The 10-40 window

[npetreley]

Someone else asked this question (until then I didn't know what the 10-40 window was). I looked into it, and I think it's an interesting question that deserves its own thread. Here's a quote from his question:

I have often asked why God would create the "10-40 window" in which most of the people are not Christian nor are they exposed to Christianity. Can anyone explain this to me?

Here are some interesting statistics about the 10-40 window. (Caution: Various web sites on the 10-40 window have significantly different statistics about it, but not different enough to make that the focus of discussion. I just want to mention that the statistics vary, in case you happen to find one that disagrees with the statistics I pulled.)

From:

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~samkong/mission/1040.php

...71 % of all Muslims, 98 % of all Hindus, and 68% of all Buddhists live in the 10/40 Window.

...There are 34 Muslims countries, 7 Buddhist nations, 3 Marxist nations and 2 Hindu countries in the Window.*

...There are 55 countries in the world that are considered "Unevangelized." 97% of these are in this Window.*

...There are over 1.3 billion people living in the Window who have little or no chance to hear the gospel.

...In the Window, we find 86% of the people group which are less than 2% Christian.*

...There are 500 people group in the Window that have never heard the Gospel.*

...Only 1.2% of all mission fund go to the Window.*

...Only 1% of all Scripture distribution are distributed to the 10/40 Window.*

...Only 3% of all the languages for which the Bible has been translated are directed toward the Window.*

...9 out of the 10 countries where the physical persecution of Christians is the most severe is in the Window.*

...The greatest revival ever on earth is taking place in the 10/40 Window countries of Asia? Every day in communist China over 25,000 people accept Christ. In India, an estimated 15,000 people are turning to Jesus daily. In the early eighties there were only 15,000 known Christians in the Himalayan country of Nepal compared to over 200,000 followers of Christ today.

-------

Now, what does this have to do with Theology and Bible Study? IMO, a lot, but I'd rather read responses of those who see a connection than make my own at this point.

As an aside, I found the wording here amusing:

...In the Window, we find 86% of the people group which are less than 2% Christian.

I didn't realize it was possible for any Christian to be less than 100% Christian.

 

[North Carolina Tentmaker]

I had never heard of the 10/40 window before. Thanks for teaching me something new npetreley.

Wikipedia says the term was invented by Louis Bush in 1990. It refers to the area of the eastern hemisphere between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator.

The question quoted was

I have often asked why God would create the "10-40 window" in which most of the people are not Christian nor are they exposed to Christianity. Can anyone explain this to me?

And the answer to this is really very simple. God did not create the 10-40 window, man did. For starters Jerusalem is in the window. The entire earthly ministry of Jesus Christ took place inside the window. Early churches in Alexandria, Antioch, most of the ministries of the apostles, all took place inside this window.

Many nations in the window are hostile to missionary work and it contains a majority of the people of the non-Christian religions of the world (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Confucianism).

It is not that God does not care about those people and it is not that Christian missionaries of the ages past or present day have not tried to work in those areas. It is that men in those areas have rejected the gospel and actively opposed it.

 

[lgpruitt]

THANK YOU! I was about to make a new thread for this question.....

 

[lgpruitt]

But, there are many areas in this window, and I do agree, it is termed by man as the 10-40 window, that are nevery exposed to Christianity. Take out the places that reject the Gospel....again, my question is why? Not quite so easy to answer in my opinion.

 

[Aaron]

Because God will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and compassion upon whom He will have compassion, and whom He will, He hardeneth.

 

[lgpruitt]

So, does that automatically make groups

damned on this earth?

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Aaron:
Because God will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and compassion upon whom He will have compassion, and whom He will, He hardeneth.

While I believe this statement to be 100% true (it is, after all, scripture), I don't think we have the luxury of assuming that the people in the 10-40 window are objects of God's wrath. We are told to declare the Gospel, and that is what we should do, and do it under the assumption that God's elect are everywhere.

Here are the statistics that disturb me:

...Only 1.2% of all mission fund go to the Window.

WHY?

...Only 1% of all Scripture distribution are distributed to the 10/40 Window.

WHY?

...Only 3% of all the languages for which the Bible has been translated are directed toward the Window.

WHY?

...9 out of the 10 countries where the physical persecution of Christians is the most severe is in the Window.

Is this why? We're faithless cowards?

