A Black Man was the First Missionary to leave America with the gospel, George Liele

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W. Austin Gardner welcomes you to the first episode of the World Evangelism Podcast. I hope you will subscribe, like, and share with others. 

Today, we discussed Genesis 1:1 as a motivation for world evangelism. God created, so He has every right to command that the gospel be preached to His world. 

We pray for China and ask you to pray. For more information, go to Operation World: https://operationworld.org/. Sign up for the daily email to pray for the country of the day. 

Also, learn more about China here. https://operationworld.org/locations/china-peoples-republic/

You are encouraged to get your copy of the book where I was introduced to George Liele. https://www.amazon.com/Free-Indeed-Heroes-Christian-History/dp/1579247342/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EK2BX1UNH53V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.FUXn1SV7J-BMu1RYJJi3LQ.12c8Q-KY-qIDe41kAqGjsVv6bMPBc_cgCvin6R5Mes8&dib_tag=se&keywords=free+indeed+sidwell&qid=1711321118&sprefix=free+indeed+sidw%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-1

I invite you to sign up for weekday emails from my writing here. https://waustingardner.substack.com/

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Episode Transcript

W. Austin Gardner (00:02):
Well, my name is Austin Gardner, w Austin
Gardner, and I am welcoming youto the very first podcast World
Evangelism Podcast.
Now, lord willing, I'll bedoing this once a week and it'll
go out on YouTube at its ownchannel and that will be in the
notes that come along with thisand it'll also have notes on

(00:25):
that channel.
And I just want to reallyinspire missions and empower
leaders.
I want to help you have adesire to get the gospel message
to the world and I want to helpyou do that in every way that I
possibly can.
I want to help you.
That's the point.
So each time I want to talk toyou and I'll bring up several
things every time I want to talkto you about a Bible verse, a

(00:47):
key Bible verse to consider inworld evangelism, and that verse
today is Genesis 1.1.
Now, as almost silly as it maysound, I consider that to be the
most important verse there isin the Bible about world
evangelism.
Well, literally abouteverything, when you think about

(01:07):
it.
In the beginning, God createdthe heaven and the earth In the
beginning, before anything everwas.
God was, and God made the worldand God made all of us, and
that gives him the authority todo literally anything he wants
to do and to say anything hewants to say.
Now I know that in the life ofthe world you live in, it's easy

(01:29):
for us to question whether ornot he really created the world.
But it doesn't take long foryou to start thinking about all
the things you see and juststudy the creation a little bit
and you'll figure out.
God created the world.
And that's a fantastic thoughtand a fantastic idea that God
created everything.

(01:50):
So if God created, God cancommand.
If God created, god can command.
And when God created man, mansinned against God.
But God loved man enough thathe sent his son to die for him.
Before he ever created theworld, he already knew man was
going to sin.
He already knew man was goingto sin.
He already knew man was goingto mess up.
And you know what he did heprovided a way for man to be

(02:10):
saved after that.
So I want you to consider as aworld evangelism verse today, a
very unusual verse Genesis 1.1.
In the beginning, God createdthe heaven and the earth.
He has the authority to tell usanything.
He has the authority to sendmissionaries.
He has the authority to offersalvation.

(02:32):
Second thing I want to do eachtime we meet together on a
weekly basis is I want tointroduce you to a country and I
want to ask you to pray forthat country.
And to do that, I want tochallenge you to go to Operation
World Now.
You'll find that in the notes,but you want to go to
OperationWorldcom and you wantto look up the different

(02:53):
countries and you want to studythem, and you can even sign up
to get their daily email prayerlist, which is one country a day
, and I'm here to motivate youto care about what God cares
about, which is world evangelism.
To do that, we need to knowabout the different countries
that we need to pray for them.
Today, I'd like to take you tolet me see if it'll even let you

(03:16):
see it.
I don't know if it will or not.
I want to take you to OperationWorld.
I can't do a very good job ofthat on there.
I was trying to show it to ourYouTube viewers and we want to
pray for the country of China.
Now, China is the world'slargest country.
In fact, as I was looking atthe hundred largest cities and I

