Please Don't Send Me to ... America?

I grew up in a church that had a long history of supporting missionaries to other countries. And so when I first heard the song, Please Don't Send Me to Africa, it brought me back to my child hood days sitting in church listening to some missionary speak of the work he or she was doing in so distant land. Here is the chorus to this cute song:

"Please don't send me to Africa

I'm sure I don't have what it takes

I'm just a man, I'm not a Tarzan

Don't like monkeys, gorillas or snakes.

I'll serve you well in suburbia, in my comfortable middle class life

But please don't send me to Africa

Where the natives are restless at night."

Today I listened to a sermon that might have been called The Sequel to Please Don't Send Me to Africa. This sermon is by Keith Daniels of South Africa and it is titled:  A Warning To America.

Here is just a short excerpt from this very powerful - and even scary - sermon:

"But now my children and my wife were coming back to America and we were going to have six days in New York... And as I was walking, suddenly, my heart sank. Because I saw buildings suddenly with neon lights that were so filthy what was being advertised on those neon lights...I could not believe my eyes at such filth and depravity was so public and my heart just sank. And I said, No God, no. And I began to cry. If it was so filthy outside can you inagine how defiled a human would be inside if you walked in...?...I turned around and looked at another building and it was worse, more bigger, more defiling...  And I began to weep aload, and I said, 'God, I can't bring my children to New York.'... I said, no, you defile your child bringing your child to America. You defile you child bringing him to New York, the greatest city in the world....And I began to weep, and I began to weep loader than I thought I was weeping, I wept so load I was standing there sobbing...and I lifted my hands up and I was shouting, I didn't know I was shoutiing, I was not trying to be fanatical...I cried so loud in my anger that I couldn't bring my children to the city without defiling them. I cried out 'God I'll do anything but close these building down God close these buildings down! They're defiling the children...God this is defiling, this is defiling. Close these buildings down...in Jesus Name I wept. A few hundred people were standing still...I looked at their faces and most of them had tears coming down their faces..."

Recommended reading:

The roman Road to Salvation
The Last Night of Sodom, by Dr. Jerry Bilkes