 

[lgpruitt]

My former church did a lot of mission work in the 10/40 window. I guess that's why it fascinates me but burdens me. That's why I posted the original question. It bothers me so few go to this area....so little is spent to send people to spread The Word....I've pondered this area for years. I've asked many preachers, Sunday School teachers, etc about it. I just praise God that I was born in an area of the world that we learn about Jesus from the get-go.( for most of us) I can't remember a time when I wasn't in church or learning The Word. But, I live in Tennessee, and you'd think we're the "bible belt". 93% of the county where I live in West TN DOES NOT go to church on Sunday. Another disturbing figure....

 

[lgpruitt]

I just read your opening statement on the "receiving" thread and then all the comments....ouch. Things do get hot in here

 

[Mexdeaf]

Originally posted by npetreley:

Here are the statistics that disturb me:

...Only 1.2% of all mission fund go to the Window.

WHY?

...Only 1% of all Scripture distribution are distributed to the 10/40 Window.

WHY?

...Only 3% of all the languages for which the Bible has been translated are directed toward the Window.

WHY?

...9 out of the 10 countries where the physical persecution of Christians is the most severe is in the Window.

Is this why? We're faithless cowards?

I would say that I don't put much stock in statistics- many times they are misrepresented. I also do not think cowardice has anything to do with it. There are many faithful men and women working in this area that we do not know about, many of them not Baptists, but yet doing their part to spread the gospel just the same.

The problem is more about access than availability. It is easier for a person from the Philippines or Japan, for instance to enter the countries in the 10/40 window than someone from the USA. That is why many in our missions group are working to send people from those (and other) countries to the 10/40 window.

So God's work is being done and His Word is going forth, even though it may not all be done through people we know or from the USA.

 

[John of Japan]

Originally posted by Mexdeaf:
I would say that I don't put much stock in statistics- many times they are misrepresented. I also do not think cowardice has anything to do with it. There are many faithful men and women working in this area that we do not know about, many of them not Baptists, but yet doing their part to spread the gospel just the same.

The problem is more about access than availability. It is easier for a person from the Philippines or Japan, for instance to enter the countries in the 10/40 window than someone from the USA. That is why many in our missions group are working to send people from those (and other) countries to the 10/40 window.

So God's work is being done and His Word is going forth, even though it may not all be done through people we know or from the USA.

Well said, Mexdeaf. I agree completely.

Here is another aspect to the 10/40 window that I don't remember ever seeing discussed. Many of the countries in the 10/40 window have in the past been fully introduced to Christianity (if not the Gospel), but later rejected it as a country. This is true of all of the countries of North Africa and the Middle East. They were reached by the 1st and 2nd century church, and at one point in their history many if not all of them could be called Christian countries. However, the scourge of Islam went to war with these countries in the 7th century, and within a hundred years they were all conquered. In the process many hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed, and the remaining Christians were compelled to become Muslim at the point of the sword.

In the case of Japan, by the late 16th century much of Japan was Catholic, including the whole island of Kyushu. However, Christianity was outlawed for political reasons by Nobunaga, the Shogun of the day. In the early 17th century, Tokugawa Ieyasu, the new Shogun, began enforcing the ban, and many hundreds of thousands of Catholics were slaughtered in war and executed afterwards. Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, not only Christianity but all foreigners and foreign influence were forbidden on pain of death until the Meiji Restoration in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

What am I saying? After a country rejects Christianity as the ones mentioned above did, the entire direction of the country and/or culture is away from Christ, and it becomes "Gospel resistant."

Should we try to reach the people groups in the 10/40 window? Of course, because the Great Commission commands it! But it sure isn't easy, folks, as I can witness! The hearts of these people are hard!

 

[lgpruitt]

It is much easier, and I have been told by many missionaries, to work in the 10/40 window if you resemble the culture. It is much harder if you are cacausion American to work within this window. Work is being done there by many misionaries, even from the US that can fit into the culture/ethnicity.

 

[lgpruitt]

It is just a vast area to cover....with many areas that are so extremely remote to man....

 

[His In China]

What is the 10/40 Window?

World evangelism statistics: Of the 55 least evangelized countries, 97% of their population lives within the 10/40 Window.

Unless something changes soon, most of these unreached people will never hear the Gospel. Why? Well, Bryant Myers of World Vision has estimated that only about one and a quarter percent ( 1.25% )of Christian mission giving is going to missions work in the 10/40 Window. Open evangelism is difficult and even impossible in many 10/40 Window countries. Those are creative access areas.

What will you do in the next five days that will move the Church toward reaching people in the 10/40 window with the gospel?

