by Dan Jones
On a recent edition of Mission Network News I heard on Kinship Christian Radio last week, I learned that Trans World Radio is in the final stages of boosting the power of its radio signal from 100 kilowatts to 450 kilowatts.
Now, that might not mean much to people unfamiliar with the technical aspects of Christian broadcasting, but what it means in the real world is that the radio transmitter on the island of Bonaire just off the coast of Venezuela will now be able to broadcast the gospel of Jesus Christ to 50 million people.
That’s 50 million souls that now have the chance to hear that Jesus is LORD, that He died for all our sins, and anyone can be forgiven and spend eternity in heaven alive with Him forever.
That’s some pretty good news.
And, among those 50 million souls to be potentially saved are the people on the island nation of Cuba where the government does not allow Christian radio stations on its soil. I’ve recently written about a revival going on in Cuba, so it’s fabulous to think about those Christians having access to the Word of God and music that worships Him and glorifies Him. HALLELUJAH!
The power upgrade will also reach people in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and other countries of the Caribbean and Latin America.
All this got me to wondering about Christian radio in other parts of the world.
Here’s what I found:
Wikipedia shows a list of 29 countries that have Christian radio stations from American Samoa to the US Virgin Islands, but the list is incomplete and, of course, it does not show how many countries have radios stations where the signal can be heard in other countries. Trans World Radio says it reaches 160 countries.
Christian radio began in about 1921 and at one time had reached more people with the Gospel per hour than any other form of evangelism.
According to Wikipedia, Maria Miranda, the most listened-to radio evangelist from Latin America in 1990, was heard by over 100 million people per day through 537 radio stations in 22 countries during that time.
“The Lutheran Hour” has been broadcast since 1925, and can still be heard on Kinship Christian Radio at 6:00 p.m. on Sundays. It had 5 million listeners by 1931, and, by 1987, broadcast in over 31 languages to 40 million listeners.
The first missionary specific radio station, HCJB, went on the air in Ecuador on December 25, 1931. HCJB broadcast on a number of frequencies, including shortwave, which meant that it was received by people all over the world. By 1944, the station had aired programming in 14 languages including live programs in Czech, Dutch, French and German. It generated much of its own programming, but also aired several programs familiar to Kinship Christian Radio listeners including the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Hour of Decision, “Nightsounds” with Bill Pearce, and (one of my favorites) Pacific Garden Mission’s “Unshackled!”
The Golden Age of Radio-style “Unshackled!” first aired on September 23, 1950. It’s the longest-running radio drama in history and one of a very few still in production in the United States. The show is aired over 6,500 times around the world, each week, on over 1,550 radio outlets and is translated and re-dramatized into eight languages on six continents.
Christian Radio is able to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to people all over the world because radio signals aren’t constrained by borders drawn on a map. And, it appeals even to non-Christians. In Yemen, a country in which 97 percent of the country is listed as Muslim, 10 percent of the population listens to Christian radio.
Even in China, where to be a Christian is to risk death, Christian radio is there providing encouragement and the tools to lead others to Christ via the Word of God.
Come to think of it, none of any of this would have occurred to me nor would I have shared it with you here, had I not heard it on Kinship Christian Radio in the first place.
Christian Radio truly is a miracle and God gets the glory.
Today’s Praise
Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth–to every nation, tribe, language and people. Revelation 14:6 (NIV)