Until All Have Heard
Until All Have Heard
Ministry Lessons from the Book of Acts (Ep. 298)
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The Book of Acts show us the story of the early days of the Church. It seems so exciting, but that was then…right? Ed talks with Ministry partner Mike Fabarez on the powerful lessons from the Book of Acts that should shape outreach in today’s world. You’ll need to have your Bible in-hand as we let God’s word challenge us to be bold, courageous and faithful in our witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus…Until All Have Heard.
This is until all have heard from the Far East Broadcasting Company. I'm Wayne Shepherd with Ed Cannon, president of FEBC, and we have a special guest going to join us.
SPEAKER_02I am so excited about this today, Wayne. Actually, I have my pastor, Pastor Mike Fabarason, who has been a long time well, I've been a longtime fan of his preaching. And um I met him first at an NRB meeting many, many years ago. He didn't know me, but I knew him. I've followed his teaching. And when I moved to California, obviously, we uh have the privilege of attending his church. Uh have been members there for 15 years, but now we've invited Pastor Mike Favares to be the theological voice on FABC's board, and I'm privileged to announce that he's a board member.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great. And he's also pastoring many through his radio program, Focal Point, Focal Point Ministries.
SPEAKER_02So heard on many radio stations around the country.
SPEAKER_01So, Pastor Mike, welcome.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on the program today.
SPEAKER_01I know it's a busy season for you. Uh is there a non-busy season for a pastor? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's funny. We do talk about busy seasons and we say it's going to be busy. It's Christmas, it's busy, it's Easter, it's busy, it's summer. Yeah, I know. There's it's it's pretty busy all through the year.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, we're grateful for your time. Ed, what are you looking at there? You got a book, you got an old book in front of you, don't you?
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. It's a very old book. It's a book book published by Moody Publishers in 1963, uh, and it's written by a man named Gleason Ledyard. Gleason Ledyard. It's called Skywaves. It's the history of the Far East Broadcasting Company. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01I think the book was published subsequently in later years, too. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02It's been it's been revised, sure. But there's a forew in the book, and I'm just going to read a few sentences from the forward, and I think that will get us into the content we want to talk about today. The foreword starts by saying when I read Gleason Ledyard's book, Skywaves, I felt as if I were reading a chapter added to the Book of Acts because of the surprising succession events that brought Far East Broadcasting Company into being. And it skips down a little bit later. It says, in this day of population explosion, an age-old message must be born to the earth's millions through the most modern media. And this is exactly what the men of the Far East Broadcasting Company have done. And forward was written by Billy Graham. And it's just kind of touching to think that in 1962 that's what he'd say about it. And I want to go on to say, and that's exactly what the men and women of the Far East Broadcasting Company are trying to do today, is to use an age-old message on the most modern of media. And that's what we're trying to do. It seems to be working fairly well as we're seeing the numbers of people responding to our social media, cell phone apps, web pages. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The ministry is exploding, it really is. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And I do think it's exploding because we're professing the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, Pastor Mike, we've asked you to be a part of this today because we wanted to look at the book of Acts. Now we can't go deep into it here today, but what do we have in the book of Acts? Why do we have it in the first place?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Yeah. Well, I just love the title. These are the Acts of the Apostles. And, you know, here's what the Apostles were doing. Now, of course, we can think about the Apostles as the twelve, as Jesus called them, and there is a very important technical use of the word, the apostles, the sent ones, the ones that have the authority of Christ. They're writing New Testament books. They have, as 2 Corinthians 12, 12 says, this uh special ability to authenticate their message as new revelatory truth from God. But, right, we are all sent ones with a small A. We're all being sent by the Great Commission. And uh that's what I love about the book of Acts, is we can identify with it so well because we are sent, right, to go make disciples of all the nations. One of the great observations I think anyone has just sitting down and reading through the book of Acts is it ends so abruptly. Right? It ends in Acts 28. Paul's under house arrest, and then it just talks about him sharing about the kingdom, and then it just stops. And uh we think, okay, well, I I guess the the Acts of the Apostles aren't done yet. So Billy Graham, I just think hit the nail on the head talking about FEBC, and that's why I'm so excited to be a very small part of it. Uh, because I I love any organization that has has decided to not be settlers, but to be pioneers. That's what we are. As Christians, we are not settlers. We're not just to find our little churches and get our little corner of Christianity and and get our picnic blanket and our basket and just kind of sit there and do our thing. We're we're we're pioneers, right? We're we're supposed to go into any community, any country, any part of this world and try and we're supposed to be salt and light. We're supposed to get out there and make a difference, saturating our communities with the gospel. And so when you get an organization like FEBC, uh, yeah, we are continuing the book of Acts. And uh and we don't have to be special people. That's one of the great one of the great texts of Acts is in Acts chapter four four, verse 13, uh, when they said they noticed the boldness of these people and they noticed they were just common men. And that's just always an encouragement, right? Common people, but when they align themselves