Unknown Nations Podcast

This is the Unknown Nations podcast, where we'll be sharing about reaching the nation where Jesus is unknown. Well, hello and welcome to the Unknown Nations podcast, highlighting what God is doing in the most spiritually dark places in the entire world. And today we're talking about how a fierce warrior encountered the gospel through the Jesus film, and it totally transformed his life.

Not just his, but the entire region where this guy is from. My name is Greg Kelly with Unknown Nations, where we have the honor to serve God by helping reach the most zero-access, barrier-ridden, spiritually antagonistic, spoken-word reliant people groups on the planet, giving birth to the church in impossible places. That's who we are, and we are so proud of having the privilege of you joining us today.

Hey, today in this story, it's from the field and from just an amazing place in the country of the Democratic Republic of Congo, deeply hidden in the jungles, are a people group. Remember, the people groups that we focus on are the nations, i.e. the ethne, where Jesus is totally unknown. And this people group is called the pygmies, and so here they are in the deep jungles of the Congo.

Despite their isolation, this man, this fierce warrior, he was transformed by the power of the gospel. There's nothing else that could change this man. He lived in anger, he was feared by so many people, but it was the power of the gospel that transformed him.

And you're going to be amazed and surprised at the way God is moving in such unexplainable ways really to reach an individual with a hardened heart like this. But before we get going into his specific story, I want to give you a little background on the Democratic Republic of Congo, not to be confused with its neighbor, the Republic of Congo, the main city there being Brazzaville. You go across the river and you're in a massive, massive city called Kinshasa, and that is the main community center, if you will, of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a massive country.

Think of the eastern seaboard of the United States of America. I mean, this place from the Mississippi River to New York, down to Florida, up to New York, the Congo is a enormous country, and in it are some of the most isolated places, not just in Africa, but on planet Earth, where there's no infrastructure. When you go from Kinshasa all the way over to the eastern Congo in a place called Bukavu, you would be going the equivalent of from Dallas to New York.

So it's just a huge spread. And then in the midst of this massive country are the people group called the Pygmies, and they become our target, because when we first started working with the Pygmies, they were an unreached people group. Now, Congo has had tremendous success and advances with the gospel.

When you think back to the early 1900s, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, was almost exclusively unreached. The famous missionary David Livingstone, actually, that's where he sort of started, up and down the Congo River he would go. So this place has rich, rich, rich heritage.

But then you go forward a hundred years to 2000, and you see tremendous advances to the point where Congo now is one of the most Christian countries in the entire continent of Africa. But again, living deep in the forest are the Pygmies. And when I think of the Pygmies, I've been into these areas, they talk about them, they're almost like ghost-like figures.

When the Pygmies don't want to be found, they are almost impossible. You'll go into these areas, and they are just like shadows, just in behind the trees. They're living in the forest.

They're surviving on the land. I tell people that if you do get lost in a location, not just Africa, but anywhere, you'd want a Pygmy with you, because I say the Pygmies would be like a combination of Tarzan and MacGyver. The Pygmies are who you want, because they are very resourceful people.

They're small in stature, but they're fierce, again, like the subject matter today of our story. But the Pygmies have been largely resistant to the gospel. And the reason is, is that the majority people, called the Bantu, have really been very hostile towards the Pygmies.

They've abused, they've taken advantage of the Pygmies. They've even enslaved the Pygmies. They would have them do very difficult tasks, like they would kill some of the animals in the forest that the Bantus don't want to deal with, but the Pygmies would do that kind of stuff.

I've seen Pygmies climb up trees harvesting honey in the middle of a ferocious beehive. So the Pygmies would do all that kind of stuff, and they have been very persecuted by the Bantus. And as I said, they're considered very elusive in nature.

And so how do you reach a people like that when the Bantus, who, you know, unfortunately, this is an example of a Christian community really having some poor decisions, making wrong choices, and alienating another tribe because of their behavior. Not by the majority, but it only takes a few. And so if you're Bantu and you're coming in and you're trying to reach the Pygmies, one Congolese to another, different people groups, who would you use? And that's where one of the heroes of our story comes in.

One of our indigenous leaders, I would call him the Pied Piper. When the Pygmies see him coming, they trust him. They know that he means them no harm.

They love him because he has served them for years and years. And so they trust him, and they've opened up their hearts to this individual. So when he comes up, the Pygmies come out of the forest, and they want to hear what he has to say.

And what he has to say is the message that all of us need to hear to say, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so they trust him. And so here we were, and we were in this particular area, and they were sharing.

When we think of going into these places, you need an individual. It's not just this one man, right? Because he's one individual, and you've got thousands and thousands of Pygmies. You need people called the men of peace.

A man of peace is a reference in the Scriptures that God uses those individuals who uniquely have access to these closed access areas. And so the man of peace showed up into this area to share the good news, to love on the Pygmies. And the Pygmies came out of the shadows, again, because they trusted him, including this warrior.

And this warrior saw that there was no threat, and he came forward. And the man of peace began to talk to them and tell them about Jesus. That was a total foreign story.

They had never heard the message of the good news of Jesus Christ. One of our strategies at Unknown Nations, as we're talking about the Word, is we share the Word in audio through our solar-powered audio Bibles. But sometimes even before that, we show the Jesus film.

The most powerful evangelism tool in our lifetime, where hundreds of millions of people have watched the story of Jesus, based on the book of Luke, unfold before their eyes. And remember, these are oral learners. So well over 90% of the Pygmy people group are oral learners.