(03:37):
can't remember for sure howmany, but I think 26 of the
largest cities in the world arein China.
Of 100 largest cities in theworld, 26 of them are in China,
and China, to be honest with you, has very little gospel witness
.
Very little is being done, andI just want to ask you to be in

(03:59):
prayer for China.
Let me look that up just alittle bit to give you a little
bit of detail about China here,if I can.
Here's just some basic factsPopulation is approximately 1
billion billion, that's abillion more than the United
States has 1,425,317 people and17,000 people, and Capital city

(04:29):
is Beijing.
It's a communist country.
It is the 16th country out ofthe top 50 countries that
persecute Christians.
It's number 16.
7.9% of the people say thatthey are some kind of Christian,
only 5.7% of them beingevangelical Christians of some

(04:51):
sort.
Would you pray for China?
There's not a lot of missionarywork going on.
There are a lot of greatnational pastors and they're
working, but when you considerthat less than 6% of the people
are claiming to be Christians,evangelical Christians, there's
a great call for us to considerwhat we can do to get the gospel

(05:13):
message to the country of China.
Now, each time I meet, I wantyou to one to know a Bible verse
and two, I want you to pray fora country and I want to ask you
to do that.
And the third thing I want todo is I want to introduce you to
a person and I want tointroduce you to a book, and so
I want to do both of thosesimultaneously today and I'll

(05:35):
have this in the footnotes.
But if you are watching onYouTube and I'm not real good at
any of this but here's a book,free Indeed, free Indeed, and
it's written by Mark Sidwell,s-i-d-w-e-l-l.
Mark Sidwell and it is a storyof black heroes of Christian
history.

(05:55):
It says here on the frontheroes of black Christian
history.
One of my favorite men inhistory is an African-American
slave who God saved and let goto the mission field.
You can get this book.
I'll have it in the notes soyou can look it up.

(06:16):
Let me give you some interestingthings about.
Let me give you just someinteresting things about my
friend, our buddy, george Lau.
He is the first he's really thefirst missionary out of the
country of the United States togo overseas.
We don't know when he was bornfor sure, but it was around 1752

(06:38):
, somewhere in Virginia orMaryland, and he was a slave
when he was born.
He gets saved when he's about18 or 19 years old and becomes
the first African-AmericanBaptist preacher to be ordained
as a pastor.
That happens in around 1775.

(06:59):
Good night.
He's at the young age of 22 or23,.
If they're right about when hewas born, then he founds one of
the very first churches oldestblack churches in the United
States.
It's called Silver Bluff andit's in South Carolina.
That was about 1775 and he wasowned by a Baptist deacon.

(07:21):
That was a good man and a kindman and so he gave his name was
henry sharp.
He was a British man and hegave George Liele a lot of
freedom to go out and do theministry and then he emancipated
him.
He gave him his freedom so hecould go out and preach and
start churches.
Well, he died and his childrentried to put him back into

(07:44):
slavery because they wanted tolose the money they could get
from him, and so he was rescuedby another British man that he
had to pay his passage for, himand his wife, and they went as
missionaries to Jamaica.
He actually sold himself backinto a form of slavery.
He became an indentured servantand worked for years to pay off

(08:07):
the debt that it took to gethim to Jamaica, that it took to
get him to Jamaica.
So he's the first Protestantthat's the word they use
evangelical missionary fromAmerica that leaves from America
to go somewhere else.
He goes out before Adonairamand Judson, before William Carey
, and he has a self-supportingministry.

