On being witnesses to the nations

When Christ said, "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth," he was speaking to a group of men who were from Galilee, not from Jerusalem. They were already missionaries in that they were outside their homeland.

While the United States is indeed post-Christian and our peoples do need to respond to the gospel, a nation like Afghanistan, where sharing the gospel has been a capital offense for at least five years, has a much smaller Christian presence than Western nations like the United States and Australia.

"Operation World" claims the Christian population in Afghanistan is .01 percent, or about 2,314 in a nation of 23,141,000. That might have changed a little in the half-dozen years since my edition of "Operation World" was published, but it indicates a nation in much greater need for missionaries than our own.

Maybe a reordering of priorities is called for.