The vision of a dying world: The people in the mission fields

Working on a school report about missions? Here are some facts to use.

Missions statistics from the places of the 10/40 Window:

Center of population:Two-thirds of the world's population -- more than 3.2 billion people -- live in the 10/40 Window.

Unreached and unevangelized: 95% of the people living in the 10/40 Window are unevangelized. Many have never heard the Gospel message even once. There are either no Christians or not enough of a Christian movement in many cultures of the 10/40 Window to carry out vibrant near-neighbor evangelism. If those groups are to be evangelized, believers will need to leave their own culture to enter another where they will seek to plant the gospel. Such cross-cultural evangelism is required because there are people groups with no church movements that are understandable or relevant to them.

Good news: There's a difference between unreached and unreachable. In 1989 there were only four known Christians living in Mongolia. That country now has an estimated 10,000 indigenous believers. Also, Christian television programming can now be received in many closed 10/40 Window nations.
Poverty: Eighty-five percent of those living in the 10/40 window are the poorest of the world's poor.

Good news: Christians delivered more than $1 million worth of food to just one 10/40 Window refugee camp in a recent year. In one North African country that is hostile to the Gospel, abundant rain fell after an Easter service. A local news channel reported, "Christians have brought rain to the desert."

World religions: Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are centered within the 10/40 Window.

Least evangelized cities: Half of the world's least evangelized cities are in this window.
Statistical data on unreached people groups:
The statistics of the numbers of non-Christians can be staggering.

865 million unreached Muslims or Islamic followers in 3330 cultural sub-groupings
550 million unreached Hindus in 1660 cultural sub-groups
150 million unreached Chinese in 830 groups
275 million unreached Buddhists in 900 groups
2550 unreached tribal groups (which are mainly animistic) with a total population of 140 million
Forming a smaller -- though important -- unreached group are the 17 million Jews scattered across 134 countries

Good news: Missions researcher David Barrett says the country with the most rapid Christian expansion ever is China where there are 10,000 new Christian converts every day.
Bible translation availability
At least some part of Scripture has been translated into 2,212 of the world's 6,500 languages 366 languages have the entire Bible
928 other languages have the New Testament
Individual books (such as the Gospel of John) are available in 918 additional languages 80 percent of the world's people have access to at least some portion of the Bible in a language they can understand.

 

[His In China]

The Chinese People

Population Summary:
Mainland China: 1.3 billion (5 times the population of America)
Taiwan: 21 million
Hong Kong: 6.4 million
Macao: 400,000
Language: Mandarin (70%), Cantonese, five other major dialects

Fast Facts:
· Urban Population: 35%

· There are four times (4x) as many people without Christ in China as there are people in the United States.

· Every Day in China:
54,477 people are born
21,403 people die

· Every 3 days in China:
164,431 people are born
64,209 die; more people than the capital of West Virginia

· China has an estimated 1,200,000,000 people without Christ! (Thats 95% of the population.)

· 892 people die every hour in China

· 93% of China's population is ethnically Han (what most people think of when they picture Chinese people); however, about 7% of the population is made up of minority or tribal groups.

 

[His In China]

Mission Parable by James M. Weber, Missionary to Japan

A mission’s parable about lost people: putting world evangelism statistics in perspective by James M. Weber, missionary to Japan.

Once upon a time there was an apple grower who had acres and acres of apple trees. In all, he had 10,000 acres of apple orchards.

One day he went to the nearby town. There, he hired 1,000 apple pickers. He told them:

"Go to my orchards. Harvest the ripe apples, and build storage buildings for them so that they will not spoil. I need to be gone for a while, but I will provide all you will need to complete the task. When I return, I will reward you for your work.

"I'll set up a Society for the Picking of Apples. The Society -- to which you will all belong -- will be responsible for the entire operation. Naturally, in addition to those of you doing the actual harvesting, some will carry supplies, others will care for the physical needs of the group, and still others will have administrative responsibilities."

As he set up the Society structure, some people volunteered to be pickers and others to be packers. Others put their skills to work as truck drivers, cooks, accountants, storehouse builders, apple inspectors and even administrators. Every one of his workers could, of course, have picked apples. In the end, however, only 100 of the 1,000 employees wound up as full-time pickers.

The 100 pickers started harvesting immediately. Ninety-four of them began picking around the homestead. The remaining six looked out toward the horizon. They decided to head out to the far-away orchards.

Before long, the storehouses in the 800 acres immediately surrounding the homestead had been filled by the 94 pickers with beautiful, delicious apples.

