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Died: Dr. John Edmund Haggai, Founder of Haggai International Ministry
John Edmund Haggai, a preacher and revivalist who saw the need to equip Christians around the world to evangelize their own countries, died Wednesday at 96.
Known for challenging people to “attempt something so great for God, it’s doomed to failure unless God be in it,” Haggai founded Haggai Institute for Advanced Leadership, moved it to Singapore, and trained more than 120,000 evangelists from non-Western countries, including 1,200 from Indonesia, 400 from the Philippines, 500 from India, 400 from Nigeria, and 380 from Brazil. He argued this was the best new strategy for global missions after the end of Western colonialism.
One of his first students was K. P. Yohannan, who went on to found Gospel for Asia.
“Haggai was full of stories,” Yohannan recalled. “In them all, Christians were overcomers and giants—men and women who received a vision from God and refused to let go of it. Diligence to your calling was a virtue to be highly prized. Haggai was the first person who made me believe that nothing is impossible with God.”
Haggai was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1924. His father was a Syrian refugee who had fled Turkish forces in 1912 and was welcomed to the United States. The elder Haggai converted from Eastern Orthodox to evangelical Christianity, enrolled in Moody Bible Institute, and became a Southern Baptist pastor.
The younger Haggai was inspired to follow in his father’s footsteps: He accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior at four years old and announced he felt a call to preach at six. A few years later, Haggai said he wanted to be a missionary to China.
Haggai went to Moody like his father and met Christine Barker from Bristol, Virginia, a soprano who sang professionally from the age of 13 and had her own weekly musical program on the radio. She had given up a scholarship at Julliard to attend Moody. Haggai fell in love, and the two got married the day after graduation in 1945.
While the young graduate still dreamed of being a missionary to China, a civil war broke out between nationalists and the Communists, and the Haggais decided to stay in the US. Haggai soon accepted a position pastoring a church in Lancaster, South Carolina. He grew it to about 1,000 members and won praise for record-high Sunday school attendance.
Haggai also started a radio ministry, with a 15-minute weekly program called Crusade for Christ. He got a second degree in history and philosophy at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and started traveling with Youth for Christ.
He was a powerful and popular speaker on the evangelistic circuit. One ad claimed that though only a young man, he “has plumbed the depths of the Bible and emerged with usable answers to many of the problems of our time.” He condemned the moral decline of the era and urged people to turn to the Bible as a guide for life.
In one sermon, he preached that “a million hammers have banged away at the anvil of God’s Word,” and now “the hammers are broken but the anvil remains.”
Haggai did not directly challenge the racism and the segregation of the South, but he occasionally himself ran afoul of the racial codes. In one hotel, he was mistaken for a singer who was supposed to perform. In some parts of the country, ads for his evangelistic crusades spelled out his ethnicity ahead of time.
In 1950, the Haggais had their only son, John Haggai Jr. He suffered a traumatic brain injury at birth, caused by an intoxicated doctor. The couple refused to institutionalize their son, and Christine committed to caring for the boy full time. After Johnny died at 24, Haggai wrote that those his namesake never spoke more than two words at a time, he was convinced his son prayed powerful prayers, trapped inside his broken body.
A few months after Johnny’s birth, the family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Haggai took over as senior pastor at Woodland Park Baptist. His first sermon at the megachurch was titled: “What’s Wrong with Your Church.” He challenged the congregation to live out their faith, witness to their neighbors, and support global missions.
In 1956, Haggai moved to another megachurch in Louisville, Ninth and O Baptist Church. The Sunday school had more than 2,000 regular attenders. He baptized about 420 people his first year and grew the church’s mission class to nearly 1,000. Haggai was asked to speak at the pastor’s conference ahead of the Southern Baptist Convention that year, and decided to preach about what was wrong with preachers.
“God help us to reappraise and to re-emphasize the place of the pulpit in evangelism,” Haggai said. “Revitalized pulpits in our land with the proper emphasis on evangelistic preaching will bring a new day spiritually and socially within our drink-hazed, lust-crazed, gold-glutted borders. Forbid, O God, that we should minimize the place of the pulpit in evangelism.”
