The Price of Spreading the Gospel: A Story for Today’s Generation

In July 1986, Dr Billy Graham made a huge decision. He spent millions to host a major international conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This event brought together eight thousand pastors and evangelists from distant villages in Central Africa and from nearly every corner of the world. Delegates came from over 180 nations, creating one of the largest gatherings of gospel ministers ever. Dr Graham showed incredible generosity by paying for the flights and hotel stays of every delegate. He wanted to make sure that financial difficulties would not stop anyone from attending. This was more than just a conference; it was a sign of how much he valued spreading the gospel worldwide.

Among the attendees was an evangelist from a small village in Central Africa named Joseph. During the conference, Joseph listened closely to every word Dr Graham spoke. Before the conference ended, he asked for a private meeting with Dr Graham. That request was kindly granted.

When they finally met, Joseph shared his story. What Dr Graham heard that day would stick with him forever.

Joseph said, “As a young man, I heard the gospel on a dusty African road, and I responded immediately, trusting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. The moment I believed, an overwhelming longing took hold of me, a burning desire to return to my native village and share the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven with my own people. I went from door to door, telling everyone I encountered what had happened to me, fully expecting their faces to light up with the same joy that had flooded my own heart. Instead, I was met with fury and rage.

The men of the village seized me and pinned me to the ground, while the women flogged me mercilessly with barbed wire. When it was over, I was dragged into the surrounding bush and abandoned there to die. I crawled on my hands and knees to a nearby watering hole, and over the course of several days I slowly began to recover. In those long, painful hours of solitude and reflection, I convinced myself that I must have left something essential out of the message, or perhaps I had communicated it poorly. So I rehearsed my testimony carefully, prayed with every ounce of fervour I could gather, and eventually limped back to the village to try again.

I received another flogging. When I had recovered sufficiently to stand once more, I returned a third time, and was whipped a third time. The barbed wire found the same wounds that had barely begun to heal, tearing them open afresh. But something was unmistakably different on that third visit. As I began to lose consciousness and the world around me faded, I noticed something I had not seen before: one of the women who had been beating me had suddenly stopped. She was weeping openly. And then I saw others beginning to weep alongside her. I awoke in my own bed, being tenderly cared for by the very hands that had previously sought to destroy me.

By the grace of Almighty God, and through that patient and suffering witness, the entire village turned to Christ.”

Dr David Jeremiah recorded that at this point in the conversation, Joseph lifted his shirt to show the scars on his chest and back. This was a living testimony written not in ink, but in flesh and blood. Dr Graham was visibly shaken and moved. Later, he told his staff, “I am not fit to untie his shoes, and he wanted to meet me?”

This story poses a tough challenge: we must stop cheapening the gospel. A man endured immense suffering, returning not once, not twice, but three times to the source of his pain to share the same gospel that many preachers today water down or ignore for fame and money. Dr Erwin Lutzer once said something very important about the modern Church: “Many of us are not even willing to live for Jesus, much less die for Him.”

These words hit hard when we think about Joseph’s scars. The true spirit of revival must return to the Church. The gospel has always come at a price; it cost Jesus His life and has cost many believers their homes, families, freedom, and lives throughout history.

I am drawn to stories of strong faith, where people stood firm no matter the cost. These stories inspire us. They leave our generation without excuse. If Billy Graham, one of the best-known evangelists of the twentieth century, could feel humbled before the sacrifice of one unknown African pastor, then so should every minister of Christ.

But let’s ask another question. Pastor Joseph was young when these events happened. Do we still have young men and women in the Church today who have that same strong commitment to the gospel? Are today’s Christian youth ready, willing, and able to carry on the truth of the gospel?

“And there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord.” (Judges 2:10)

This verse worries me. It reminds me of a story I heard about the children of an old man of God. They were crying as they watched their father suffer at the hands of the church he had served for years. These children wished they could turn back time to rethink their choice to follow Jesus and the local church their father led. But it was too late.

Their lives were hurt by the very leader they loved, damaged in ways that would need a special kind of God’s mercy to heal. They had seen a twisted version of the true God. They had been sold a fake Jesus, not the loving, self-sacrificing Son of God from the Bible.

The sad truth is that these children might never serve the God of their father, much less think about dying for Him like Pastor Joseph did.

This is the heartbreaking state of many young people in churches today. They stand on the edge of losing their faith and, in some cases, becoming atheists. Some are close to rejecting Jesus and Christianity because they are disappointed by the hypocrisy they see in those who claim to represent Him. Others who still call themselves Christians live lives that do not reflect true, New Testament Christianity. Most of our young people lack spiritual fire and passion.

They go to church but are not truly in Christ. They can organize big events but struggle to pray genuinely. They can spend money on anything but find it hard to pray about anything. They can feast lavishly but can rarely fast sincerely. They can give money to anything but struggle to grow spiritually. If the fathers of this generation do not urgently come together to fix the broken walls of the gospel, today’s youth will fall into serious apostasy, and the influence of the Church will disappear quickly. Dr Erwin Lutzer once said, “the fall of Turkey into the hands of radical islamists proves that there is no guarantee that the church will always survive in every nation.”

“Now the sons of Eli were corrupt; they did not know the Lord.” (1 Samuel 2:12)

The fathers are getting old. The children are hurting. The world is becoming more hostile to the truth. God’s true followers are becoming fewer. Culture seems to be winning over the Bible instead of being shaped by it. Post-modernism and relativism are pushing out absolute truth everywhere. Society is losing patience with real, Bible-believing Christians. John J Murray observed: “We have now gone back to the era of the early apostles. The Roman empire under which many Christians were martyred was pluralistic and tolerant of religion. The only people they could not tolerate were the Christians.”

Persecution of faithful Christians has more than doubled worldwide and will keep rising in the coming years. The future of the Church in Africa and globally depends a lot on today’s young Christians. But the question that should keep every spiritual leader awake is this: will today’s youth, who benefit from the efforts of their fathers, take up their own swords and prepare for the battle ahead? To be continued.