The Last Japanese soldier

Reposting this old piece from 2011 with the news that Hiro Onoda passed away this week.

The Gospel is a message – it’s news, ‘good news’. That is, it is something that needs to be communicated – to be told – to be articulated. This means that despite good works and godly lives being foundational to Christian witness – that witness will be incomplete and indeed ineffective without words. The need for the gospel to be heard, known, understood, comprehended as a message, a proposition – cannot be bypassed.

Carl Trueman describes words as the basic currency of communication - that for all the artistic alternatives cannot be substituted if there is to be concrete and clear transmission of God’s work in Jesus Christ. Serious people dealing with serious business understand this. When you apply for a mortgage the Bank Manager doesn’t power-mime or try to expressively dance out the basis of such an agreement. He doesn’t give you a candle and suggest you sit in the corner for 15 minutes and think about what a mortgage might mean to you. Rather he explains the ‘terms & conditions’ - 'this is what the Bank will do and this is what you need to do'. If you don’t understand he will explain it again – using perhaps different words, but like all serious business only when all the parties are locked into a common understanding expressed in words is there a basis for a meaningful relationship.

So we need to speak – we need to tell the gospel - proclaim, herald, announce, articulate, explain, verbalize it. Back in the 1960s & 70s there were occasional stories about Japanese soldiers discovered on remote Pacific islands. Cut off during the war and isolated they had been unaware that the war was over. They were ‘fighting on’ years, even decades, after peace had been made. The great news that hostilities had ceased, that weapons could be laid down, and that after the long years of conflict people could at last go home – was of no consequence to these men. It made no difference to their lives – because they hadn’t heard the news!

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)

Above: in 1974, Japanese soldier Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, complete with Samurai sword, was finally discovered on a Pacific island. For 30 years he thought World War Two was still being fought.