Now go to Jeremiah 25, Jeremiah 25 in the Old Testament.
You see, according to the Bible, the Word of God has gone into all the world.
And when we study the Bible, we see that that is the way it has always been from
the beginning of creation until now, and this doctrine that teaches that there are
parts of the world and nations of the world that have never heard the Gospel and
that have just been in darkness for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, I don't
believe in it.
I don't think it exists.
Now let me give you an example.
It's funny, I was reading a book over the last couple of weeks, I was reading a book
on the life of Genghis Khan.
Who knows who Genghis Khan is?
You know, so I read a very long, lengthy biography of Genghis Khan.
And Genghis Khan is the one who founded the Mongolian Empire, and just to help you
understand the size of the Mongolian Empire, at its peak it stretched all the way from
Korea to Poland.
That's a pretty big empire.
I mean, it was all of, you know, we look at Russia today, it covered that whole huge
land mass of most of Russia.
It went into Eastern Europe.
It covered all the, you know, a lot of the Muslim lands, a lot of the Arabic area
of the Middle East.
It covered most of present day China, into Korea, other East Asian nations, literally
the Mongolian Empire covered 22% of the Earth's land mass.
And I mean that's taking into account North and South America and everything.
I mean 22% of the Earth's land mass was under control of the Mongolian Empire.
Now Genghis Khan founded the Mongolian Empire in the early 1200s, 1206 AD, okay?
And he did not conquer all of that in his lifetime.
He conquered quite a bit of it though, and then his descendants conquered the rest and
expanded it over 100 years or what have you.
But here's what's interesting about the Mongolian Empire, which covered not much
of Europe, but mainly all of Asia, the Middle East, right, China.
What's interesting is that even though Genghis Khan was not a Christian, okay, he believed
in the Mongolian religion of worshiping the sky and shamans and all this crazy stuff.
In fact many of his descendants became Christians, and in fact the Mongolian Empire at times
was ruled by women that were the widows of some of these Khans, you know, some of
the subsequent Khans that came after him, ruled by these women that were Christians.
A lot of what they called the Golden Family, which was Genghis Khan's family became
known as the Golden Family because they were like the ruling dynasty for a while.
Many of the Golden Family were Christian, and in fact throughout the entire Mongolian
Empire there was actually pretty much religious freedom.
And I was reading about, and this book isn't a Christian book, it was just a history
book about the Mongolian Empire, and it was explaining in the book that in all
the major cities of the Mongolian Empire there were just tons of Christians, Jews,
Muslims, and Buddhists, and they were all coexisting, and there were all these Christians
in all the major cities, and even much of the royal ruling family of the Mongolian
Empire was Christian, and one of the major religions of the capital of Mongolia
at that time was heavily Christian.
And they weren't even Catholic, because they're telling the Pope, you don't know what you're
talking about, and whatever, I'm not saying they were all Baptist, but I'm just telling
you that throughout Asia, throughout this massive part of the world that today we would
look at that part of the world, right, and say that is a part of the world that's
destitute of the gospel, wouldn't we?
I mean if we looked at Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan, the Middle East where it's all
Muslim, we'd look at that area and say, oh man, that's an area where almost nobody's
Christian.
That's probably one of the biggest areas people would point to as an area and say
those people have never heard the gospel.
Often people point to Africa, say Africa has never heard the gospel, but Africa probably
has more Christian missionaries in it than any country in the world.
They've heard the Bible, they've heard the word, I mean how many tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands of missionaries have gone to Africa with the King James Bible
in their hand?
So many.
And then we look at this massive part of the world here.
I mean 22% of the land mass, but you know, let alone we know North and South America
there's a Bible in every town, in every store, but just even that part of the world
over there, at that time there were lots and lots of Christians.
Christianity had a heavy influence.
Even people who were ruling the Mongolian Empire were Christian, many of them.
I'm not saying that they were saved or Baptist, I'm just saying that there were
many claiming the name of Christ and the Bible and the word of God and Christianity were
prevalent in all of Asia at that time.
And I was just reading a secular history, it's just explaining the religious makeup
and what's going on.
And then it explains how later the Mongolians rejected Christianity by and large.
So I looked up a statistic today, and of course this is Mongolia, but I'm just applying
this to the whole world.
I'm just giving you an example though.
You know today in the country of Mongolia, which is just a small country, there's only
about 3 million people living there.
I looked at the statistics of Mongolia today and it's basically 53% Buddhist, 39% say they're
not even religious at all.
So did you get that?
53% Buddhist, 39% said they're not religious at all.
Christians, there's about 2% of the population that says that they're Christians.
I saw a statistic in China, 25 million people are officially Christian.
But those are the ones that go to a state-sanctioned church or whatever.
They don't have the statistics on all the people that are underground or whatever.
So what I'm trying to say is this.
You can look at a place like Mongolia today and say, oh that is an un-Christian place.
That is a place where many people probably live and die and never hear the gospel because
only 2% of the people are even claiming to be Christian.
Well wait a minute, there was a time when Christianity was a major religion there, even
in that part of the world.
Even in China, even in Mongolia, even in the Middle East.
But what happened?
They rejected it.
They didn't pass it on to their children.
They turned to the false religions of Buddhism.
They converted to Buddhism around the 1500s in Mongolia.
And many of these other countries converted to Islam and rejected Christ, kicked out
Christianity and so forth.
And look, when you kick out Christianity out of your nation and you kick out the Bible
and you kick out God's word and you convert unto Buddhism and Islam and other false
religions, you are plunging your descendants and your children into generations of darkness.
And that's what we see today in the world, but we're very foolish if we look at a
country that's been plunged into darkness and say it's always been in darkness.
Do you really know that?
Would you have guessed that Mongolia was filled with Christians in the 1200s?
No, because you don't know because you weren't there.
And so what I'm trying to say is that throughout history, God's word has gone throughout
the world.
And I think in every generation or every several generations, God's word goes out and
God's word goes into nations.
You know, you look at a nation like, you know, North Korea for example, right, that's
very closed off and isolated.
I'm sure that it's very isolated from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but how long has
it been that way and how long will it continue to be that way?
Eventually it will fall.
Eventually God will allow the Gospel to come in.
And then those people will have a chance to accept or reject the Gospel.
And based on their choice, their eternal destiny will be determined and in many cases,
the eternal destiny of their children will be affected because they may plunge even
their descendants into darkness.
But you know, God only visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children's unto the
third and fourth generation.
And then He's going to give people another chance, you know.
And in fact, He gives people other chances even before that in many cases.
But I believe that there are so many places in the world today that we look at and
say these people have never had the Gospel, but the truth is that the Bible says in
Romans 1 that when they knew God, they glorified Him, not as God.
It's not that they never knew God in Asia.
It's not that they never heard about God in Africa or any of these places.
It's that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.
And then they became darkened.
And when we see in Romans 10, He says, look, their sound went into all the earth, their
words unto the ends of the world, but they've not all obeyed the Gospel.
That's the problem today.
So this philosophy that says, well, it's not fair, these people haven't heard the Gospel,
they don't have a chance.
God says that when they knew Him, they rejected Him.
And that's their fault, not God's fault.