Millions Hear the Gospel

Answering the call of God to reach the greater population of Thailand (see our post "To the Regions Beyond") we, together with our Thai team, started to develop a suitable message. Then Aderik came to the Lord. Not only was it wonderful to see him come to a personal experience with the Lord, he was a wonderful provision of the Lord for getting the Gospel out to the nation. As one of the leading cartoonists in the land he helped us shape the message in an idiomatic form which could readily identify with the Thai people. We prepared it in a 4-page format and then I went with Aderik to Bangkok to meet the General Manager of a printing company that produced the newspaper, "The Daily News". The goal was to print a first batch of one million copies.

A New Idea Emerges

The manager proudly showed us his newspaper with the front and back pages in full plate colour showing Thai traditional dancers. It was a beautiful production. These special editions were every Wednesday and Sunday when the lottery results came out.

"How would you like to have a full-page presentation of your message on these special days?" he asked.

He gave the price - 1,000 pounds. I quickly made calculations. It would be going all over the country to the best reading public - into the homes, the factories, the eating places, the palace - with no distribution costs. I kept my excitement to myself and said...

"Yes, we would like to do that".

We returned to Chiangmai in the north and prepared the illustrated message in one full page format with a reply slip at the bottom, and then returned to the Daily News with a confirmed date plus the full payment. Somehow we had the payment, although I can't remember how it arrived. Back to Chiangmai, and we put in place a beautiful correspondence course and a team to handle the follow-up. We eagerly awaited the time of the publication . The day came and I went to the newsagent ready to buy many historic copies. In 1963 this was the first of this kind of evangelism. We were so disappointed when we opened the newspaper and found our full-page Gospel message was not there. We learnt later that the management has been pressured not to print it because of Communist influence.

However, the Lord had used them to give us the idea and we subsequently went to bigger and better newspapers and put them in. Thousands responded from all of the 71 provinces of Thailand. From around 20 Newspaper Campaigns 246,000 Thai Buddhists responded. Our team, led by Unoope Pimpar, did a magnificent job of handling the follow-up with the Bible Correspondence Course, "The Living Word". Records, with photographs, were kept of each person giving details of their growth and responses.

This type of evangelism was later tried in other countries with limited success, but for Thailand it was the direction of the Lord. The last Newspaper Campaign was held in 1986 in "Thai Rath", Thailand's biggest newspaper with a circulation of over 3 million. It cost $5,000 and 10,000 responded in one day. How powerful is the Word of the living God!