November 01, 1989 by Ralph D. Winter

Dear Friends,

Vroo-oo-mm!! Not since the close of the Second World War have more profoundly significant events, in one month, erupted on the world scene.

Earthquakes and hurricanes—mere side-shows compared to these astonishing events on the global level.

Boom, boom, boom, the Eastern bloc countries are yielding to massive popular uprisings demanding new freedoms. Where will this sudden liberation lead? Chaos, new feuds? Warlike resurgence?

We hear that thousands of people in East Berlin have seized upon currency differentials between East and West Berlin to make a quick buck.

Landlocked Germans in the southern part of the Soviet Union have seized upon glasnost to bail out of their enclaves of exile to flee to West Germany. Imagine the missionary significance of thousands of evangelical Mennonites showing up in West Germany speaking all these exotic languages of the southern part of the Soviet Union, like Kirgiz, Tadjik, Uzbeck, Kurdish, etc. While they are running away from their own mission field, maybe they will soon see things differently and venture back, in smaller numbers, but with determined missionary purposes? Who else would know their way around, speak the local languages like these newly liberated Germans?

And, then, what about all the other millions of Soviet citizens whose suppressed Christian beliefs have grown incredibly strong under pressure, who may well be better prepared to share their faith on the mission fields of the world than many a “free world” believer who has long ago succumbed to the corrosive acids of secularism and affluence?

Yes, if glasnost can somehow continue (before a new post-revolution Napoleon will arise), it may be that the Soviet Union, plus the Eastern Bloc countries can provide a good measure of the missionary force in the countdown to the year 2000…if they are baptizing people 24 hours a day in a city in Siberia…???

Two wonders: 1) the Soviet Union itself contains millions of Christians with battle-tested faith, who can not only evangelize their own hundreds of Unreached People groups, but also contribute to the global evangelization movement, and 2) we can rejoice in the fact that Christians from the rest of the world can now have access to a spirit-starved populace and have opportunity to touch freely for the first time in 70 years the vast unreached plethora of Central Asian Muslim groups.

Muslims? That is the theme of this issue. The second largest religious group (about half the size of Christianity), the largest non-Christian bloc with a major head-start in the fact that Jesus is a prominent, highly revered person for all of them.

Are new things about to happen? One of them is Phil Parshall’s profoundly stirring new book (see pages 7, 30, 32). And don’t miss the absolutely bombshell article by the pseudonym, Tom Trueman, on page 9).