The Wow of His Word

Chapter 8

God’s Touch Transforms Much

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature;

the old things passed away; behold, new things have come”

(2 Cor. 5:17).

After nine-year-old Isabella Baumfree was sold for $100 and a flock of

sheep, she was whipped and sexually abused, among other cruel mistreatment. Years

later, when her master sold her five-year-old son, Peter, she became broken and

bitter. Then the young slave girl was touched by the power of God’s Word, and her

life dramatically changed. Sojourner Truth, who became a traveling preacher

sharing God’s message of love and forgiveness, is considered one of the bravest

women in American history.

Like Sojourner Truth, untold others have been transformed by the power of

God’s Word: alcoholics, drug addicts, compulsive gamblers womanizers, prostitutes,

murderers, and slave traffickers. The arrogant and abusive have become humble and

kind. Those embittered with hate, have been filled with love and learned how to

forgive. The power of God’s Word has inspired people to share their wealth and to

minister to the poor and disadvantaged. Even a miserable slave owner named John

Newton was touched by God and was inspired to write the memorable hymn “Amazing

Grace.”

God’s Word has dramatically changed the lives of people even in the world’s

most remote villages. For example, Pennsylvania missionaries Mark Zook and his wife

took God’s Word to the murderous Mouk tribe of Papua, New Guinea. The video “Eee-

Taow: The Mouk Story” tells the story of how radically life changed after the tribes

embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Another video, “The Taliabo Story,” reveals the

tremendous impact the Gospel had on a remote island of Indonesia, where the Taliabo

had searched in vain for eternal life for generations.

Scottish merchant marine Ernest Gordon’s autobiography, Miracle on the River

Kwai, tells how British soldiers were forced to build the bridge over the River Kwai in

a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II. The book is not about

building a bridge as much as it is about the rebirth of the human spirit through the

power of God’s Word. Gordon describes how the prisoners’ behavior regressed to that

of barbarians—fighting, clawing, and stealing food from each other. When the

situation became intolerable, the men started reading the Bible and were gradually

transformed into harmonious humans. Gordon’s book was made into the 2001 film

titled To End All Wars.

Leo Tolstoy, Russian author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, wrote

about his own spiritual transformation: “For thirty-five years of my life I was, in the

proper acceptation of the word, a nihilist—not a revolutionary socialist, but a man

who believed in nothing. Five years ago my faith came to me. I believed in the

doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation . . . life and

death ceased to be evil; instead of despair, I tasted joy and happiness that death

could not take away.”

Don Richardson, author and ambassador-at-large for World Team, a mission

organization, has studied cultures throughout the world and found within hundreds of

them startling evidence of belief in the one true God. Richardson wrote about how

God has prepared all of the world’s people groups to receive the gospel in his book

Eternity in Their Hearts. His title is a reference to Ecclesiastes 3:11, that God “has

also set eternity in their heart.” Richardson gives innumerable examples of how

missionaries carried the Word of God to primitive and isolated people, who were

receptive to and even anxiously anticipating those who would bring them the Gospel.

God’s Word dramatically impacted the lives of all types of people, even headhunters!

An example of a tribe who had eternity set in their hearts is the Hmar tribe

of Northeast India. When a missionary briefly visited their isolated village in 1910,

one of the first converts was a young man named Chawnga. He and his wife prayed

fervently that God would use their son, Rochunga, to translate the Bible into the

Hmar language.

At ten years of age, “Ro” became the first boy from his village to attend

school. All alone, he trekked ninety-six miles to the closest school through a jungle

of tigers, elephants, bears, and man-eating pythons. His parents’ intercessory

prayers kept him safe, and when he started school in Churachandpur, God helped Ro

learn five languages so that he could understand each of his five instructors. Ro

continued his schooling in England and then successfully completed graduate work at

Wheaton College in Chicago, Illinois.

The story doesn’t end there. Ro had to work extra jobs while in school, so he

never had time for recreation. Every time he became discouraged, his prayerful

parents inspired him to rededicate himself to the mission that they felt was God’s

plan for him. After years of diligence and sacrifice, Ro finished translating the Bible

into the Hmar language, and copies were shipped to India. Chawnga and the other

villagers were ecstatic that they now had the book that they had anticipated since

the first missionary visited their tribe.

And this remarkable story just keeps getting better. Ro married a Christian

woman, and together they founded numerous schools, more than 300 churches in

India, and Bibles For The World, which has sent 19 million Bibles to more than 100

countries. All of these blessings and transformed lives resulted from a man and

woman being touched by God and fervently and faithfully praying for their son to

follow God’s plan.

Fiji, another testament to the transforming power of the Lord Jesus Christ,

was once a nation riddled with superstition, sorcery, and cannibalism. Ancestral

spirits dictated behavior and meted out curses; tribal fighting was gruesome; and

greedy warriors devastated entire villages and islands. After the people dedicated

themselves to the Lord, God healed their poisoned streams, banished the wild pigs

that had been devastating crops, and repopulated fishing grounds that now swarm

with vast quantities of fish and crabs. Fiji’s story of transformation has been

preserved in the documentary entitled “Let the Sea Resound.”