The sermon brought him national headlines. “BLAME ON PULPIT,” one said: “Ministers Who Substitute for Gospel Preaching are Scored at Baptist Convention.” Invitations to speak started rolling—more than 700 around the country—and Haggai decided to leave pastoral ministry and become a full-time itinerate evangelist.
After many years supporting mission work and encouraging missionaries, Haggai got his chance to proclaim the gospel abroad in 1964, when he was invited to preach in Lebanon. There, an interaction with Christians in Beirut changed the rest of his career in ministry. He heard some local Christian leaders complaining about missionaries.
“Frankly, it made me angry,” Haggai later recalled. “I knew that missionaries the world over had sacrificed greatly, many giving their lives. How could anyone question the methods of those willing to pay such a high price for their commitment?”
The local leaders told him that Westerners did not cooperate with local Christians and often barred them from leadership positions, even if they had more experience and education than the missionaries. They misunderstood local cultures, causing unnecessary offense, and seemed to the unconverted to represent colonial power rather than the cause of Christ.
“People aren’t rejecting Jesus,” the Lebanese Christians said. “They’re rejecting Western domination.”
Haggai changed his mind.
“It was a significant moment for Dr. Haggai,” said Ebenezer Bittencourt, director of the Haggai Institute in Brazil. “On the plane ride home, he realized that the world was changing and that the strategy for missions and evangelism had to change too.”
He developed his first leadership training institute to “equip and inspire” national leaders in 1969, in Switzerland. The first students were from Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Korea, what was then called Formosa, and Lebanon.
Two years later, with a $500,000 gift and a $130,000 loan from Cecil Day, founder of Days Inn Hotels, Haggai moved the institute to Singapore. On Day’s advice, the board members were all Singaporean, and Haggai was the only teacher with a US passport. The ministry trained evangelists from 189 countries.
“The Haggai Leadership experience, it really changed the way I see the world,” said Josie Ching, a Christian in the Philippines. “I got it, that each of us is a missionary in our right and in the place that God placed us.”
The institute celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019, with more than 600 leaders from more than 60 nations. The ministry committed to training 250,000 more leaders in the next decade.
Haggai was preceeded in death by his son, Johnny, who passed in 1964, and his wife, Christine, who passed in 2019. Haggai International is collecting tributes to his life and work from around the world and planning an online memorial service.
ലണ്ടന്: ഓസ്ട്രേലിയക്ക് പിന്നാലെ 16 വയസിന് താഴെയുള്ള കുട്ടികളില് സോഷ്യല് മീഡിയ നിരോധനം കൊണ്ടുവരാന് യുകെയും. ഓണ്ലൈന് സുരക്ഷ ഉറപ്പാക്കാന് തനിക്കാവുന്നത് ചെയ്യുമെന്ന് യുകെ സാങ്കേതിക വിദ്യ സെക്രട്ടറി പീറ്റര് കൈലേയെ ഉദ്ധരിച്ച് ബിബിസി റിപ്പോര്ട്ട് ചെയ്യുന്നു. എല്ലാത്തിന്റെയും രേഖകള് കയ്യിലുണ്ടെന്നും തനിക്ക് ആദ്യം കൂടുതല് തെളിവുകള് ലഭിക്കണമെന്നും അദ്ദേഹം വ്യക്തമാക്കി. യുവാക്കളിലെ സോഷ്യല് മീഡിയകളുടെയും സ്മാര്ട്ട്ഫോണുകളുടെയും സ്വാധീനത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് കൂടുതല് ഗവേഷണം നടത്തുമെന്നും കൈലേ പറഞ്ഞു.
