2018 Truth for Today Mission Report with Eddie Cloer

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you. As you know, I try to come around once a year, bring you sort of an update to our work, and also preach for you. It’s always a delight to come. I have the greatest appreciation and admiration for Kevin, and I know he’s doing a good work here. I want you to support him and encourage him. He’s a good man, and I’m very thankful that you have him. As I began our consideration of truth for today, I’d like to take us to the account of the Great Commission that is given in Mark 16, 15, and 16. Our Lord said, Go you into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who has believed and he who has been baptized shall be saved. He who has disbelieved shall be condemned.

You will recognize that it is the first part of the Great Commission that is for you and me, since we are disciples. And that part says, go you into all the world. It is the second part that is for the non-Christian. He who has believed and he who has been baptized shall be saved. The startling thing about the Great Commission is that our Lord is asking us to take on the whole world.

He didn’t give us any numbers. And he didn’t give us any places. He didn’t say, I want you to go to half of America or half of Africa. He didn’t give us any numbers. And he didn’t give us any places. He just gave us the challenge to reach out to all the earth. Go you into all the world. How are we doing in connection with this? He has given this charge to his disciples. If you are a disciple, then this charge has been given unto you. Consider these figures. We will have to go through the bad news to get to the good news. I’m going to suggest to us that we have 14,000 churches of Christ in America. Now, these are my statistics, and I may be stretching it a little bit. But I’m counting every congregation that claims to be a congregation of the church that Jesus established on the day of Pentecost, 14,000 of them.

We are estimating that these 14,000 churches of Christ average a contribution every Sunday of $1,500. Now, some of them are below that amount, and some of them are much beyond that amount. I am an elder in the College Church of Christ in Searcy, Arkansas. We have about 1,400 members. And I assure you, we’re far behind or far beyond the number of 1,500 on Sunday morning.

Flavio Yakely, who is one of the men who has studied the growth traits of the Church of Christ in America for a number of years, lives in Searcy. And he’s my go-to man whenever I want additional information about how we’re doing, he estimates that the average member of the church gives around 4%. We’re not even close to 10. But if we figure with that 4% number, we would have to say that each Sunday, the churches of Christ in America give about 21 million. We set aside around $21 million to do what we’re going to do regarding the work of the church.

Well, obviously, there are 52 weeks in the year, and whenever you combine what we give for the 52 weeks, we come up with about $10,920,000,000 that we set aside in the course of the year to do what we’re going to do.

But the startling thing about this amount of money that we set aside on Sunday morning is the fact that only about 25% of what we give is actually used to teach people outside the United States of America. About 75% of what we give would be used either in what we do in the United States or in benevolence.

Now, I have not included benevolence in this count, because remember, benevolence is not mentioned per se in our Lord’s Great Commission. He said, Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the commandments that I have given to you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Benevolence is not in the Great Commission. It’s not specifically mentioned, at least. And if benevolence is in there, it would be, in the second part, teaching them to observe all the commandments that I’ve given to you. It would be a secondary response to the Great Commission and not a primary response. It looks like to me that our Lord was pretty clear whenever He gave the Great Commission that he was turning the gospel that he created by his death and confirmed by his resurrection over to his disciples. And he was saying to them, you are the entity that I’ve got in the world that I’m going to use to get my message of salvation out to all the people of the earth. In my weak moments, I have said to myself, well, I just wonder why the Lord didn’t use the angels.

They can get it out a lot quicker. They can cover the earth better than we can. They can say it, obviously, more eloquently than we can say it. But the fact is, he didn’t. He said, I want my disciples to do it. I came into the world and I died so that there would be a gospel to preach. And I’m asking my disciples to preach it to the whole earth. Now, benevolence is good. We want to engage in benevolence. But remember, benevolence is our compassion, not our great commission. In other words, whenever we see somebody in need, we want to help them. And if we have a heart like unto the heart of Jesus, we will do that. But benevolence is not our great commission. The great commission that we’ve been given by our Savior is to teach.

To teach the world the gospel that Jesus created. I told you, we’ll have to go through the bad news to get to the good news. So we come now to the good news that I’d like to mention to you. I believe, from what I’ve seen and what I understand, that there is a stirring among us.