That doesn't mean they're stupid, and it doesn't mean that they're illiterate. But what it means is they prefer to learn in a non-literate way. And that's why the Jesus film is so powerful, because they're watching the life of Jesus.

And so here are these individuals, this crowd gathers, and they start watching the life of Jesus. And they're drawn, because they see, wow, this is a good person. He's helping people.

He's praying for people. The children love him. The crowds are gathering around him.

They're drawn, and they're brought into the story of Jesus' life. And then they see the turn. They see the betrayal.

They see the Roman soldiers who had captured Jesus and imprisoned him. And that made them think of their own lives and how they're mistreated by the Bantu people. So the Pygmies are completely engulfed in this story of Jesus being treated like they have been treated.

And they're watching the crown of thorns, and they're watching the nails go into Jesus' hands, and they are distraught by it. Nobody more so than our fierce warrior. Remember, he's in the crowd, and everybody is nervous, because this guy's presence is there.

And he's a guy who would go around, and he is such an intimidating individual that they're fearful of him. So they're mindful that this individual's there, and this warrior, he has a justice about him. He knows right from wrong, even though he's this fierce warrior, and he's watching what happened to Jesus, and he is getting so frustrated because he's thinking to himself, this man is innocent.

He didn't do anything, and yet he's being terribly treated. And so in his frustration, he reacted how many of us would, who maybe are unfamiliar with the story in an aggressive way. Well, this is a guy who fights things with his hands and his bow and arrow.

That's how he deals with things. And so he's looking at the Roman soldiers treating Jesus poorly, and he reaches in, and he pulls out his arrow, and he puts it in his bow, and he fires it at the screen. Because the pygmies, when they saw the Jesus film, I mean, the pygmies think a wheelbarrow is like space age technology.

So you can imagine if they're watching a film of people, they think they're real. And so this guy takes his bow and arrow, and he shoots it at the screen to try and take out a few Roman soldiers, and the whole screen comes crashing down. And everybody's looking around like, what just happened? And the guy's like, where'd he go? Where'd all those people go? And one of the partners was there at the showing of this.

It came to this man, and he said, it's make-believe. Those are not real people, but the story's true. That is Jesus, the Son of God, and he gave his life for you.

He died for you. The reason he was being beaten and persecuted is because of you. He shed those drips of blood.

He cried those tears because he was thinking of you. And this man, this fierce warrior, received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. I think of Paul, and I think of how Paul persecuted the church, and everyone was terrified of Paul.

Yet, when he had his transformation, he was a new man. He was a new creation, and this warrior became a new creation. And he began to go around and share the gospel as a church planter, and he has been a part of planting now over 30 churches through the solar-powered audio Bible, because who knows the pygmies better than this fierce warrior? And so he goes into these communities that are a little bit scared at first because they know his reputation, and they can see something's happened to him.

They can see he's been changed, and so God is using this very individual to plant dozens and dozens of churches among the people groups of the pygmies. And we look at that, and we say, praise God for the transformation, but that's not really where we want it to end because Jesus didn't call us to make converts. Jesus is not satisfied with us just raising our hand, saying yes to Jesus.

Jesus wants us, you and I, just like this individual, to be in it for the long term, to make disciples. Friend, disciple-making is a commitment to the long haul. You and I never sort of accomplish that to its fullness.

It is an ongoing sort of investment in our life from now until the time that God calls us home to glory. And so they're going around, and they're making disciples, and this guy is sharing the solar-powered audio Bible. They're sharing the Jesus film more in these communities.

They're planting churches. They're literally seeing what the goal of Unknown Nations is. If you were to ask any of our team members, why do you guys exist? What's your objective? You would hear us say, to see indigenous church-planting movements.

And that's exactly what we're seeing among the people group called the pygmies who are no longer considered unreached. And what does that allow us to do? That allows us to celebrate what God has done there, but also to uproot and invest our resources into other places that are spiritually antagonistic because they still exist all throughout Africa. Here's what I want to encourage you with.

Now that you've heard this powerful story, it's time. It's time for you to also engage because you need to be a part of that story, and you need to ask the Lord, you know, my opportunities, what is God calling me? How does God want to use me? Because you and I have the power to be part of this bigger mission around the nations of the earth that have never heard. Here's some suggestions for you.

And I'm speaking to myself, right? This is where I was at, you know, a few years ago. I didn't understand like I'd hear a story like this and it feels so disconnected. And yet God is saying, no, I want you to intimately be a part of stories like this around the world of nations that are yet to hear the good news.

We can pray. We can pray for those still waiting to hear the good news message. What a powerful way.

You can support Unknown Nations and help us bring the gospel, help us empower people like this who are going willingly, eagerly, boldly with the good news message of Jesus Christ. We can, they need to be equipped. They need to have the Jesus film.

They need to have solar powered audio Bibles. They need motorcycles. They need to be empowered so they can take the gospel into these places.

And then we'd really encourage you to share this podcast. Would you think of maybe even write down names of friends, family members who you think might be encouraged by this podcast, forward this link to them, give us a favorable rating. That would be wonderful because that will allow others to hear the messages from Unknown Nations and friends.

This is not about us. This is about the work of the Holy Spirit. He is, he is doing the work.

He is the one who changed this pygmy warrior's heart. We are so thankful for you for joining us today on the Unknown Nations podcast, and we hope that you are inspired by the power of the gospel to transform even the most isolated and fierce lives. Visit our website, unknownnations.com and I look forward to seeing you next time on the Unknown Nations podcast.