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.
You know, 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 landmass 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 landmass.
And I mean, that's taking into account North and South America and everything.
I mean, 22% of the earth's landmass was under control of the Mongolian Empire.
Now, Genghis Khan founded the Mongolian Empire in the early 1200s, 1206 A.D., 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.
Now, 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 worshipping 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's 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.
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 baptized, 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 just Mongolia, but I'm just applying
this to the whole world.
I'm just giving you an example though.
Today in the country of Mongolia, which is just a small country, there's only about three
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?
33% Buddhist, 39% said they're not religious at all, 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 like 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 unchristian 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.
But 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, you know, 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 onto 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 childrens 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 under 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."
Look, God says that when they knew Him, they rejected Him.
And that's their fault, not God's fault.