with the uncommon truth, right, the truth of God in a world full of lies and deception, uh, they become very bold. And uh that's how, by the way, the book ends, right? That Paul was sharing the kingdom of God with boldness. That's really a theme in the book of Acts. And if we can be bold as pioneers, taking the truth of the gospel to places where it hasn't been, or even in mines where it may have been, but it didn't take root, and we keep watering and we keep cultivating. I'll tell you what, there's nothing more exciting than to be a Christian like that. So no matter where you live, in suburbia, downtown, Chicago, wherever you might be, right, we want to be pioneers with the gospel. And that's why the book of Acts is such a great backdrop and one that motivates me every time I read it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, through us the beat goes on, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER_02You know, I'm, Pastor, I'm encouraged at uh Acts chapter eight after uh Saul approves of the e execution of Stephen, and then it goes on to say, now those who were scattered because of the persecution, they went around preaching the word. So it was the persecution that scattered them and allowed the word to spread. And FEBC serves in a lot of countries where it's not severe persecution, but we're threatened by governments, we're threatened by radical um religious people, and it causes difficulty and persecution. But our staff around the world continue to say uh the more persecution, the better our outreach. The more people that come to faith because they know that the persecution is against us. And it's just remarkable and it reminds me so much of that verse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and think about it. This is how it works, even in nature. The the wind uh blows against those trees, and those trees take the roots, and the roots keep digging deeper and grabbing more soil, right? And and uh I just love the fact that uh God sometimes uses the pressure upon the church uh to get it to reach and branch out even further. And and sometimes we need that, right? Even you go back to uh I mean it's a whole different topic, but uh God told mankind to be fruitful and multiply and spread over the face of the earth, and they were refusing to do it. So God had to use the the painful discipline of confusing their language to get them to go do what they're supposed to do. And I'll tell you what, we have so many temptations, back to my initial analogy to be settlers, right? We love comfort, we love convenience, we love whatever it is that lets let's put our feet up and lean back in our chairs, but sometimes it's persecution that gets us out of the chair, back to what we're supposed to do. And we need to be on the front lines, right? Sharing the gospel, caring about souls that are lost, filling our churches with people that are not Christians and seeing them saved, uh, doing apologetics, right? Caring about people that we are not presently reaching. And that's what uh every mission to organization is about. That's what every church should really be about. And uh it is all about us, you know, knowing that we can't ever be fully comfortable, and and we've got to be on the edge of saying, what are we gonna do next to see the gospel go out even further.
SPEAKER_02You know, I think uh for our listeners to understand the validity of what Pastor Mike has just said is born in the fact that he is doing that. So I'm gonna give a little plug for Compass Bible Church, who's aggressively planning churches all around the United States, particularly in places where they don't see quality Bible teaching churches present. And in addition to that, he started the Compass Bible Institute, a biblical theological training ground uh for lay people to go out into the world and understand the gospel and share it. So his testimony, what he just said, what's very important um has a lot of credibility because that's what he is doing. And I see it from the inside of our church, and it is re we it's working remarkably well. So my hat's off, Pastor.
SPEAKER_00Let me just say, Ed, that's so kind of you to say, but the thing in the book of Acts that we see is that these men and women were not yielding to the pressure to back down on what Christ had told them, right? They weren't gonna change their doctrine uh to try and go with whatever the popular surveys said. And uh that's why, in essence, we started a college. Who wants to start a college in this climate today, right? Colleges are are on the decline. Right. And yet we started Compass Bible Institute because we said, you know, there's a lot of places that don't even believe in a literal, you know, six-day creation anymore. There's a lot of people that do not believe really firmly in the inerrancy of scripture anymore. And so we we you know, we're all about planning churches. Well, we need to staff them with youth pastors and young married pastors and and preaching pastors. And we we we've got to train them up and make sure that they are absolutely committed unyieldingly, without apology, to the truth of God's word. Now, I'll tell you what, it's a very costly thing. I just got out of a board meeting yesterday for Compass Bible Institute, and we look at the the financial cost involved in this, we think, well, this is a challenge. God's gonna have to supply, and yet it's worth it. It's worth it because we've got to be pioneers. We have to be out there reaching communities where things are not uh, we're not, where the where the word's not being preached, as you said, Ed. We're about to go in our next church plant to a place where probably they're gonna add uh 30,000 people just in the next couple of years into this one metropolitan area. Every church in the area could plant a new church, and we'd still never keep up uh with reaching people for Christ in that area. And probably within the next 10 years, you're gonna see way more people moving into that area than that. So we've got to look at a map, not just overseas, which I'm all about, right? That's why I serve on FEBC board, and I'm I'm all about other boards that are reaching people around the world. Uh, but we've got to reach domestically here where people are moving and they do not have Bible-teaching churches that believe it. I mean, absolutely believe it. We're not just gonna take a few things here and there. It's not a smorgasborg, it's not a cafeteria. We've got to believe what God says with unabashed, unashamed kinds of voices that can articulate it and call people to follow it without apology.