As I travel about the brotherhood, I see a stirring among us. A stirring to get back to the Great Commission and to do what Jesus has asked us to do. That is, if we could just get our giving up to 8% instead of 4%.

If it is true that the average member of the church gives about 4%, if we could get our giving up to 8%, that would give us twice as much as we have coming in right now. We would have $10 billion, $920 million that we could spend on teaching the world outside the United States of America. If we had that much, you know what that would do? It would give us at least $1.50 for every person on earth. We could get something to them. Right now, we’re only ministering to about 25% of the population of the earth. I have it on good authority that 29% of the people of this earth during their lifetime will never hear the name of Jesus.

And they will never see a Bible. They will never be around anybody who is going to be able to teach them anything about the gospel of Jesus. They will live their entire lives upon this earth and never have any kind of opportunity to know the gospel that Jesus created in order to save them.

There would be also about 21% of the population of the earth who might hear the name of Jesus one or two times during their lifetime. They might hear a phrase from the Bible, but they will never get an opportunity to learn how to become a Christian.

There will be another 25% that might receive a correspondence course from World Bible School. And they might receive a correspondence course from the Institute of English that is trying to get correspondence courses out like World Bible School is. But they will learn very little, very little. I would say, by way of repetition, that we minister to about 25% of the people on earth.

We claim to be the Lord’s church. We claim to be a congregation of the Lord’s church. But we’re getting done so little amount of work in regards to teaching the people of the earth the gospel of our Lord. We need to really think about this. We need to rethink about what we’re doing and how we’re going about it. But as I said, there is a stirring among us. We want to do a better job of this. We’d like to give more toward it. We would like to think more about it. So as we turn our hearts toward reaching out into all the earth, perhaps first of all, we would want to start with the missionaries that we’ve sent overseas.

We have about a thousand of them. Now sometimes we get a little more than a thousand, sometimes we’re a little bit less, but we stay right around a thousand. Let’s start with them. God bless every one of them. And let us make sure that they have what they need. These are people who have left America and they’ve gone to other places to carry the gospel to those people.

Let us make sure that we pray for them. Let us make sure that none of those people are without what they need in order to do the good work that they’re trying to do. Let us start with them. And then let us go to the national preacher. That is the man who lives overseas. We call him a national preacher. That is, he is a native preacher to some country outside the United States of America.

He may be a national preacher. He may be a national teacher. I don’t know how many we’ve got. But I’m estimating that we have 75,000. I hope I’m dead wrong. I hope we have 100,000. I hope we have 200,000. But every one of these we desperately need. There is a value that he has that we want to be especially aware of.

Number one, he’s already over there. That’s good. If we can help him, that’s going to save us a lot of money. We don’t have to send him over there. It costs quite a bit for him to go over there, come back if he comes back to the States. Susan and I try to go overseas maybe every year. Sometimes we don’t make it. But we decided a long time ago we would never ask the church to help us to go overseas because it costs so much and we’re not going to be there very long we’re just going to stay for about three weeks you just can’t get much done that way we’re not going to evangelize the world that way what are we thinking about? Who are the people who are going to really help us in evangelizing the earth?

They are the people who live over there or the people who live us leave us and go over there to stay. They’re the ones who are really going to help us. I mean, if we’re serious about evangelizing the earth, those people are really special to us. And we want to make sure that they have what they need. So the national preacher is of extreme value to us because he’s already over there. He’s already a Christian. He knows the language and the customs. If you don’t know the language and you’re going to go overseas and learn the language as you get started, That’s good. But you know how long it’ll take you to learn the language? It’ll probably take you around four years. And you’re going to have to study that language two hours every day for four years to be able to think in it and to be able to know it well enough where you can preach and teach in it.

If you try to teach in a language you don’t know, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes that you may spend a lot of time trying to correct. Here’s a man who’s already over there. And he knows the language, and he knows the culture and the customs. He’s far more effective at getting the gospel out in his land than we would be. We want to go over there, but we’re just not effective in getting the gospel out the way he would be. Why not use him? He’s already beginning to teach others. We know well what he needs. Here is the big need that he has, And we want to make sure that we supply it. He must have a thorough, in-depth knowledge of the Word for him to be able to do what we’re planning on him doing.

