Coke and Christ

A good while back I read an interesting peace in a magazine about an evangelistic outreach in India in the 1960s, I believe it was. The author, world-famous Norwegian evangelist Aril Edvardsen, reported an incident that had affected him deeply.

While ministering in the Hindu heartlands, he was approached one night by a woman. She had reportedly embraced the message Edvardsen had preached and become a believer, but she wasn't there to thank the evangelist. Instead, she had a question for the peaceful Norwegian crusader:

HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN?

"For how long have you known this Jesus in Norway? For how long have you had the chance to hear this life-changing message about a Saviour that died so that we could live? For how long?"

Edvardsen went on to describe how this tiny female figure standing in front of him, tears flooding down her face, relayed to him what she had witnessed during her mother's last, desperate moments. Powerless to intervene, the daughter had stood by the bed, agonized by the loud cries and protestations filling the room. "They're coming for me. The spirits are here to take me." As if attempting to avert disaster, the dying mother repeatedly called for help. But none was to be had. She didn't know whom to call on who could deliver her from the unseens terrors coming at her. Doctors couldn't help her. The holy men of Hinduism couldn't provide much in the way of consolation at death's door, either. And nobody had ever told them about Jesus.

COKE HAS DONE WHAT WE HAVE FAILED TO ACHIEVE

Now, as she was standing facing the preacher for the first time, the daughter kept on repeating the question, and each time she did, Edvardsen's sense of shame grew progressively stronger. This was the 1960s, and nearly two millennia following Jesus' death and ressurrection, there were still people left in the deepest darkness as to what had happened on that renowned cross. Nearly 2,000 years on, and the masses of India, clutching on to life in distant villages, knew aboslutely nothing about whom to turn to when their Hindu gods would fail them at the time of their most pressing need. India, once the Jewel in the Crown of their allegedly Christian overlords, had not been told the single most important piece of news.

But even upon gaining independence in 1947, India already knew, or would soon be overfed with all kinds of commercial stunts aiming at telling them, there was a beverage called Coka-Cola. The soft drink invented in the late 19th century, was rapidly making headways into all corners of the world,  'converting' young and old, Buddhist and Hindu, at an astounding rate. And soon more people knew of its tantalizing qualities than knew of the fact that Jesus not only quenches your thirst, but can resurrect your body from the grave as well.

The sucesses that night on the crusade in India were completely overshadowed by the daughter's piercing question: "How long have you known?". Aril Edvardsen had no answer to give her. But for the rest of his life, which ended in Kenya in 2009 while on duty for Christ, he made sure that as many as he and his associates could reach, got to hear the saving piece of news:

If you call on the name of Jesus, even in your death throes you will receive help.