A Country On Fire: Inside Ethiopia's Revival
Welcome to God’s Church On the Move, the podcast that takes you to the spiritual hotspots where God is actively at work and doing incredible things.
With me in the studio are Ron and Charis Pearce.
Welcome, guys.
Hi, Joy.
Hello, Joy
Hi, so tell us about Ethiopia.
I know that in the past, we’ve talked about the evangelism that’s happening.
Well, in Ethiopia as a whole, for those people that haven’t heard the story, there’s a massive turning to God there from two fronts.
And one would be in the Orthodox or the Coptic, as some people say, but it’s really Orthodox, the Orthodox Church, which is the predominant religion of the area.
It’s Christian, Orthodox.
And this, I would say, probably would be about 60 to 65 million people that adhere to that.
This was started by the Ethiopian eunuch situation in the Book of Acts, and the Ethiopian eunuch took the gospel down, a church grew up.
It was wandering in the wilderness, shall we say, for many years, but then there’s been, in the last 15 years, I would say, huge revival, and it’s pure revival.
It’s almost like Martin Luther and the Reformation movement.
This would be sort of like that Reformation, this massive turning, coming back to God, leaving dead orthodoxy behind in coming alive in Christ.
And so, that’s what’s going on right now.
Now, Ethiopia was a little bit different than several other countries in Africa, because Ethiopia was under Communism for many, many years, correct?
Exactly.
And in that period of time, I forget the number of years, it was like a decade or a little bit more than that, the Evangelical churches were persecuted massively, and they didn’t, they suffered, really suffered.
Under Communism.
Communism.
But it was showing people how awful it was under that sort of rule, and it gave people a reason to listen to the Gospel.
What happened was that the depth of the Ethiopian Evangelical believers under Communism became so strong that it was the launching pad for the revival that you see there now.
And especially in another religious group, and that would be the Muslims.
This is a traditional religion, and they are discovering the truth of the Gospel now in large numbers.
So those are the two groups.
You’ve got the Orthodox.
And you’ve got the Muslims.
Percentage-wise.
I’m going to use some numbers here.
Orthodox is probably about 65 million, and the country is really growing fast.
And the Muslims would probably be around 40 million.
And there’s about 138 million?
Maybe, but that might be a little high.
But it might be very high.
I know it multiplies quickly.
It does.
And you’re in it for so many years, and you keep having to change numbers, and I don’t even know where they are right now.
But it’s in that range.
Right, okay.
So what’s happening then with the…
Okay, so what happens is this, is that in the springtime, in March and April, they send out the evangelical, shall we say, believing believers.
These are believers who’ve come out of the traditional religions, and they’ve come out, they’ve accepted Christ, they’ve been trained, and they’re Bible-strong.
That’s no other way I can put it.
It’s sort of like they’ve left everything of the old behind.
They’ve taken the word of God, they know how to relate the word of God to their people from their cultural background, from their traditional religion background.
They go out there by the thousands.
And I’ve been accosted by people that say, that’s impossible, that’s impossible, we never see this.
And many of the times, these are the people that are Westerners living in those cities of Ethiopia, and they’ve never seen.
Well, it’s probably not, because this is in the countryside, predominantly, and these are people that don’t raise their heads up too much to be counted.
In other words, they’re going into hostile situations because of the religious factor, because of politics, some of the revolutionaries that want to bring back Communism into the country, and therefore, they don’t go out there and advertise their presence or their name.
They just do the work.
And this time, in March and April, they sent out 15,000 trained evangelist pastors to go out and share the word.
And it’s not just within Ethiopia now.
And over the years, because we’ve been involved with this funding, this operation, they are now going up into Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, down the coast.
I think some have gone down as far as Mozambique, as well as, and I will do this generally because of the situation, they go to other countries in the Middle East.
Many Middle Eastern countries.
That’s as far as we’ll go with that.
That’s where we got to stop.
So, don’t ask for specifics, Joy.
No, no, do not ask.
We cannot give you the specifics on that.