SPEAKER_01You know, Pastor Mike and Ed, when I think of the book of Acts, I think of boldness. We've already talked about that just a little bit. They were they were bold, they were innovative, they were yielding to the Holy Spirit. And as I hear Ed give testimony of his contact with our broadcasters around the world who are doing things that just are are so bold and so innovative that they put us to shame in our country in terms of ministry because they s they're stepping out. They're engaging their cultures with the with the with the message of Christ in ways that we haven't even thought of. And I that's part of what this whole, you know, Acts 29 kind of thinking is all about here. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One of the examples I think you're referring to, Wayne, I'll just share real briefly, is a man that we know in uh Kazakhstan who was a Muslim. Uh he was actually deeply involved with his his uh mosque and became a believer, radical transformation, and now he does a broadcast for us on the radio in the very city where he grew up. And we asked him, aren't you aren't you worried about, you know, your your former m friends, your your Muslim friends in the community persecuting you and coming after you? And we were talking through a translator, so there was a bit of gap in time, and pretty soon when he understood my question, you see this great smile come up on his face. And he said, Well, I learned in seminary that if you're a Christian, you will be persecuted. So if I'm getting persecuted, then bring it on. And it was that attitude. And so I just love hearing those kind of stories. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01And we're so concerned about safety and you know the the wisdom of uh dialoguing with the other side, so to speak, you know, because we feel like maybe we'll we'll be uh on the short end of the stick. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, that's right. We have the truth. Capital T, right? We have the truth. Why are we afraid to engage people? That's exactly right. You know, be bold about it.
SPEAKER_02Well, Pastor Mike, as we're kind of running out of time, you have some final thoughts for us on what we talked about today?
SPEAKER_00I'm holding back on what I want to say about what you've just said. You know, it's like taking teenagers and saying, hey, we're gonna play football and and and and getting them on the football team in high school and and and somehow not preparing them, that they're gonna get knocked around, right? And unfortunately, we we have not done a service to Christians when we have not prepared them for what Jesus told us. In this world, you're gonna have persecution, right? But take heart and overcome the world. And I know, Ed, you've sat through a lot of my sermons, so you've heard this many times, but Christians need to learn that the Christian hope is not about the here and now, it's about the then and there. And we need to we need to save, as Tozer rightly said, right? These all these hopes for comfort and ease and pleasure. It's for another time, right? Right now, it's about warfare, it's about the the battles that we face every day in advancing the cause of Christ in this world. And so we're going out there to do the battle for truth, as Paul said. We're tearing down every argument that raises itself up against the knowledge of God. And uh we we enjoy that. Just like a high schooler comes home, right, with bumps and bruises, and mom says, How was the game? And he says, uh, it was great, even though he seemed bruised, right? It was great. He loves the game. And that's what you just spoke to in that testimonial. And that's how every Christian should feel. It's okay to take a few bumps and bruises for Christ.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell And that's why we're so grateful to have you speaking into the work of FEBC through our board, Pastor. And um yeah, so Focal Point Ministries, you can find the app for Focal Point.
SPEAKER_01Right, FocalPoint Ministries.org. Look it up, take advantage of it, listen for it on radio.
SPEAKER_02It's gonna be a gift to you if you hear the teaching and preaching of Pastor Mike Fabaras. I can assure you, it's the real truth, and nothing has inspired me more in my life uh than the 15 years that I've been sitting under his teaching.
SPEAKER_01He's not just saying that, Mike, he tells me that all the time. So he loves compass.
SPEAKER_00Very kind, very kind.
SPEAKER_01Pastor Mike Fabaras, thank you for your time. We know it's uh valuable to you and to us, so we appreciate it very much. All right, Ed, that'll do it for this week. Thanks, Wayne. We always look forward to uh the next time that we get together with our friends on Until All Have Heard, and we'd love to hear from you. So if you want to contact us, do it through our website, febc.org. For producer Joe Carlson and Wayne Shepard with Ed Cannon. Thanks for listening to Until All Have Heard.