The famous missionary Hudson Taylor, who pioneered an immense work into China, once said the following about Tibet:
“To make converts in Tibet is similar to going into a cave to rob a lioness of her cubs.”
The almost 1 billion Han Chinese which Hudson Taylor and many other western missionaries engaged with the Good News are now considered reached, with more than 100 million followers of Christ, mostly in the underground church. However, minority groups within China such as the Tibetans in the southwest remain largely unreached (Joshua Project conservatively estimates 0.04% of Tibetans to be Christian).
While there are many possible reasons for this, we will focus on the aspect of spiritual strongholds and spiritual warfare.
The Book of Job gives us a glimpse into spiritual warfare, but the dynamics of this warfare are strange to conventional, worldly thinking. After all, we know that God is all-powerful. With one word, the Lord could have crushed Satan and prevented the Enemy from wreaking havoc on Job. But instead, the two engage in a conversation about Job, because it is in Job’s heart where the great spiritual battle takes place.
Since the dawn of time, Satan has contended that humanity will reject God. Job’s friends did not help much, but Job eventually aligned himself with the Lord and vindicated God’s name and character.
This glimpse into spiritual warfare is instructive to our lives as well. When we pray, we are aligning our hearts to God and bringing about the Kingdom. Our prayers compel God to move – through dreams and visions, healing and miracles, and divine encounters with persons of peace, and much more. Our prayers also tune our hearts to better hear from Him and discern His voice, while tilling the soil of the hearts of those who hear the Word.
The Book of Daniel gives us another glimpse into spiritual warfare, as Daniel’s prayers were hindered by the prince of the kingdom of Persia for 21 days. The remaining strongholds of unreached and frontier, least reached people groups are closely guarded by the Enemy. Missions work in these regions are challenging and dangerous for workers and especially for locals. Persecution comes from every angle, from political, clan, and religious persecution, illegal nature of evangelism, large-scale confiscation of passports and restrictions on foreigner visas, physically remote access, lack of access to Scriptures in heart languages, an oppressive atmosphere, and centuries of lies about the Christian faith which have become ingrained into the culture and mindset.
Breakthroughs require extraordinary prayer and fasting, whether through great revivals of the past such as the Great Awakenings and the Holiness Movement, or what is happening today across Muslim lands, and what we pray will happen in strongholds like Tibet.
Will you join us in prayer as we proclaim the Good News to the nations? Your prayers help protect, encourage, and minister, and their full impact will not be known this side of eternity. Among many things, your prayers are you claiming what side you are on in the great spiritual battle. They are a declaration of victory in your life despite suffering and persecution. They declare the coming Kingdom and help tilt the scales to the next breakthrough. Your prayers are countered and remembered. They fill up many golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints (Revelation 5:8) and compel the heart of God to move.