by Manuel, Bible School for the Nations leader
Whenever I visit Japan, I’m impressed with what an amazing people they are!
Right now, I am sitting in a friend’s living room in Japan and reflecting on the last four months in the Bible School for the Nations. I love to watch our students’ lives transform as they learn to love deeper—both God and other people—as they study the whole Bible.
In fact, one of the biggest realizations for our students is their understanding that all people have infinite value simply because God made them with a wonderful design and purpose. If this simple truth would be embraced around the world it would end human trafficking, gendercide, and many other problems we face today.
This infinite, inherent value means that people are not the problem (as in overpopulation). Rather, people carry in them the ability to create something out of nothing and turn a whole nation’s economics around – like George Washington Carver, the man who invented peanut butter.
Whenever I visit Japan, I’m impressed with what an amazing people they are! Their loyalty to their friends goes so deep that they would take a bullet for them at any time. They operate in accordance to the Bushido code. Yet Japan has the largest child pornography industry and highest suicide rate in the world.
I strongly believe that if the Japanese committed not to a religion but to the person of Jesus Christ their nation would look very different. They would know their value, individually and as a nation. Injustices against women and children would be part of the past and an army determined to bring life and healing to people would arise.
All this is connected to what we are doing in Madison when we raise up people who love God with all their heart and love others with that same undying love. This is why I do what I do and will continue to invest my life in people knowing the Bible and the God of the Bible.