Contacting uncontacted tribes

Back when I was on the YWAM DTS course, at Holmsted Manor, I said in a blog post:

Later we talked about how in Revelation, it promises that people from every people group will be represented in the group of believers at the end of the age (Revelation 5:9 and Revelation 7:9). This is a message of hope for us: the Great Commission will be completed: people from all nations will hear the Gospel, and have the opportunity of responding to God's call on their life.

This is all very well, but what does it mean for the "Uncontacted" Tribes in South America?

You see, if everyone is going to have a chance to be a believer in Jesus, does that mean Christians will one day walk up to these "uncontacted" people and tell them the good news?

Is that really necessary?

Should we do that?

Maybe not.... What if they already have a knowledge of the saviour though the stories they would have had passed down from the generations that left the Ark, then spread across the world? What if they are spoken to by the Holy Spirit and don't need other humans to contact them to know about Jesus? Do they really need us to add anything to their understanding of God?

Is that possible, or is it inevitable that one day, we will make renewed contact with these people?

I'm interested in what you think about this. Please let me know in the comments.

over 1 year ago Jon H responded:

Hey Ed,

I will watch the video when I get home,

I think Jesus is spread in two separate ways,

There is often the most familiar model of evangelism where missionaries from mostly developed countries go out to another nation where there maybe high crime, another dominant religion and spread Christianity by social work, helping the poor and victims of crime.

On the other hand, here in Israel, the word 'missionary' and 'evangelism' is a huge taboo. People get very hostile to anything to these things, as they visualise Christians using aggressive conversion methods like a sleezy car salesman. This may or may not be true, but in the past Christians have done terrible things to Jews so its sort of understandable.

The organisation I work for just does social work, mostly providing food and assistance to new immigrants to Israel, mostly people from ex-SU states. Here we are just there to bless people, and let the Lord touch those people through the people we assist.

In many Arab and Muslim nations Christian ministries have found traditional evangelism methods not provide much result, of course there is care and assistance to those who are in poverty or victims of war, but not many real conversions to Christ. In this case in the last 10 years more Arab people have given their lives to Christ that the whole history of Islam, this seems to be the holy spirit has been speaking to Arab people directly through dreams and visions without any human intervention.

Something I found amazing this week, my church has a big list of numerous ministries that deal with all sorts, Jews, Palestinians, Arab Israelis, Druze & Bedouin people and Sudanese Christian immigrants. The most amazing I saw was one ministry to some Arab people who lived in a village close to the Lebanon border, these people provide a dentist there as a lot of them have tooth ache!!

Of course, if you find people doing overseas work in unusual or unlikely parts of the word, please do share it!!

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