He really wants to be a teacher. He really wants to be a preacher. But he doesn’t have the opportunities to learn that we have over here in the States. He will write us and say, Thank you for the help that you’ve given me. Tell everybody that the biggest need that I have is to understand the Bible. And if I can understand the Bible, I’ll go preach it and I’ll go teach it. You and I are going to settle everything with money. We’re settled in here in America. We don’t plan to leave. And we’re going to send some money to him and then go on our way. But he says, that’s not really what I need. There is something that’s bigger and far more important. I need an understanding of the Bible. One of these days soon you will turn over what you do for the Lord to somebody else.

There’s going to come a time soon when you and I are going to leave this world and we’re going to turn over what we do to somebody else. Who are you going to turn it over to? You want to turn it over to somebody who doesn’t understand the Bible? You’re going to turn it over to somebody who’s really a novice in their understanding of the Bible? If you do, you know they’re not going to be able to help build the church into a strong church tomorrow.

We’ve got to have men who are going into tomorrow who really know the Bible. I tell our students at Harding, I don’t know what kind of problems you’re going to face tomorrow. I wish I did, but the Lord didn’t give me that kind of information. But I know this. Whenever you get to tomorrow and you face some of these unusual problems that I don’t even know about, you’re going to have to settle them in one way. And that is by taking your Bible and studying it and comparing the problem you’re facing with what the Bible actually teaches. If you don’t know the Bible, if you don’t know how to handle it, then obviously the church of tomorrow is going to be weak indeed. What are we going to leave behind? So I’m arguing that the national preacher will tell us we need three things from you.

Number one, we need you to help us in our edification. We are baptizing more people than you are. We’ve got to edify far more people than you will have to do. So give us the materials that we need for edification. For that reason, we’ve been sending this. It’s pretty small, but we have to pay postage by weight. So we have determined to make it as light as we can and yet to have a lot of information in it.

We can have about 135 pages of a book like this in this. And we send it out every month. We mail to about 32,000 men. We tell the men, we’re not going to send you any money. But what we will do is we will send you materials that we believe are sound, faithful materials that you can use in your teaching. So in the main, we’re just taking them through portions of the Bible. And every once in a while, we will have a topical study. Like, for example, we will have a topical study of baptism, or we will have a topical study of the Lord’s Supper, or we will have a topical study of the uniqueness of our Lord’s Church. But in the main, we’re taking them through different sections of the Bible. When we have five of these, when we’ve sent out five of these, this happens to be our study of Mark, we will bring those five together and we will make a commentary about this size.

We try to get a lot of information to them that will help them to understand the Bible and be more effective as teachers. Remember this thought. I’d rather train 12 men to work than to try to do the work of 12 men. I didn’t come up with that statement. Dwight L. Moody did. But he’s right about it. How are we going to evangelize the world? How are we going to reach out into all these places where the gospel has not gone? How are we going to do it? It’s our challenge. It’s our obligation. How are we going to do it? Well, one of the best ways to do it is through these national preachers. Raise them up to be real good preachers and turn them loose to preach to their own people in their own language that’s going to help a lot and that’s what we’re trying to do this is my favorite picture I’ve probably shown it to you before I really like it this illustrates what we’re trying to do when I come by and I ask you to help us and the brethren put a contribution basket in the back what are we asking you to do?

We’re asking you to help us with men like this. Now, not all of the men, not all of the 32,000 would be like this man. This is sort of the idea. He is the man that we’re really trying to help. We’ve been mailing to him for around 12 years. And he has a stack of the materials that we have sent to him. They all have the same color. What we send overseas has the same color. Only the colored ones do we use here in America. But he’s been receiving these materials for around 12 years. He’s got maybe 140, 144 of them. They’re stacked up. They are a pleasure to him. They are a treasure to him. That’s his library. That’s about all he has to work with. But he’s telling us, those commentaries have helped me too.

We have picked out around 600 men like him. And we sent six of these to him. These are just more expensive to mail, but they live longer. They’ll live about 50 years. But it takes us around $15 or $16 per commentary just for postage to get it over to him.

We’re trying to improve our sending the commentaries out. We hope we can do a better job of that. But you can see behind him, he’s got a bookcase, but he’s not got much in it. Probably some old Bibles that we have sent over there that he uses well. But here’s a man who will preach for two congregations on Sunday, and then during the week, he’s teaching at some kind of little preacher school that he’s got going.