(08:29):
Because, I mean, he's a slaveand nobody's going to take care
of him and tremendous problems,tremendous problems happened to
him there in the country ofJamaica.
He starts a church, it beginsto grow.
They buy their building.
The slave owners are mad andthey're trying to hurt him.
They end up killing one of themen and cutting his head off and

(08:52):
telling them if they don't quitcoming to church, they're going
to do the same to the more ofthem.
And they put George Lyle injail, even though he was a free
man, but he was a black man andthey mistreated him and abused
him and he never quit.
He never quit, never gave up,never got a bad attitude.
And when they cut that otherman's head off, those members of

(09:14):
the church, they saw some otherChristians praying and they got
with those Christians and theysaid if you don't stop, we're
going to do that to him.
What we did to him.
We're going to do it to you.
Y'all understand that.
You know what happened.
They said we do.
They said, well, get out ofhere.
And they and the people ranafraid because they couldn't
believe the power and thefearlessness and the boldness of

(09:38):
those brave men.
He did a tremendous job inJamaica, starting churches and
training people.
His influence spread everywhere.
People heard about him inBritain, people helped him and
he died sometime between 1820and 1828.
It's not really known, but hereally changed things and I want

(10:03):
you to know that we have gonefor a long time.
Those of us who love worldevangelism and we're so proud of
William Carey and we're soproud of George Lyle.
Excuse me, Adnan Judson, but wedon't even know about old
George Lyle.
That's why I want to challenge,but we don't even know about
old George Lyle.
That's why I want to challengeyou to get this book, this free,
indeed book.
I want to challenge you to getit by Mark Sidwell.
I'll give you the link.

(10:24):
You can order it right onAmazon.
A friend of mine told me aboutthis book and I ordered it.
It is a story of severaldifferent black men that God
used and how God used them inevangelism.
In fact, it is a story of 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13

(10:45):
, 14 different men, people wedon't know, but we should know
and, lord willing, little bylittle I'm going to get you to
know.
So I hope you'll order thisbook and I hope you'll get that
and put it in your library Now.
This is the very first WorldEvangelism podcast today and
there's a whole lot I've got toimprove.
And somebody's going to say,boy, good night, you don't have

(11:06):
your intro down, you don't haveyour outro down, you don't have
all your paperwork done.
And I'm going to say, buddy, Ijust got to jump in the pool and
get with it and get it going,because I want you to be excited
about world evangelism.
I thank you for listening.
I hope that you will inviteothers.
Come to the YouTube channel andsign up and subscribe.
You can watch it on YouTube andI'm going to be doing different

(11:27):
things there and you can alsolisten to this as a podcast.
Help me get the news out.
We want to help pastors.
Pastors ought to tell the storyof George Lyle.
I'm going to tell them how toget the information about George
Lyle so they can use it.
So would you please help mespread the word Now.
Here's our goal.

(11:48):
If God created the world, heowns the world and he wants the
world to hear about him, then weought to be involved in getting
his gospel message to the world.
So I'm challenging you to helpme pray for world evangelism,
pray for China, pray for morethan 1,400,000,000 people in the

(12:08):
world that need the gospel.
Every week, I'll look at adifferent country with you, but
China is always on my heart.
But China is always on my heart.
China is always on my heart.
Would you pray for China?
Then I want to tell you thatI'm going to throw in a bonus.
We'll do this once a week, butI'm going to put a bonus one in

(12:29):
because I'll be interviewingmissionary wife Bridget Young.
Blake and Bridget Young serveas missionaries in the country
of Colombia.
They're currently in Mexico,still learning some Spanish to
get ready to go, and Bridget haswritten a couple of books one
book and one grieving handbookand we're going to talk about

(12:49):
that on our next podcast.
I'll be interviewing her.
So spread the word and let'sget some people to be here with
us.
I really appreciate you takingthe time to come and be with me
today.
I appreciate you.
I appreciate you watching onYouTube.
I'll just tell you right now,as I record this, we have not
one subscriber on either one.
This is the first podcast.

(13:11):
It'll try to go live and we'llsee what's going to happen.
I'm still learning how to dothis, so would you please pray
with me about us promoting worldevangelism, people hearing the
gospel message of Jesus Christ.
Thank you for being with ustoday.
God bless you and I lookforward to seeing you the very
next time.