The people around us may be nice and polite and financially prosperous but if they are not converted they are spiritually blind and in great spiritual danger.

This is clearly the biblical picture of the unconverted.

Blind. Enslaved. Spiritually dead.

The question is, do we believe it?

There is a lot of pressure not to. These kinds of thoughts certainly are not politically correct. The people around us minimize the importance of belief. And as a result, I am afraid that we are in danger of losing a sense of the urgency of the evangelistic task. It is good, I think, to take a step outside of our culture, and remember that the way people are telling us we must think is not the only way to think and certainly not a biblically way to think.

This morning I read this letter from Ann Judson. I would much rather think like Ann Judson than even the most respected unbeliever of our age.

Note her passion for the conversion of the lost.

She writes,

“I want the Baptist throughout the United States to feel, that Burmah must be converted through their instrumentality. They must do more than they have ever yet done. They must pray more, they must give more, and make greater efforts to prevent the Missionary flame from becoming extinct. Every Christian in the United States should feel as deeply impressed with the importance of making continual efforts for the salvation of the heathen, as though their conversion depended solely on himself. Every individual Christian should feel himself guilty if he has not done and does not continue to do all in his power for the spread of the gospel and the enlightening of the heathen world. But I need not write thus to you. You see, you feel the misery of the heathen world. Try to awaken Christians around you. Preach frequently on the subject of Missions. I have remarked it to be the case, when a minister feels much engaged for the heathen, his people generally partake of his spirit.”

Letter from Ann Judson to Francis Wayland, January 22, 1823