World Evangelism Podcast

A Black Man was the First Missionary to leave America with the gospel, George Liele

• W. Austin Gardner • Season 1 • Episode 1

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W. Austin Gardner welcomes you to the first episode of the World Evangelism Podcast. I hope you will subscribe, like, and share with others. 

Today, we discussed Genesis 1:1 as a motivation for world evangelism. God created, so He has every right to command that the gospel be preached to His world. 

We pray for China and ask you to pray. For more information, go to Operation World: https://operationworld.org/. Sign up for the daily email to pray for the country of the day. 

Also, learn more about China here. https://operationworld.org/locations/china-peoples-republic/

You are encouraged to get your copy of the book where I was introduced to George Liele. https://www.amazon.com/Free-Indeed-Heroes-Christian-History/dp/1579247342/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EK2BX1UNH53V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.FUXn1SV7J-BMu1RYJJi3LQ.12c8Q-KY-qIDe41kAqGjsVv6bMPBc_cgCvin6R5Mes8&dib_tag=se&keywords=free+indeed+sidwell&qid=1711321118&sprefix=free+indeed+sidw%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-1

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W. Austin Gardner:

Well, my name is Austin Gardner, w Austin Gardner, and I am welcoming you to the very first podcast World Evangelism Podcast. Now, lord willing, I'll be doing this once a week and it'll go out on YouTube at its own channel and that will be in the notes that come along with this and it'll also have notes on that channel. And I just want to really inspire missions and empower leaders. I want to help you have a desire to get the gospel message to the world and I want to help you do that in every way that I possibly can. I want to help you. That's the point. So each time I want to talk to you and I'll bring up several things every time I want to talk to you about a Bible verse, a key Bible verse to consider in world evangelism, and that verse today is Genesis 1.1. Now, as almost silly as it may sound, I consider that to be the most important verse there is in the Bible about world evangelism. Well, literally about everything, when you think about it. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth In the beginning, before anything ever was. God was, and God made the world and God made all of us, and that gives him the authority to do literally anything he wants to do and to say anything he wants to say. Now I know that in the life of the world you live in, it's easy for us to question whether or not he really created the world. But it doesn't take long for you to start thinking about all the things you see and just study the creation a little bit and you'll figure out. God created the world. And that's a fantastic thought and a fantastic idea that God created everything. So if God created, God can command. If God created, god can command. And when God created man, man sinned against God. But God loved man enough that he sent his son to die for him. Before he ever created the world, he already knew man was going to sin. He already knew man was going to sin. He already knew man was going to mess up. And you know what he did he provided a way for man to be saved after that. So I want you to consider as a world evangelism verse today, a very unusual verse Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. He has the authority to tell us anything. He has the authority to send missionaries. He has the authority to offer salvation.

W. Austin Gardner:

Second thing I want to do each time we meet together on a weekly basis is I want to introduce you to a country and I want to ask you to pray for that country. And to do that, I want to challenge you to go to Operation World Now. You'll find that in the notes, but you want to go to OperationWorldcom and you want to look up the different countries and you want to study them, and you can even sign up to get their daily email prayer list, which is one country a day, and I'm here to motivate you to care about what God cares about, which is world evangelism. To do that, we need to know about the different countries that we need to pray for them. Today, I'd like to take you to let me see if it'll even let you see it. I don't know if it will or not. I want to take you to Operation World. I can't do a very good job of that on there. I was trying to show it to our YouTube viewers and we want to pray for the country of China.

W. Austin Gardner:

Now, China is the world's largest country. In fact, as I was looking at the hundred largest cities and I can't remember for sure how many, but I think 26 of the largest cities in the world are in China. Of 100 largest cities in the world, 26 of them are in China, and China, to be honest with you, has very little gospel witness. Very little is being done, and I just want to ask you to be in prayer for China. Let me look that up just a little bit to give you a little bit of detail about China here, if I can. Here's just some basic facts Population is approximately 1 billion billion, that's a billion more than the United States has 1,425,317 people and 17,000 people, and Capital city is Beijing. It's a communist country. It is the 16th country out of the top 50 countries that persecute Christians. It's number 16. 7.9% of the people say that they are some kind of Christian, only 5.7% of them being evangelical Christians of some sort. Would you pray for China? There's not a lot of missionary work going on. There are a lot of great national pastors and they're working, but when you consider that less than 6% of the people are claiming to be Christians, evangelical Christians, there's a great call for us to consider what we can do to get the gospel message to the country of China.

W. Austin Gardner:

Now, each time I meet, I want you to one to know a Bible verse and two, I want you to pray for a country and I want to ask you to do that. And the third thing I want to do is I want to introduce you to a person and I want to introduce you to a book, and so I want to do both of those simultaneously today and I'll have this in the footnotes. But if you are watching on YouTube and I'm not real good at any of this but here's a book, free Indeed, free Indeed, and it's written by Mark Sidwell, s-i-d-w-e-l-l. Mark Sidwell and it is a story of black heroes of Christian history. It says here on the front heroes of black Christian history. One of my favorite men in history is an African-American slave who God saved and let go to the mission field. You can get this book. I'll have it in the notes so you can look it up.

