Asia makes up the vast majority of 3.8 billion hidden peoples who are being missed by traditional missionary efforts and mass media evangelism. They are most lost of the lost -- trapped in utter spiritual darkness.
I am not trying to minimize the social and material needs of the Asian nations, but it is important to reemphasize that Asia's basic problem is a spiritual one. When the Western media focuses almost entirely on our problems of hunger, for example showing all these pictures of starving children on TV, it is difficult for Americans not to get the false impression that hunger is the biggest problem.
But what causes the hunger? Asian Christians knows these horrible conditions are only symptoms of the real problem -- spiritual bondage to satanic philosophies. They key factor -- and the most neglected -- in understanding India's hunger problem is the Hindi belief system and its effect on food production. Most people know of the "sacred cows" that roam free, eating tons of grain while nearby people starve. But a lesser-known and more sinister culprit is another animal protected by religious belief -- the rat.
According to those who believe in reincarnation, the rat must be protected as a likely recipient for a reincarnated soul on its way up the ladder of spiritual evolution to Nirvana. Though many reject this and seek to poison rats, large-scale efforts of extermination have been thwarted by religious outcry. As one of India's statesmen has said, "India's problems will never cease until her religion changes."
Rats eat or spoil 20 percent of India's food grain every year. A recent survey in the wheat-growing district of Hapur in north India revealed an average of ten rats per house.
Of the 1982 harvest of cereals in India, including maize, wheat, rice, millet and so on -- a total of 134 million metric tons -- the 20% loss from rats amounted to 26.8 million metric tons. The picture becomes more comprehensible by imagining a train of boxcars cars carrying that amount of grain. With each car holding about 82% metric tons, the train would contain 327,000 cars and stretch for 3,097 miles. The annual food grain loss in India would fill a train longer than the distance between NY and LA.
The devastating effects of the rat in India should make it an object of scorn. Instead, because of the spiritual blindness of the people, the rat is protected and in some places, like a temple thirty miles south of Bikaner in north India, even worshipped.
Clearly, the agony we see in the faces of those starving children and beggars is actually caused by centuries of religious slavery. In my own beloved home of India, thousands of lives and billions of dollars go into social programs, education and medical and relief efforts every year...
The real culprit is not a person, lack of natural resources of a system of government. It is spiritual darkness. It thwarts every effort to make progress. It dooms our people to misery to both in this world and in the world to come. The single most important social reform that can be brought to Asia is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Over 300 million of my people have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. They need the hope and truth that only the Lord Jesus can provide.
Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty....I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
John 6:35, 48-51
Priority #1 isn't more food programs or charities -- the world needs Jesus.
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