Monday Morning Reality Check
Inform! Remind! Persuade! 1.1 billion people have yet to hear the Good News.

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De-evangelization

If you are educated, you can't suddenly de-educate yourself. It stays for life. Similarly, individuals who have become evangelized can't become de-evangelized. Nor can aggregates like a people group. However, events can prevent evangelizable people from becoming evangelized. The worst recent example is Turkey. As Asia Minor it was a vibrant center of worldwide missionary outreach for 13 centuries after Jesus. Even in 1900, Turkey was 22% Christian and 46% evangelized. Shortly after, the sultan liquidated 1.5 million citizen Christians by declaring a holy war-deevangelization accomplished.

The best example of this in a Turkish city is the ancient Christian imperial capital, Trabzon (Trebizand). In 1895, 80,000 Christians were deliberately massacred in the city: more than even its normal resident population. To this day, there are no Christians and scarcely a trace of Christianity anywhere near--deevangelization accomplished.

There are scores of current examples of peoples and regimes deevangelizing their lands with decrees, guns and bayonets. But the churches are guilty of neglect only if they do nothing about such atrocities and rights violations. At the very least, Christians can pray, protest, publicize, mobilize and create new varieties of evangelization against which decrees and guns are powerless.