W. Austin Gardner:

Let me give you some interesting things about. Let me give you just some interesting things about my friend, our buddy, george Lau. He is the first he's really the first missionary out of the country of the United States to go overseas. We don't know when he was born for sure, but it was around 1752, somewhere in Virginia or Maryland, and he was a slave when he was born. He gets saved when he's about 18 or 19 years old and becomes the first African-American Baptist preacher to be ordained as a pastor. That happens in around 1775. Good night. He's at the young age of 22 or 23,.

W. Austin Gardner:

If they're right about when he was born, then he founds one of the very first churches oldest black churches in the United States. It's called Silver Bluff and it's in South Carolina. That was about 1775 and he was owned by a Baptist deacon. That was a good man and a kind man and so he gave his name was henry sharp. He was a British man and he gave George Liele a lot of freedom to go out and do the ministry and then he emancipated him. He gave him his freedom so he could go out and preach and start churches.

W. Austin Gardner:

Well, he died and his children tried to put him back into slavery because they wanted to lose the money they could get from him, and so he was rescued by another British man that he had to pay his passage for, him and his wife, and they went as missionaries to Jamaica. He actually sold himself back into a form of slavery. He became an indentured servant and worked for years to pay off the debt that it took to get him to Jamaica, that it took to get him to Jamaica. So he's the first Protestant that's the word they use evangelical missionary from America that leaves from America to go somewhere else. He goes out before Adonairam and Judson, before William Carey, and he has a self-supporting ministry. Because, I mean, he's a slave and nobody's going to take care of him and tremendous problems, tremendous problems happened to him there in the country of Jamaica. He starts a church, it begins to grow. They buy their building.

W. Austin Gardner:

The slave owners are mad and they're trying to hurt him. They end up killing one of the men and cutting his head off and telling them if they don't quit coming to church, they're going to do the same to the more of them. And they put George Lyle in jail, even though he was a free man, but he was a black man and they mistreated him and abused him and he never quit. He never quit, never gave up, never got a bad attitude. And when they cut that other man's head off, those members of the church, they saw some other Christians praying and they got with those Christians and they said if you don't stop, we're going to do that to him. What we did to him. We're going to do it to you. Y'all understand that. You know what happened. They said we do. They said, well, get out of here. And they and the people ran afraid because they couldn't believe the power and the fearlessness and the boldness of those brave men.

W. Austin Gardner:

He did a tremendous job in Jamaica, starting churches and training people. His influence spread everywhere. People heard about him in Britain, people helped him and he died sometime between 1820 and 1828. It's not really known, but he really changed things and I want you to know that we have gone for a long time. Those of us who love world evangelism and we're so proud of William Carey and we're so proud of George Lyle. Excuse me, Adnan Judson, but we don't even know about old George Lyle. That's why I want to challenge, but we don't even know about old George Lyle.

W. Austin Gardner:

That's why I want to challenge you to get this book, this free, indeed book. I want to challenge you to get it by Mark Sidwell. I'll give you the link. You can order it right on Amazon. A friend of mine told me about this book and I ordered it. It is a story of several different black men that God used and how God used them in evangelism. In fact, it is a story of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 different men, people we don't know, but we should know and, lord willing, little by little I'm going to get you to know. So I hope you'll order this book and I hope you'll get that and put it in your library Now.

W. Austin Gardner:

This is the very first World Evangelism podcast today and there's a whole lot I've got to improve. And somebody's going to say, boy, good night, you don't have your intro down, you don't have your outro down, you don't have all your paperwork done. And I'm going to say, buddy, I just got to jump in the pool and get with it and get it going, because I want you to be excited about world evangelism. I thank you for listening. I hope that you will invite others. Come to the YouTube channel and sign up and subscribe. You can watch it on YouTube and I'm going to be doing different things there and you can also listen to this as a podcast.

W. Austin Gardner:

Help me get the news out. We want to help pastors. Pastors ought to tell the story of George Lyle. I'm going to tell them how to get the information about George Lyle so they can use it. So would you please help me spread the word Now. Here's our goal. If God created the world, he owns the world and he wants the world to hear about him, then we ought to be involved in getting his gospel message to the world.

W. Austin Gardner:

So I'm challenging you to help me pray for world evangelism, pray for China, pray for more than 1,400,000,000 people in the world that need the gospel. Every week, I'll look at a different country with you, but China is always on my heart. But China is always on my heart. China is always on my heart. Would you pray for China? Then I want to tell you that I'm going to throw in a bonus. We'll do this once a week, but I'm going to put a bonus one in because I'll be interviewing missionary wife Bridget Young. Blake and Bridget Young serve as missionaries in the country of Colombia. They're currently in Mexico, still learning some Spanish to get ready to go, and Bridget has written a couple of books one book and one grieving handbook and we're going to talk about that on our next podcast. I'll be interviewing her. So spread the word and let's get some people to be here with us.

W. Austin Gardner:

I really appreciate you taking the time to come and be with me today. I appreciate you. I appreciate you watching on YouTube. I'll just tell you right now, as I record this, we have not one subscriber on either one. This is the first podcast. It'll try to go live and we'll see what's going to happen. I'm still learning how to do this, so would you please pray with me about us promoting world evangelism, people hearing the gospel message of Jesus Christ. Thank you for being with us today. God bless you and I look forward to seeing you the very next time.