They are very active, though, and we can’t even tell you the good stories.
Yeah.
Some that are amazing about how God’s going ahead of them into some of the most dangerous parts of the Middle East with the gospel.
So, when you say they go out, they’re hopping on buses, they go to the countryside, they jump into the fray of what’s happening.
They’re not jet-jets, and, you know…
Walking…
No, they’re not televangelists.
Okay, so, yeah, they get on a bus, and they go for a bus.
We raise funds for them to go out, all right?
And I think this year we did about 10,000, and then 5,000 of them went on their own, and they had enough money.
10,000 evangelists.
Yeah, 10,000 evangelists.
And they go out, and we talk about giving them a bus ticket and a sandwich.
Now, that’s the short that we can understand of this.
The bus ticket will mean they’ll go two by two, and they’re going to go to their various areas.
Some are further away, some are real close.
Therefore, if you average it out, it’s probably, I don’t know, it’s probably on average, 20 to $30 transportation cost to go out for 90 days.
And then you’ve got a sandwich.
What that is, is taking care of them with food until they get to their first situation where they will win a family to the Lord.
And then that is called the host family, and that host family will then support them and take care of them in that region.
And then they’ll fan out days’ walks away, and they’ll go to all the villages and all the people within their circumference of their territory, and that host family will take care of them.
I mean, that’s quite an assumption, that the host family, but that’s the culture, right?
It’s the culture.
The same thing in China.
China is the same thing.
Missionaries for years in China and the nationals, they’ll go out two by two, and they will go, and they have nowhere to stay, and they’ve got nothing to eat until they win somebody to Christ.
And that is the host family.
Then they take them in.
It’s very common around the world.
Over here, we would not even come close to this.
We need a year’s support.
Exactly.
It’s just not even…
It’s two different worlds.
So over there, they’re going to go out, and they’re going to find their first converts.
Host family takes care of them.
They branch out.
And right now, we did the math on this with them and broke it down.
This past year, every day, they would be winning about 25 people to the Lord in most situations.
That would be two family units, and they would be winning them to the Lord.
And so, if you multiply 25 by 90, and you go that by 15,000, you’ll come up with some numbers.
A lot of zeros.
Get your calculator, Charis.
These are the situations now, and you’re probably looking at a retention rate of about 80 to 90 percent.
So these aren’t just people raising their hand to get somebody to leave.
This isn’t a mass crusade where you get 2 percent hanging around for a couple of years.
You’re talking about 80 to 90 percent of the people, and it’s not 100 percent.
There would be 10, 15, 20 percent that wouldn’t understand, follow with it for whatever reason.
But then the next year after that, they come back to them.
And therefore, it’s round two.
And many of those people now have come in as well.
So it’s building upon itself.
It sounds very organized, like a very…
This is an army.
I’ve looked at the books on this.
I know the people involved.
We have meetings with them.
I cannot tell you their names, how it’s organized.
It reminded me, when I first saw it in operation, it reminded me of the French resistance in the Second World War, because I’m a student of Second World War situations, history.
And this was very, very close to that.
Organized, serious, planned out, strategy, strata, so that if you get caught, you’re not going to betray everybody else.
Oh, boy, it is incredible.
And it’s amazing because the person who the Lord really used to develop this whole plan, the story behind his testimony, and he is the most humble person, but really the Lord has given him the plan, basically.
It really is a plan, and it’s a strategy that works.
And it really, I mean, when they talk about it, it’s not something that we would ever sit down and figure out ourself.
No.
A Western mind could not grasp how to relate to these people the gospel.
And it’s a clean, pure, non-watered-down gospel, but something they can understand.
This gentleman, we’re not going to give names, this gentleman had a Saul to Paul conversion experience through a miracle, and then God gifted him with the plan, as you say, and the strategic mind.
He was a leader in this traditional religion before.
Now, he was, shall we say, the persecutor that came over and is now the strategist that God has used to build this massive operation.
