Bible Bottleneck
Why doesn't
God intervene to provide bibles for Christians who are praying - even singing hymns - for
them?
God does intervene. For
example, every piece of luggage entering China is scanned for "forbidden" items, including bibles, yet bible-filled
suitcases continue to sail right past the Chinese border guards, whose eyes God
continues to blind from detecting His bibles.
The problem isn't the lack of God's intervention or provision, which are aplenty. The
problem is that majority of the resources that God has provided for
these bibles are bottlenecked and misused by the Christians to whom they
have been entrusted.
Who are these people?
It's us, the Christians in North America who have been given 80% of the
Protestant wealth in the world. In 2000 alone, God rained down $12 trillion dollars of income
on American and Canadian Protestant Christians. If the average offering
followed the Old Testament example of 10%, $1.2 trillion would have been
collected for the Great Commission. At an average cost of $3 per bible,
dedicating just 0.3% of the collection from that year alone would have been
more than enough for 1 billion bibles.
Instead, the offerings were only
2.6%
of income, or about $300 billion, which is still 100 times more than the $3
billion needed for 1 billion bibles. Unfortunately, the vast majority of
the collection was used for less urgent needs and even misused. For
example, one of the largest Protestant
denominations in America reports that for every $1
spent
on missions, $5 is being spent on paying the interest (not even the principle)
on church building mortgages.
Did Jesus command us to buy real estate on debt and give His money to
bankers, or to take His gospel to the ends of the earth?