Rev. Platt speculates that there are only two reasons why there are not more missionaries in the area from which he was filming. The first reason he offers is that Christians don’t know that there are billions of unsaved people across the world. Most Christians I know do know this. That fact drives them to prayer and generosity (dare I say radical generosity) to world missions. The second reason he offers is that Christians who don’t share Rev. Platt’s views believe in universalism—the heretical belief that all people will end up in heaven. The Christians I know do not believe this.

Along with 612,000 other people, I watched a video by Rev. David Platt, posted on X, a week ago. The text added to the ninety-second video said,

If we actually believe the Bible, we’ll leave behind this brand of Christianity we’ve created that’s content to essentially ignore over 3 billion in the world who’ve never heard the gospel.

So the question is: do we actually believe the Bible?

The video is of Rev. Platt on a rooftop in a bustling city, giving a very emotive plea for world evangelization. And yet, my response was one of incredulity. My response bothered me a bit, not the least, because I am for world evangelization. I have been in Christian ministry for two decades. I have been on a few short-term mission trips. I have taught pastors in another country. My wife and I have a few international mission agencies that we support. And at least at one point, we considered being international missionaries. So, why my negative response to Platt’s impassioned plea?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days. I want to make sure that I’m not developing a curmudgeonly reflexive response to fellow pastors who call the church to care about sharing the gospel with those who don’t know Christ. After some soul-searching, I think I’ve settled on some reasons why Platt’s plea was off-putting for me.

First, Rev. Platt insists that if Christians actually believed the Bible, the three billion souls he references would already be reached or that more would be being done to reach them. The assumption here is that world evangelization is not going as planned because of the disbelief of God’s people. We could speculate this is true. After all, both letters to the church at Corinth are based on Paul’s clear opinion that the church at Corinth had not been maturing as fast as it should have been. But at the same time, that all people (or more people) are not saved (or have not heard the gospel) in 2024 in the year of our Lord does not prove that the church does not believe the call to gospel missions. In fact, Jesus teaches that God’s sovereignty over salvation means that some people will not be converted and some people (who will not believe) will not hear the gospel (Luke 4:23–27).

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