The orchards on the 800 acres around the homestead had thousands of apple trees. But with almost all of the pickers concentrating on them, those trees were soon picked nearly bare. In fact, the ninety-four apple pickers working around the homestead began having difficulty finding trees which had not been picked.

As the apple picking slowed down around the homestead, Society members began channeling effort into building larger storehouses and developing better equipment for picking and packing. They even started some schools to train prospective apple pickers to replace those who one day would be too old to pick apples.

Sadly, those ninety-four pickers working around the homestead began fighting among themselves. Incredible as it may sound, some began stealing apples that had already been picked. Although there were enough trees on the 10,000 acres to keep every available worker busy, those working nearest the homestead failed to move into unharvested areas. They just kept working those 800 acres nearest the house. Some on the northern edge sent their trucks to get apples on the southern side. And those on the south side sent their trucks to gather on the east side.

Even with all that activity going on the harvest on the remaining 9,200 acres was left to just six pickers. They were, of course, far too few to gather all the ripe fruit in those thousands of acres. So, by the hundreds of thousands, apples rotted on the trees and fell to the ground.

One of the students at the apple-picking school showed a special talent for picking apples quickly and effectively. When he heard about the thousands of acres of untouched faraway orchards, he started talking about going there.

His friends discouraged him. They said: "Your talents and abilities make you very valuable around the homestead. You'd be wasting your talents out there. Your gifts can help us harvest apples from the trees on our central 800 acres more rapidly. That will give us more time to build bigger and better storehouses. Perhaps you could even help us devise better ways to use our big storehouses since we have wound up with more space than we need for the present crop of apples."

With so many workers and so few trees, the pickers and packers and truck drivers -- and all the rest of the Society for the Picking of Apples living around the homestead -- had time for more than just picking apples.

They built nice houses and raised their standard of living. Some became very conscious of clothing styles. Thus, when the six pickers from the far-off orchards returned to the homestead for a visit, it was apparent that they were not keeping up with the styles in vogue with the other apple pickers and packers.

To be sure, those on the homestead were always good to those six who worked in the far away orchards. When any of those six returned from the far away fields, they were given the red carpet treatment. Nonetheless, those six pickers were saddened that the Society of the Picking of Apples spent 96 percent of its budget for bigger and better apple-picking methods and equipment and personnel for the 800 acres around the homestead while it spent only 4 percent of its budget on all those distant orchards.

To be sure, those six pickers knew that an apple is an apple wherever it may be picked. They knew that the apples around the homestead were just as important as apples far away. Still, they could not erase from their minds the sight of thousands of trees which had never been touched by a picker.

They longed for more pickers to come help them. They longed for help from packers, truck drivers, supervisors, equipment-maintenance men, and ladder builders. They wondered if the professionals working back around the homestead could teach them better apple-picking methods so that, out where they worked, fewer apples would rot and fall to the ground.

Those six sometimes wondered to themselves whether or not the Society for the Picking of Apples was doing what the orchard owner had asked it to do.

While one might question whether the Society was doing all the owner wanted done, the members did keep very busy. Several members were convinced that proper apple picking requires nothing less than the very best equipment. Thus, the Society assigned several members to develop bigger and better ladders as well as nicer boxes to store apples. The Society also prided itself at having raised the qualification level for full-time apple pickers.

When the owner returns, the Society members will crowd around him and proudly show off the bigger and better ladders they've built and the nice apple boxes they've designed and made. One wonders how happy that owner will be, however, when he looks out and sees the acres and acres of untouched trees with their unpicked apples.

 

[Aaron]

Originally posted by lgpruitt:
So, does that automatically make groups

damned on this earth?

There will be some of every tribe and nation that are saved. But your question was, why would God create the 10-40 window?

 

[genesis12]

Great stuff, His in China. I'm amazed that you can do that, having heard otherwise so often. I'm most interested in WHICH Christian television programs are being shown in your neck of the woods, and which radio programs have access.

 

[Deacon]

One of my friends works as a missionary with WORLD TEAM in New York City, evangelizing and discipling students from the 10-40 window.

NYC provides many unique opportunities to reach out to foreigners who otherwise might have little opportunity to hear the gospel.

Upon becoming believers, they are discipled knowing that upon returning to their native country, they may become an witness for Christ in places where many of us cannot even enter.
They are not fettered with travel restrictions and speak the language better than a missionary ever could.

Rob

 

[bapmom]

IGpruitt,

have you thought of going to one of these fields yourself?