He’s trying to raise up other preachers. That’s exactly what we want him to do. That’s the kind of preacher that we need. We want all of those that we can get, and we have resolved that we will send the materials, We will be glad to send them all the materials that we can to help them in their work. We mail to 32,000 of them. We don’t try to turn anybody away. If he writes us and says, I’m preaching over here, we can’t check him out to any degree. And so we just put him on our list and begin to mail to him and ask him to send us some kind of report, let us know how he’s doing.

I think it’s one of the finest things that we can do. I believe that one of the finest things that you can do with your money, with your resources, is to help the national preacher and to make sure that he has the materials that he needs, that he has the encouragement that he needs, where he can preach to his own people in his own language.

And we need to raise up more and more of them and turn them loose on the world. Secondly, he says, I need materials to help me in evangelism. Now, we believe that World Bible School is doing a good job at that. So we’re not trying to duplicate what World Bible School is doing. And we believe that World English Institute is doing a good job at that as well.

So we want to encourage them in their work. But quite some time ago, back in 2004, I think it was, we decided that we would produce this upon the suggestion of World Bible School. I don’t think we had a similar suggestion from World English Institute, but since we prepared it, they have been very encouraging about it. We wanted to have a book that had a New Testament in it. I went to the Lachman Foundation. The Lachman Foundation owns the New American Standard translation of the Scriptures. And we asked them, would you let us use your New Testament if we use it royalty-free?

The New American Standard translation is a very good translation. It is a little more readable than the old King James would be, and it’s even a little more readable than the new King James. Anyway, they responded to my appeal by saying, Yes, we will let you use our New Testament royalty-free as long as you want to, as long as you give it away. So we produced this book. It has 300 pages on how you become a Christian, how you live as a Christian, and then it’s got a New Testament in it. We give them a recipe for unleavened bread. We tell them how to take a handful of raisins and boil them and make grape juice. We try to think of all the questions they might ask if they’re way out there and they’re just beginning to be servants of the Lord.

They’ve just become Christians and they’re trying to be a congregation of the Lord’s people. We can get this printed for about a dollar. We have to print a lot of them. We have to print about $35,000 to get it down to a dollar. And then usually we will ride piggyback on a container that’s already scheduled to go overseas. There’s some airspace. They don’t fill it to the top. And they will let us put some of our books in there. But we’ve managed over the ensuing years from the time that we published it to get a million and a half of these overseas.

We figure that they will live for about 20 years. They really take care of it. They’ve got a Bible in it. That’s really special to them. And then we’ve got about 20 lessons on God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, that they can teach to others. It’s just a tool to help them in their evangelism. And it’s worked really well. When we started it, we had it entitled Becoming a Faithful Christian. But we were having trouble getting that title across some of the cultures.

It scared them. China would stop us if China could. So we changed the title of it. We changed the title of it as it goes into India, Seeking the Better Life, something like that. It has the same content to it. But these will live for about 20 years, and we estimate. Now, maybe we’re stretching it. Maybe we’re just dreaming. But we estimate that every book that we have sent overseas during its lifetime, during the 20 years that it serves before it falls apart, will lead somebody to Christ. As I said, maybe we’re stretching it, but think about it. That’s a million and a half. That’s good. We need some projects that will help us to believe, at least, that we’re getting the word out there. And there will be a lot of people who will use books like this and they will teach others and no telling the good that will be done.

You have some funds. All of us have some funds and you’re going to spend those funds in some way. You’re going to spend those funds and if you don’t spend them, you will leave them to somebody who will spend them. And I’m begging you, I’m pleading with you to think about this. Perhaps there would be a portion of your estate that you want to set aside to be used to get the gospel to people who will never hear. Can you think of anything more noble? I know this is a tender spot. I’m not telling you to leave your children out. I’m just saying think deeply about this. Maybe there’s a portion of your estate that you can use for the preaching of the gospel around the world. We’ve got to think this way. And remember the last gift that you will give Jesus is a portion of your estate.

