Saturday Song: A Flock of Seagulls, "Telecommunications"

We certainly live in an interconnected world. News can be reported in real time and we can connect with people all over the globe. We have so many apps on our smart phones that their original function of voice communication is being overshadowed by all the other things they can do.

Just think of all the innovations during the past 150 years. The telegraph began the communications revolution. Then the telephone and Radio became an everyday part of people's lives. And though the facsimile machine was first invented and demonstrated in France in 1842, it didn't become ubiquitous until the mid 1980s. In the mid nineties, the Internet was opened up for civilian use.

Listen to this ode to modern technology here.

Though there are abuses of these communication modes, they've also been a boon to spreading the gospel. Through shortwave radio transmissions, the gospel is penetrating closed countries such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Satellite television is popular in Iran. Christian broadcasters are beaming in Arabic gospel shows to the millions of viewers since evangelizing in person is forbidden in that Islamic state.

Thanks to the Internet, many people can hear or download gospel programs and sermons. Countries such as China restrict what their people can see, read, and hear but radio fills that gap.

Telecommunication has allowed Christ's statement, regarding the woman who wept on his feet and wiped them with her hair, come to pass. Matthew 26:13 (KJV) says, "Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.".

What an absolute blessing this technology has been in proclaiming the gospel, especially where missionaries are banned!

On Monday, I'll be writing about how much we are told to give in the Bible.