Gordon Fort was a world away from home when he awoke in the middle of the night to a Facetime call from his daughter.
“Of course at this late hour I expected bad news, but she showed me a sparkling diamond on her finger,” Fort recalled. “At my conference the next day I showed this picture to everyone since it was good news.
We must share good news
“On another occasion a friend sent a note to tell me that a man I knew and loved who had three leukemia cancers was then in remission. This, too, was good news.
“The church is exhorted to share good news with a world in need.”
Fort, senior ambassador for International Mission Board President Paul Chitwood, was keynote speaker at a missionary appreciation banquet hosted by Birmingham Metro Baptist Association Sept. 10. He and his wife, Leigh Ann, were appointed as IMB missionaries to Botswana in 1985, and now make their home in Hoover.
The event drew more than 400, including some 100 retired, furloughing or transitioned missionaries.
“Scripture explains this good news some 77 times,” Fort went on to say. “Sometimes it’s the good news about salvation, sometimes it’s the good news about Jesus Christ and sometimes it’s the good news of the Kingdom of God. And Jesus said this good news will be proclaimed in all the world before the end comes.”
An imperative and a prophecy
Fort noted Christ’s exhortation was both an imperative and a prophecy.
“It’s an imperative because it has to be done,” Fort declared.
“Jesus didn’t give us ‘The Great Suggestion’ or ‘The Good Idea,’ but ‘The Great Commission.’ As His disciples we’re commanded to share the good news. The word ‘preached’ in the New Testament actually means ‘to herald,’ just as the trumpeters would herald the beginning of the Greek games.
“But it’s also a prophetic word since He told us about ‘the end,’” Fort continued. “At the end, according to the book of Revelation, people from every language, tribe and nation who’ve responded to the good news will gather to worship at the throne of God.”
Willing to serve
The word “witness” in Matthew 24:14 is the basis of the English word “martyrdom,” Fort said.
“We must be willing to serve the Lord where we are and wherever He calls us,” he explained. “There’s no nation that doesn’t need the good news and no government with the right to prevent our sharing the good news. God wouldn’t call us to herald the good news if He didn’t realize our potential to do so and if the world didn’t need to hear it.”
Fort related a conversation with the late Alabama health officer Ira Myers, whose daughter, missionary doctor Martha Myers, was killed in Yemen in 2002.
“I asked him why she was buried behind the Jibla Baptist Hospital rather than in America,” Fort recalled. “Dr. Myers said his daughter told him before she went overseas that if she died, she wanted to be buried in Yemen as a witness.
Testimony to obedience
“The hospital where she worked served 40,000 patients every year. Her grave is a testimony to her obedience to the call of God and her commitment to serve people in need.
“‘The end’ is coming, and no man knows the hour or the day,” Fort said. “And the end is coming for each of us. We must live every day with the end in view and a sense of urgency to herald the good news.”
For said of IMB missionaries, “Your support is the anchor that moors us to our purpose.”
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