And whenever you see him, he just may well ask us, how are you doing with my great commission? You know he’s interested in everybody. You know he wants the whole world to know what you know. I believe we can do better. Furthermore, he will say, can you help me with a school? Can you help me to put a school in my community? That is a big request that we get. And wouldn’t you expect it? What do they want? What do they need? Here’s a man who lives way out there. He just doesn’t have anything like what you and I have. He doesn’t have a car. Maybe he walks. Maybe he’s got a bicycle. And he has come to know the Lord. Maybe through World Bible School or through a missionary. What does he want? I want some help to teach others in my community.

And I would really like to have a school. We’ve thought about this a lot. The national man has a better handle on schools than we do here in the States. He believes that he needs to have a school, and every other preacher needs to have a school. So we’ve been thinking about this for quite some time, trying to figure out what we could do about it. For example, in Brazil, they will take our materials, and that will be their curriculum for their school.

They’ll have a school. It may be just nine or ten men. It might be four or five. They might meet out under a tree. But they want to have a school. They want to be growing. They want to be developing into better preachers and teachers, and that’s exactly what we want them to do. So we put together a school online. We did this in 2015, and I probably already mentioned it to you, and you probably know quite a bit about it already. This would allow us to utilize Internet. Internet is a new development in the last 25 to 26 years here in America.

It came into being during the first presidency of Bill Clinton. And now it’s in 90%, it is said, of the land area of the earth. It’s a wonderful thing to use. Now, I know there are a lot of things on it that are repulsive to us. But it’s also a way that you and I can send a lot of information around the world postage free.

So we set this up and we have 300, excuse me, we have 231 courses online right now. We’re working hard to add more courses. That’s a course, that’s a course right there. And that’s just half of Matthew. We’ll have two courses on Matthew on there. But these courses are now out in 90% of the land area of the earth, giving people all around the world an opportunity to come online and actually study through the Bible. It’s never happened before. We don’t know of anything exactly like it, even in the religious world, in America or any other place around the world. There’s a lot of distant learning taking place, you understand. But this is just about the Bible. It’s just Bible. If you had the opportunity to say something to everybody on earth, what would you want to say to him?

Most likely, if I’ve got you pegged right, you would say, I want them to know the Bible. I want them to have an opportunity to know it. Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing. And you can pick up these. They’re back there in your library, I’m sure. You get every one that we have done. We had number 40 to come out. Just this last week. But we are translating these as quickly as we can into other languages.

So we have some of the courses in 22 languages beyond English. It’s really a big thing. All around the world they’re able to use this. Now I can’t tell you how many would be using it. I can’t tell you how much good it’s done. All I can tell you is that it’s online and it’s out in 90% of the land of the earth. And I am fully convinced that the duplication approach is a very practical way to cover the world with the message of the Bible. You can’t do it with radio. You cannot do it with television. You have to have a school type of arrangement if somebody is going to learn the Bible. Now, I’ve been teaching at Harding for 41 years, and I’ve learned at least a little bit, And I think that’s one thing I’ve learned.

You cannot do it with radio. You cannot do it with one little lesson. You cannot do it with television. You’re going to have to give them a decent, reliable way to study through the Bible. If you’re going to raise up the kind of preachers and teachers that we need. Now here he is. He’s out in an area where they don’t have much and he wants a school. And if he had a halfway opportunity, he’d have some kind of school going. You know what his problem is? He doesn’t have any teachers. He’d like to do what he could, but he doesn’t believe he’s qualified to be a teacher. And if there were teachers there, he wouldn’t have the money to hire them, to put them into place. So what we’re trying to do with this school is to provide faithful, qualified teachers for hundreds of schools and group studies around the world.

We started on that, and we’re in the process of setting up 3,000 learning centers at different places around the world where they can come to those learning centers and be informed about the online school that they could be a part of.

And if they cannot be a part of the online school, maybe they don’t have a computer, or maybe they’re not connected with internet, we will be sending those learning centers eight commentaries. Actually, they’ll get nine. One for the principal and then there will be four commentaries on the life of Jesus, number one, and then four commentaries on the life of Jesus, number two, where he can get four people and they study through the life of Christ one and then they get four more people and they can study through the life of Christ two. So we’ve got eight people who are studying through Life of Christ 1 and 2. And after the first semester, they can reverse it. And those who have studied through Life of Christ 1 can then study through Life of Christ 2. And those who’ve studied through Life of Christ 2 can go through Life of Christ 1.