16 വയസുവരെയുള്ള കുട്ടികളില് സോഷ്യല് മീഡിയ ഉപയോഗിക്കുന്നത് നിരോധിക്കുന്നതിനുള്ള നിയമം ലോകത്തിലാദ്യമായി ഓസ്ട്രേലിയ അവതരിപ്പിച്ചിരുന്നു. ഓസ്ട്രേലിയയിലെ കമ്മ്യൂണിക്കേഷന് മന്ത്രി മിഷേല് റോളണ്ട് അവതരിപ്പിച്ച ബില്ല് ഓണ്ലൈന് സുരക്ഷയുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെട്ടുള്ള രക്ഷിതാക്കളുടെ ആശങ്കയ്ക്ക് പ്രാധാന്യം നല്കുന്നു. ബില്ല് പാസായാല് നിയന്ത്രണമേര്പ്പെടുത്താന് ഒരു വര്ഷം വരെയെങ്കിലും സമയമെടുക്കും.
കുട്ടികള് അക്കൗണ്ട് എടുക്കുന്നത് തടഞ്ഞില്ലെങ്കില് സാമൂഹ്യ മാധ്യമങ്ങള് നഷ്ടപരിഹാരം നല്കേണ്ടി വരുമെന്നും ബില്ലില് പറയുന്നുണ്ട്. ഇങ്ങനെ സംഭവിച്ചാല് ടിക് ടോക്, ഫേസ്ബുക്ക്, സ്നാപ്ചാറ്റ്, റെഡ്ഡിറ്റ്, എക്സ്, ഇന്സ്റ്റാഗ്രാം തുടങ്ങിയ പ്ലാറ്റ്ഫോമുകള് 3.3 കോടി ഡോളര് പിഴ നല്കേണ്ടി വരും. സോഷ്യമീഡിയ പ്ലാറ്റ്ഫോമുകളില് സംരക്ഷണം ഒരുക്കേണ്ട ചുമതല കുട്ടികള്ക്കോ മാതാപിതാക്കള്ക്കോ അല്ലെന്നും മൈക്കിള് റോളണ്ട് പറഞ്ഞു. 18 വയസിന് താഴെയുള്ളവർക്ക് ഓണ്ലൈന് പോണോഗ്രഫി നിരോധിക്കാനുള്ള നിയമവും ഓസ്ട്രേലിയ ആലോചിക്കുന്നുണ്ട്.
Sources:azchavattomonline.com
LONDON – An ex-Muslim turned Christian evangelist has been beaten, chased by angry mobs, unlawfully jailed and even stabbed, all for the sake of the Gospel.
This is not in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. It is officially happening in Christian Britain.
Her name is Hatun Tash, and what has been done to her has even caught the attention of the British media.
Tash grew up in Turkey as a Muslim and became a Christian after moving to England. And being an ex-Muslim speaking out against Islam has made her a target.
She told us she has changed residences more than 50 times in the past four years because she knows Muslims are looking for her in order to kill her. One man has already been sentenced to 24 years in prison for trying.
Because of this ongoing danger, she asked that we interview her from a secret location.
Tash told us her conversion to Christ began when she learned the truth about Islam and Mohammed.
“As I read biography, it was very disturbing to me. So, the man you grew up to love and honor suddenly turns out to be like, yeah, not good, not good. And I decided, I can’t be Muslim.”
Then she learned about a very different God than the one of Islam, telling us, “As you dig into it, you get to meet with a God who is not silent or far or distant from you, but you meet with a God who loves you, who pours out himself on you. And not only that, He just puts himself on the cross and then says, ‘I love you from everlasting to everlasting, Come to me.'”
Tash began sharing this message to Muslims at Speakers Corner, in London’s Hyde Park, where speakers climb atop stepladders and vigorous debates ensue, often between Muslims and Christians.
Her preaching and criticism of Islam has sometimes enraged Muslims, and three years ago a man slashed her face with a knife. He has never been caught.
She however has been arrested unlawfully more than once. The London Police have twice paid her damages for wrongful arrests, including two years ago when she refused to leave the area where she was preaching. Tash was forcibly marched through Hyde Park, followed by Muslims celebrating her arrest. She was placed in a police van, strip-searched, and jailed.
This has not stopped Tash from going to mosques and sharing the Gospel daily.
