This unworthy servant was sent by a church missionary board to East Africa back in the almost prehistoric era of 1945. One reason he was eager to go: our church paper was reporting enthusiastically that the “latter rain” of the Holy Spirit was falling in Ruanda, evidenced by large accessions of adherents by baptism. There were photographs of people covering hillsides at “camp meetings.”
Also, mass conversions were reported in the Lake Victoria area of Kenya. The people, many of them, were only recently from paganism; they had difficulty distinguishing economic development (which they naturally wanted) with being “Christianized.”
However, I was appointed to neighboring Uganda where there was a rich history of martyrdoms going back to the 1880s, with Protestant and Roman Catholic missions building cathedrals on Rubaga and Namirembe hills in Kampala, complete with pipe organs. The people were literate; they had history of kingdoms going back to the 16th century, and a high level of sophistication. The Protestant Christians loved the Bible and regarded it as the only rule of faith. Our particular mission was regarded as an interloper, and “conversions” to the church I represented were hand-picked and slow.
When I learned the language and came to know the people, it became painfully evident that the mass conversions in Ruanda were not the biblical “latter rain,” the miracle stories notwithstanding. They were the “former rain.” The knowledge of the gospel was superficial; there was almost no understanding of healthful living—an important part of the message in these last days; Christian home life was largely undisciplined, love often rare; the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, which Jesus enjoined upon us all to “understand,” were almost unknown; yet people flocked into “church” membership.
Also perplexing was the famine for understanding justification and righteousness by faith in Romans, Galatians, etc. The “gospel” should produce purity of living, transformed characters (cf. Rom. 1:16), a people raised up to welcome Jesus Christ when He returns at His second advent.
The world church is the seventh of those of Revelation; the word “lukewarm” fits us perfectly ( 3:14-17). Africa (as well as we) awaits that final “everlasting gospel” that will “lighten the earth with glory”(14:6; 18:1). The “latter rain” will prepare its way; but let’s remember that when the Lord “pours out” the Holy Spirit, His first work will be to ferret out and convict of sin (John 16:8), a comforting message, for it reconciles us to God, at last.
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