I know it’s got it backwards, but nevertheless, they’ll have to use the books over and over again. And then the second half of the year, they can get four more new people and then go through Life of Christ 1. Four more new people and they can go through Life of Christ 2. So in the course of the year he can take 16 people through Life of Christ 1 and 2 which would be 40% of the New Testament. 48% of the New Testament. This is about the size of Life of Christ 1 and it’s also about the size of Life of Christ 2. So if you put two books on top of each other they would be going through two courses, 18 of them. And that does not count those who might be going through different books of the Bible online.

I really believe this is what needs to be done. We provide this online Bible school in 23 languages, if you count English. Would you keep me posting one of the time? I’ve got five minutes, okay. And we right now have several courses in Chinese, Indonesian. I think it’s 20 courses we’ve got in Chinese and about the same number in Indonesian. We have some of the courses in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, Canada, Marathi. These are Indian languages, Bengali, Nepali, Urdu, Gujarati. With these 11 languages, we can cover all of India, all of the different parts of India. Although India does utilize about 26 languages, these are the main languages.

So we believe we have a decent coverage of all of India, where they can come online and they will be able to begin their study of the Bible. I got the other day a book that’s about this thick. It is produced by several missionary groups. It’s entitled Operation Hope. And it is written to suggest different ways that we can improve. I’m talking about the religious world at large our attempt to reach out to all the earth to reach out to the people groups that have not been touched that have not been reached and I was summing through there and I came to India and you know what they said about India they said the primary way that we have now to reach out into all of India is internet and India is growing more rapidly in that field than in any other field Well, we hit the mark on that. But we also have the materials in French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Arabic, Japanese, German, Vietnamese, and Korean.

That would be 22 languages in addition to English. So if you add English, that would be 23. I really believe this is the right thing to do. I have done my best with it. I mean, we have worked very hard on this. I teach at Harding full-time. That’s how I make my living. I donate all of my time whenever I’m going out and speaking for Truth For Today. I believe that’s what I ought to do. So we will have a contribution basket in the back. But remember, I’m trying to give too. I’m not just talking about it. I’m trying to do my best with this as well. And if you have any questions you want to ask me, I would be glad to answer them. May I mention this before I sit down? This is our bubble map.

What we’re illustrating here is that we wanted to be in the big languages first. And that would just let us reach more people. The biggest language on earth, the most spoken language on earth by native speakers is Mandarin Chinese, by native speakers.

The next largest language on earth by native speakers is Spanish, and number three is English and on down. Now, if you’re talking about people who’ve learned the language, it’s not their native language, but they’ve learned it, and you add those into those numbers, then it could be that English would be number one. But anyway, you can see that we’re trying to get into the big languages of the earth where we can reach more people. Everything you see in blue would be languages that we’re in. And whenever you go home, you can get on your computer and type in throughthescriptures.com and you’ll be able to look at this website. And you’ll be able to see all the languages that we have. Now, we don’t have every course in these languages, but we’ve got some. We’re actually reaching out in these languages and providing different studies in the Bible, large studies in the Bible all around the world.

You put all these blue bubbles together, it’s about 70% of the population of the earth. Now, he’s got to have a computer, and he’s got to be connected with internet, or he’s got to have a smartphone, but a large percentage of the people on earth do. And Kevin was telling me just recently, I mean five minutes ago, no, about 35 minutes ago, that I’m scheduled to be here in a meeting. 2020, they are projecting that by 2020, that 80% of the adults of the earth will have smartphones or something similar to it.

Now, I don’t know if they’re right or wrong, but I’m saying that there is a mammoth amount of growth that’s taking place toward having smartphones in third world countries and all over the world, and we want to be there. The church wants to be there, and we want to be there with sound, faithful teaching of the Word of God. Well, the collection plate will be back there. Help us as much as you can. You’re wonderful. You’ve been a tremendous help to us over the years and we love you very much and if you have questions about the work that I’ve described just come to me after service and I’ll be glad to do my best to answer any questions that you have let’s do it let’s reach out to the whole earth

End of transcript. Thank you for reading along!