Give Me NYC or I Die

I sit here in my chair, preparing to go and preach the gospel in the heart of maybe the vilest city on earth. I have two hours left before we begin to preach ourselves to exhaustion. Maybe I will get a milkshake thrown at my head, punched, or arrested like brother Daniel did all in the last month. Maybe I will have people pull down their masks and cough at me to try and give me COVID. I don’t know. Maybe souls will be converted. I pray most importantly that God would be glorified.

This is a city which I love. I yearn for it to be delivered from darkness. She is like an unborn baby which is almost totally dead with barely any signs of life. I do not say this lightly or with a hint of pleasure: she is like a person on the verge of suicide, with almost no one crying out or coming to her rescue. Oh, how my heart struggles to fight against hopeless despair. I am like a little boy who looks longingly at the empty chair at the dinner table. When, oh when will my dad come home. I don’t want to give up hope. I don’t want to allow myself to think that my dad has abandoned this house for good. I don’t want to give up and abandon this dying infant into the grave… a grave filled with countless other old cities once roamed by godly men, once filled with songs of praise, once blasted with the earnest war-cries of gospel ministers, and once had households filled with children being raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Oh, that God would revive and reform the church in New York City, and that she would defy the Christ-less currents of this satanic sea of sin. Please, Lord, awaken this city, and grant soul shattering repentance to its godless, tyrannical rulers.

I go with other men today who also fight back discouraging thoughts, and set an example for me in taking heaven by storm. I prepare to have my eardrums explode at the bellows of these burning, battle-hardened bosoms. I don’t know what awaits me, but I know that I am unworthy to even stand on the ground of this abandoned sanctuary of the gospel: New England. Yes, it was always imperfect. But I tremble to think that I get to praise the same Savior on the same Island that Whitefield’s booming voice once did. He once thundered the gospel here. So did David Brainerd, if I am not mistaken. So did Dwight Moody, Jonathan Edwards, Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, and R.C. Sproul at various moments, though some more times than others.

My ancestors: Cunninghams, Ellis’s, and others, could have travelled through these streets as immigrants. My father came to this island from Malaysia as a lost man, and God rescued his soul. I was born here, and my father was born again here. My mother came here after her conversion and met my dad here. I don’t know what else to say, but that I am not giving up on this place anytime soon. Let men or devils do their worst, I will preach the gospel if it kills me on this island.

I ask that my fellow Christians would do one thing; in fact I beg you to do one thing: pray to the Lord of the harvest for this place. There are lost sheep here, and even in the midst of such a tough year, God is still mercifully restraining much of His anger and judgment which hangs with uncompromisable justice like a guillotine over New York’s throat. Please, Lord, grant repentance to dying sinners here. May this place be awakened like Nineveh, and may we not retreat like Jonah originally did. Don’t forget about this place.

Can I truly pray like Hannah once prayed… or like John Knox once prayed: Give me Scotland or I die? Can I say the same about New York? I honestly do not know. But oh, I want to be able to pray that prayer and mean it. I want to love other men's souls more than my own life. I want to have the love needed to be able to say this with certainty:

‘If I could die and be cast into hell in the place of even a single New Yorker, I would.’

Obviously me, a fellow sinner, couldn't atone for their sins. Only Christ's sacrifice would suffice for them. But I want to be at that level of love for my fellow kinsmen. Christ did something far greater than this for my soul, and I wish I could have even 1 percent of the love that Christ has for me, towards them. Men have burned at the stake while preaching Christ to their very tormentors. Oh that I could have this sort of love for a city that finds me as repulsive as a thorn in their sides. Lord, please work in my heart.