Now, a couple of things to go on with this, and we’ll wrap this part up, but we’ve been doing this now for quite a few years.
When I say we, they, us, funding, etc., like that.
And we’ve put a lot of money into this sort of operation.
What’s happened is, is that one of the leaders who’s a Western missionary, when I say that, he’s sort of like the gatekeeper of the situation over there.
Very trusted.
Very non-traditional Western missionary.
Non-traditional missionary who we’ve known.
And so, he talked to us this year and he says, Ron, he says, there’s probably not one person within the group that these people are ministering to that does not recognize that there’s a revolution that is spreading every year getting bigger, and everybody talks now about Jesus.
And it’s known everywhere, throughout the entire country.
This is the Jesus Revolution within Ethiopia, in this religious background group.
And it’s, he says, it’s really stunning because you can’t go anywhere and find people not talking about who is Jesus.
That would be our dream over in the Western Church here in North America.
And it’s not staying within the border of Ethiopia.
No, and they’re going, taking it to people of that same religion down the coast, up into this area, all throughout the region.
And it’s doing a massive job.
Now, we’re undergirding this with the Word of God.
And this is really important.
So, we just placed care…
290,000 copies.
Of God’s Word, which I’m holding in my hand.
And we are printing this at extremely…
We’ve got new pricing, which is incredibly good.
We can do a full Bible there right now.
Now, okay, folks, remember, there’s many parts to getting a Bible into the hands of a person, from a print shop, all the way to handing it to them through our national workers, okay?
You’ve got the printer, and then you’ve got the transportation, and then you’ve got the customs and duties, and then you’ve got transportation at the other end, alright?
But, just, and we’re not going to say where we’re doing this, but just to tell you this, the number this time is that each Bible will be printed for $2.67.
That is an all-time low for a book that is…
That’s numbers like the China printing.
I’m holding it in my hand right now.
Can you give me that number, page number?
1,416 pages.
So, it’s a good…
It looks good, guys.
It’s an inch and a half, yes.
And therefore, it is really going well.
And now, the other costs are on.
So, it probably comes out to, I’m going to say, $3.50, Carrie?
Yeah, I’ll be about that.
$3.40 now, $3.50 for a full Bible, hand to hand.
Should we say, dock to hand, loading dock to hand, it is that number.
Now, this is really, really an important thing, because they take this, and their other religion, they don’t believe in anymore.
It didn’t answer the questions of life.
So, what they’re doing now, is that they’re opening up God’s Word, and they’re studying it ferociously.
I try to think of adjectives and adverbs to try to colorize what it is.
And there is such a hunger for God’s Word in Ethiopia, that one Bible is now shared by 25 people.
In the revival.
That’s huge.
Charis, is there anything else I’ve forgotten about?
No, but when you were talking about the evangelists going out, it reminded me of the story, we’ve mentioned it on here before, but of the lady who went to get training because she felt that she needed to go out and share the gospel with all of her family, which were spread out all around.
But it reminded me of that, the urgency, they don’t care how far they have to go, or what country they’re going to, or if it’s close or far, but the urgency to share the gospel because it’s changed their lives so much.
It’s so evident within this movement.
It’s that determination.
It is also God opening their minds to the truth.
And this many times, and I know we’re going to tell you it, and you’re not going to believe it, but it’s through dreams and visions of the leadership of these other religious groups, opening their minds that this is real.
And therefore, you’ve got this mixture of the supernatural, the determination that Charis was talking about, whereby these people have a burden for the lost, their family members and their friends.
They’re going to go at all costs to preach the gospel.
Then you’ve got the planning underneath that of this movement.
Then you’ve got all of the scriptures that are being flooded into the area.
Make this cake batter, go around, and you come out with one of the most beautiful situations.
All that began 2,000 years ago, with an Ethiopian eunuch, and going and trying to find the truth in Jerusalem, going home with the answer, and in various ways it spread, and now it is one of the jewels in the world, is in Ethiopia.
Absolutely incredible.
Thanks, guys.
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