organised by a group of dedicated students enthusiastic about evangelism.

I'm sure you've been there. You're trying to explain the gospel to someone, but they just aren't hearing you. They're listening to the words, but you've some huge hurdles to get through before they'll really hear, let alone respond. Christian students in Wales face this problem every day. The fact is, they are speaking the wrong language. No matter how well they present their message, or how appealing an event they put on, if it's in English, many Welsh-speakers will have closed ears.

It was back in the 1970s, when Welsh national pride was first on the rise that the Christian Unions realised they needed to start sharing the gospel in Welsh, if they were to reach the Welsh-speaking community. As the Christian students prayed for opportunities and began to present Christ in the Welsh language, they saw large numbers converted.

In parts of Africa, Eastern Europe, China, etc., there seem to be many people turning to Christ. What are the reasons for fewer conversions in the UK?

The need is there, the gospel is the same, Christ is the same, God is unchanging. Many factors may be suggested, sociological, political, economic, and above all spiritual.

Evangelical feminists, otherwise known as egalitarians, have generally favoured retaining traditional masculine trinitarian language. Scripture is God's inspired Word and the vast majority of egalitarians have sought to defend masculine God-language against the criticism of many of their feminist colleagues. In the process, however, they deny that such masculine God-language has any implications either 1) of superiority of what is masculine over feminine, or 2) that the eternal relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit indicate any kind of eternal functional hierarchy within the Trinity.

Let it be said clearly that non-egalitarian, complementarian evangelicals agree wholly with the first of these denials. Because God created the man and the woman fully as his image (Genesis 1.26-27), it is clear that no use of masculine language for God is meant to signal some supposed greater value, dignity, or worth of men over women.

There is a death in this life, which, if experienced by every Christian would be the means of reaching millions more unsaved people with the gospel. It is, simply, death to our own reputation.

Perhaps I'm being unfair, but it seems the church in the West will do almost anything to reach unbelievers as long as we can keep our dignity and respectability, and not appear in any way 'uncool'. How far we have wandered from that bunch of nobodies we fondly call 'the early church'.

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 May 2002

Former American President Bill Clinton delivered the 2001 Dimbleby lecture with the title 'The struggle for the soul of the 21st century'. This topic should concern Christians and especially missionaries.

After an interesting review of the problems the world faces in the 21st century, Clinton poses the question as to what is more important in the world today: our differences or our common humanity?

A student's email to his CU captured the mood of this year's Word Alive: 'Since I've returned home I've not been able to stop sharing with fellow Christians what I have learned. Please do the same if you have not already - let's encourage each other.'

He continued: '...but let's not forget the lost. I have not yet had the opportunity to meet up with my non-Christian friends, and pray that my inability to keep quiet will be present when I do.' Like so many others, he left Skegness having been spiritually fed and armed for the year ahead.

Wiesbaden is in Hessen, Germany. With the Nazis completely defeated at the end of World War II, it found itself in the American occupied zone. One kind of victory had been won, but God saw that there was more work to be done in Europe, and he called some men from the American military to be involved.

Advent Sunday 1947 found the congregation of Wiesbaden Baptist Chapel preparing for a pre-Christmas meeting with the Sunday School children. The church was about 50 years old, but now they were meeting in a hall in a back-yard. Following the war there were still terrible food shortages and starvation, and unbeknown to them the poorly-dressed people were about to face one of the most dreadful winters on record.

It was reported in The Times on Thursday January 17 2002 that the alleged British shoe bomber Richard Reid, a suspected agent of al-Qa'eda, managed to stay safe by deception.

The report said that one of his tricks was to hide his religious fanaticism by scavenging empty alcohol bottles (Muslims generally do not drink alcohol) and cigarette ends from rubbish bins to leave in his hotel rooms. Another was putting his passport through the washing machine to remove a Pakistani visa stamp that might have posed difficulties when he travelled to Israel.

Bill Edgar is both a professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and an extremely talented jazz musician who has spent a lot of his life in France. He is not only very intelligent and cosmopolitan, but uses his gifts to share the gospel in various ways. EN took the opportunity to interview him while he was in Britain earlier this year.

EN: Bill, tell us about your background?

BE: My parents met in North Carolina during the war, while Dad was in the army. That is where I was born. Shortly after, we moved to Paris, France, and I grew up there. Then we spent seven years in New York. But after that, the rest of Dad's professional career until he retired in 1983, was in Geneva. It was not a Christian home, but it was a wonderful home.