Isaiah 62:6-7

I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; They shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent, And give Him no rest till He establishes And till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

The Harvest

First we find that Jesus commands that we will be His witnesses to the ends of the Earth after we have been witnesses to Him where we live and in our surrounding communities. We read in Acts, "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." (Acts 1:8) Second we find that all families of the earth will be blessed we see this as far back as Genesis when God was calling Abraham (at that point Abram) to get up and leave his family and country. God promised that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed. "NOW the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Gen 12:1-3) This promise to Abraham is used by both Peter and Paul in the New Testament as a basis for the salvation of the both the Jews and Gentiles. "You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, 'And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'  To you first, God, having raised up His Servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities."(Acts 3:25-26), "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed." So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham." (Gal 3: 8-9) This author believes that the Dimili Kurds meet both of these promises living at the ends of the earth as well as being one of all the families of the earth. I don’t think we can argue they don’t deserve to have the gospel preached to them. My point is that under these two general qualifications they fit the description. This being the case, Jesus then warns us to not sit idle thinking we have plenty of time to get this done. In fact he says the time is now and now is the time of harvest.   "Do you not say, 'There are still four months and then comes the harvest'? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! "And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together." (John 4:35-36) "Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest." (Mat 9:37-38)

Where is this harvest?

So where is this harvest that Jesus is speaking of? If there are an estimated 28 million Kurds in the world and roughly 4 million of them are of the Dimili culture then it could be safe to say that 14% of all Kurds are Dimili. For example if there are 100 Kurds living among us then fourteen of them could potentially speak Dimili. Lets take this a step further, the Kurdish Institute estimates that there are upwards of 1.09 million Kurds living in various countries in Europe and an additional 27,000 living in North America between the United States and Canada. Which means that there are potentially 156,000 Dimili Kurds living amongst us in our Jerusalem, Judea and Samarian nations. In which case it would be in our best interest to evangelize them here where we are, as is quoted in the following excerpt from Mission Frontiers:

   

Bob Blincoe a missionary working with the Kurds, recounted to me this fresh experience working with a Kurdish bicultural: "Abdulla and his wife and son fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1975 with thousands of other Iraqis. They came as refugees to the United States, bracing themselves for what they would find. Was America 'dirty and godless,' as Abdulla had heard every Friday in the mosque? "When the plane landed and he and his little family debarked, who met him at the airport? Christians from a local church. Who took Abdulla to an apartment that was furnished and stocked with food? Who took his wife to see a dentist the following day, and got Abdulla enrolled in English as a Second Language courses? You guessed it--these same Christians from the community. "Abdulla had a world view change; he decided that American Christians were the nicest people he'd ever met. "Abdulla was baptized. The years went by. He took a job, proud that he never went on welfare for a single day of his life. When the curtain went up on Iraq following the Gulf War, God spoke through extraordinary circumstances, and Abdulla was obedient to his heavenly Father. Abdulla returned to Iraq to do the work of an evangelist. "Abdulla's success was more than all expatriate workers combined, and there were probably 100 expatriate workers. As he said to me, 'Bob, you can say the same words as I can, and your words bounce off the Iraqi people. But through me, Iraqis surrender to Christ.' This was not an idle boast but a factual observation. That is why I followed him around. "Abdulla knew instinctively that if hundreds or thousands of Iraqis were to follow Christ, they would have to do it while remaining Muslims. He invented the term 'Muslims of the Holy Spirit' to describe what happened to a person who began to follow Christ. We found our support from the Koran as well as from the Bible.”

A.W. Tozer

We Christians must simplify ours lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity. Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today.

How many offers have you had?

So is reaching the Dimili Kurds here where we are enough? What about the 3.9 million still in the mountains in Turkey? Consider this statement made by one missiologist regarding opportunities to receive Christ. People in the US will receive on the average 124 offers to become a Christian disciple this year, some people who live in what is called the 10/40 window may receive 10 offers in their lifetime. Each year it is estimated that 50.5 million people die, of that number 19.4 million are Christians and 31.1 million are not. Of those 31.1 million 12.5 million never had any contact with Christians of any tradition.”

    

I thought when I first reviewed these statistics that this was ridiculous – I certainly hadn’t received 124 opportunities to become a disciple of Christ. So, I resolved that during 1997 I would track the total number of opportunities I did receive. Here’s my total:

                            

The Offer Count

  • 88 – 2 per church service
  • 8 – 90 second radio spots by the Billy Graham Association
  • 95 – 30 second radio spots
  • 3 – people distributing tracks in parking lots
  • 2 – while watching specific spots of the 700 Club
  • 1 - at a Christmas Cantata designed as a gospel outreach
  • 2 - evangelistic tracts on the internet “Mass Mail Blitzes”
  • 199 total real offers to become a Christian

20 times as many?

 So based on the sheer fact that most American Christians or citizens for that fact receive 20 times as many offers in one year than the average Dimili Kurd may receive in a lifetime, shouldn’t we be about God’s heart of evangelism as it relates to the Dimili Kurds? So where do you stand? You have obviously found this website and read this far, but what is your commitment? Christians generally fall into five differing categories as it relates to the missionary endeavor. How would you rate yourself?                              

What's your attitude

  • Negative – Are you turned off by missions and remain ignorant to the pleas of millions without the gospel?
  • Naïve – Do you a have a lack of knowledge and take a simplistic look?
  • Fearful – Are afraid of being called by God to do His work
  • Receptive – Are you open to God’s will for your life as it relates to God’s mission?
  • Enthusiastic – Are you actively involved in world evangelism?

We see from this brief study that God would have us to go and make disciples of all nations one of which is the Dimili Kurds. He also commands us to pray to the Lord to harvest or to send forth laborers into his fields. What we need to be mindful of is that when he commanded the disciples to pray this prayer in the next chapter the first thing he did was send them out. What does your next chapter hold? (Mat 10:1-7)

Quick Prayer

Pray these 5 requests daily

  • 50 states – Pray that the Lord would send someone from each of the 50 states in the US to the Dimili Kurds
  • Adopting Churches – Pray that strong Bible believing churches would adopt the Dimili Kurds
  • Support – Pray that God would raise up the needed funds to complete translation of the bible into Dimili
  • Missionaries – Pray that missionaries would e able to learn the language and culture quickly
  • Openness – Pray that the Dimili would be open to the gospel

praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints-- Ep 6:18