“I would simply stand in front of the mosques, and I’d say ‘Muhammad is a false prophet. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Tell me, what is your objections?’ Hundreds of Muslims just stop and then they want to talk to you. Sometimes you get harmed, sometimes it gets dangerous. Sometimes you end up in hospitals, sometimes you end up in people’s homes for a cup of tea,” Tash said.
“I don’t care whether people reject me or not. They need to hear the gospel,” she said.
Christian Concern’s Christian Legal Centre has defended Tash. Christian Concern’s Andrea Williams told us, “The truth is that those that have attempted to kill her have been caught on camera. The police know who they are, but they have not been arrested. She is feared by and targeted by Muslim groups because she is fearless for the gospel. She loves Jesus so much that nothing will halt her.”
Tash says she will continue to preach and continue to challenge Islam.
“Things are dangerous. Should I choose to stay silent? Like when people are spending 5,000 Pounds to buy a gun, to shoot you and shoot your loved ones? The Gospel is so glorious, I cannot be silent. And the Lord is the giver of life. So, when it’s my time, He will take me home. But until He gives me breath, we continue to preach.”
Sources:CBN News
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‘Christ Laid His Life Down for Me’: Greg Laurie Gives Powerful Gospel Presentation to Jordan Peterson
Christian megachurch leader Greg Laurie recently appeared on psychologist Jordan Peterson’s podcast, where he gave the professor-turned-cultural commentator a powerful presentation of the Gospel.
“When everything’s said and done, what’s more important than the afterlife?” the California-based pastor asked Peterson. “What’s more important than where we spend it? According to the Bible, I believe there’s a literal heaven, a literal hell, and I believe we choose in this life where we will spend the afterlife.”
Laurie added he’s going to spend eternity in heaven “not because I’ve lived a good life — because I failed in many ways — but because Christ laid His life down for me on the cross.”
“Coming back to Abraham, and what a picture, the son was willing to go and be sacrificed by the father,” the pastor continued, referring to the Old Testament story of Genesis 22. “[Isaac] knew what was going on: ‘Hey, Dad, where’s the sacrifice?’ ‘My son, God will provide for Himself a sacrifice.’ But Isaac made that sacrifice, too. The Son Jesus made that sacrifice for us, because He knew there was no other way that we could reach God, no other way we could satisfy the righteous demands of God. So Heaven isn’t for good people, as it’s often said; heaven is for forgiven people.”
The conversation between Peterson and Laurie stemmed from the 71-year-old minister opening up about the death of his son, Christopher, who passed away in 2008 as a result of a tragic car accident.
He described that day in July of 2008 as the “worst” day in his life. Nevertheless, Laurie said he is not without hope — because of his faith in the redemptive work of Jesus.
“I believe I’ll see my son again, because he believed in Jesus,” Laurie explained. “He won’t be in heaven because I’m his dad; he’ll be in heaven because he put his faith in Christ and he had that relationship. He’s a part of my future as well, so that gives me hope. But, also, I realize that God can allow these things in our life. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. I don’t even try to explain it.”
Peterson, author of the new book, “We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine,” admitted to Laurie he struggles to intellectually reconcile a desire to perfect the earthly world with the knowledge the Christian life is heavily weighted toward considering eternity.
The famed psychologist and podcast host asked, “How do you reconcile, in your own mind, the insistence that part of the Christian moral pattern is to perfect the world and to raise the material up to the heavenly with the notion of the afterlife and immortality?”
Laurie referenced 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, in which the Apostle Paul wrote about experiencing a “third heaven,” as well as the thief on the cross next to Jesus, Who promised the man, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43, NIV).
The pastor explained he has felt closest to God — and His promises of eternity — through life’s trials.
“God made a lot of promises,” said Laurie. “I’ve put those promises to the test, including the worst thing of all, to lose a child. And I’ve seen how God had come through for me. If He hadn’t come through for me after my son died, I would have given up preaching, for sure. Why carry on? But He came through for me.”
Sources:faithwire
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