This story was told to me by a missionary friend who is serving the Lord on the front lines.
“I'm a missionary in a land far, far away. In this country there are more than a hundred ethnic groups who have never heard of Jesus. Even though it is dangerous, I work to bring the Gospel to them. Any religion other than their local religion is frowned upon and adherents are persecuted.
I spent the first few years in this land learning the local language. Having gained fluency, I have sought to share more and more about Jesus these past few years.
Some people in the country where I serve believe there are millions ofspirits. If anything bad happens to them, they blame the spirits and believe they have somehow alienated them. Then the only way for them to make things right is to appease the spirits, through such means as rituals of sacrifice, gifts of food and money, dances and ceremonies, and other forms of devotion.
Others believe in reincarnation. They strive to do enough good deeds so that they can achieve ‘nothingness' instead of continually being born into the suffering of this world.
But, when you ask them if they have done enough good deeds to achieve ‘nothingness’, they say NO! Even the most religious of them say they haven’t done enough good deeds either. What a miserable life - a life without hope.
If asked, “Who is Jesus?”, some may say “I have never been to that village.” After years of witnessing to one of the tribes about Jesus, a few of the people have trusted Jesus as their Savior.
As a further outreach, I planned a worship and fellowship meeting for these believers and invited them to the meeting. About twenty of them showed up. Among those who came was a couple from another tribe. They did not know about Jesus and were not Christians.
Nobody knows (other than God) how this couple learned about the meeting. The husband and wife had traveled many hours just to get to the gathering. They spent several days at the meeting, and while there they chose to trust Jesus as their Savior and were baptized. They then travelled the long distance to return to their village.
They arrived at their home. When the tribal chief in their village learned that they were now Christians, he demanded that they revert to their tribal religion and renounce their new faith in Jesus. When they refused to recant, they were shunned, ostracized and eventually cast out of the village.
When I asked later them if they regretted following Jesus because of the high cost they had paid, they said, ‘No, we have chosen the Most Right One. We would rather lose everything than lose our salvation.’
With very little discipleship, this new believing couple trusted God through incredible difficulty and rejoiced that their salvation was worth far more than anything they had lost."
So, in one of GOD'S OTHER WAYS©, the Lord is bringing salvation to the remotest and unreached tribal villages.