The Ends of the Earth

By Suliasi Kurulo

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH is the story of Pastor Suliasi Kurulo, founder of Christian Mission Fellowship, which has trained hundreds of evangelists and missionaries, and planted more than 6000 churches in more than 100 nations, mostly among formerly unreached people.
Walk with Pastor Suli into the heights of ministry achievement that he has experienced in diverse places, from the darkest jungles to the highest mountains around the world. Walk with Pastor Suli through the tests he encountered to arrive at those heights—the heartache of poverty, the death of a child, persecution, a crisis of faith, the illness and martyrdom of close friends and fellow missionaries.
In the final chapters, Pastor Suli provides what he has learned in real life, not just theory, about how to pray effectively to see miracles in life and ministry, and how to rise to a greater level of faith. THE ENDS OF THE EARTH has the potential to catapult the reader into a new level of living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781938629402

Book preview

Bonnke

PART 1

THE VISION

Chapter 1

WHERE THE VISION GOES

Over the years, I have had the privilege of sharing the Word of God with thousands of people from different backgrounds in many nations around the world. Most of my audiences have never heard of the Fiji Islands or seen someone from Fiji, so I often start with introducing myself within the context of the scriptures.

Jesus instructed his disciples, You shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8b).

I am convinced that the ends of the earth Jesus referred to is the South Pacific. On a map of the world, one can draw almost a straight line from Jerusalem to the Fiji Islands in the Pacific Ocean. I encourage my audiences to recognize their connection to the global mission of Jesus Christ, which is to make Himself known to the ends of the earth. It is from the ends of the earth that this book is written, to capture the great move of God that, from the ends of the earth, is reaching hundreds of nations around the world.

Fiji: The Ends of the Earth

Fiji is blessed with 332 Islands and located on latitude 18 degrees South and longitude 175 degrees East, with a total area of about 7100 square miles (18,376 square kilometers). The two main islands are Viti Levu (where the capital city of Suva is located) and Vanua Levu.

Vanua Levu is what we call the Northern Division. It is there—at Udu Point, at Rabi Island, and at Taveuni—that the 180th meridian lies, forming the great circle that divides the earth. When the earth rotates toward the sun, it crosses the international dateline here, making Fiji the first place in the world to see the dawn of each new day.

I have often said to friends around the world, If you want to know what God is saying today, call me because Fiji experiences the day before the rest of the world.

Call of God

I’ve been on a journey since 1990, when I first heard the voice of God calling me into ministry. His commission was to establish a church for the furtherance of the gospel and the fulfillment of the greatest commission ever given to mankind: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19, 20a).

In 1991, I had a dream that one day we would plant a Bible-believing, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled and mission-minded church. I had a dream that we would own land and build churches. I had a dream that we would build a world class Bible school where we would train and equip workers and send them to mission fields around the world. I had a dream to build a Christian radio and television station. I had a dream to have a Christian printing press, build primary schools and secondary schools, and a university. I had a dream to plant churches in every nation on earth. I had a dream that we would raise up millionaires in the church to fund the end-time harvest. I had a dream to develop a need-oriented ministry that ministers the Word of God effectively to the needs of the community. I had a dream that one day the church would be totally debt free, that we would not be a borrower from any person or bank but only be a lender and a blessing to the ends of the earth. At Christian Mission Fellowship International (CMFI), every day we get closer to that end.

What We Do

Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we have built and established over 6,000 churches in more than 100 nations, where people are being discipled and equipped to live victorious Christian lives.

We start at home. We have successfully planted hundreds of churches and compassion ministries in Fiji. In the last decade, we established and built beautiful campuses for a CMFI Primary School and Secondary School to serve children and young people from low-income areas in the neighborhoods around the CMFI headquarters just outside Fiji’s capital city of Suva. In 2014, we constructed a multi-story commercial complex within the World Harvest Church compound in Suva, with the sole aim of raising resources to see the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the extension of the kingdom of God on earth.

We reach our world region. We send missionaries to unreached people groups throughout Australasia, such as those in Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

We reach the world, sending missionaries to unreached people groups in many nations. We train missionaries through our own Bible college, the World Harvest Institute, in a joint relationship with Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Besides Bible training, a prerequisite for any missionary is to be proven already in the areas of church planting and evangelism. These missionaries join hundreds of other missionaries serving some of the most remote, unreached people groups. With a heartbeat to see the fulfillment of Jesus’ last words to his disciples, the Great Commission, we share the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and win souls.

Many times, when I think of the unreachable peoples who had never heard the gospel before we went to them, it stirs the joy of my salvation. I’m reminded of how the gospel came to our nation, a nation of cannibals who had never heard the gospel until brave missionaries brought it to us, some never returning home, giving their very lives.

I have seen the impact of the gospel in remote people groups and how the message of salvation changes their lives from living in trees and in caves and transforms them so they build churches in the center of their villages and create communities where they gather to pray and worship the Lord. When you visit these communities, the first sound that you hear in the morning is the sound of prayer, the last sound you hear before you go to sleep is the sound of praise and thanksgiving. It comes from the hearts of those people who have received the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

In these travels, I have also met people from all walks of life who ask, Pastor Suli, how do you do it? Please teach me, speak into my life, impart to me what God has done in your life. I want to know what ministry is about, what church life is about, and how I can become an effective witness for the gospel.

Through this book, I hope to fulfill this request. I hope especially to establish in hearts the importance of ensuring the Great Commission is our greatest ambition in life.

I pray this book clarifies what it means to be a leader with the vision of reaching the world with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and how He has taught us to do it. And my prayer is that my reflections and the pillars interwoven into my personal experiences will be established in the hearts of readers as an inspiration of what you, too, can be.

God’s Faithfulness

As a leader with a God-sized vision, I have learned certain key principles that are the pillars which have guided me along the way and key strategies God has given me to fulfill His call upon my life.

I remember when the Lord spoke to my heart and told me that we were to start sending out missionaries to nations around the world. Some very close friends questioned our decision:

Pastor Suli, that will be very hard. Missionaries supported by churches in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. are being sent home because churches have withdrawn their support.

The church in the South Pacific has become indigenous and you are proposing to send these indigenous missionaries to nations around the world?

Fiji is so small, the economy is too small to sustain a global ministry.

Today, we have overcome those giants of doubt and are working in 100 nations for the glory of God because nothing is impossible with God and nothing is impossible to those who believe.

A few months ago, I shared a message on visionary leadership based on this passage of Scripture, For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry (Habakkuk 2:3).

To this day, I continue to see the fulfillment of the vision that the Lord deposited in my heart more than twenty years ago when He called me to the ministry of teaching His Word and discipling His children. It has not been plain sailing and there have been many setbacks and obstacles along the way, but we are where we are today because of the faithfulness of God in bringing the vision to pass.

I believe that the Church is on the cusp of a great explosion in the growth of the work of evangelism, soul winning, church planting, and world missions. The way we say it is, Though it tarry, don’t fuss, don’t cry, don’t be impatient. Wait for it, it will surely come.

Chapter 2

DISCOVERING THE VISION

D ust to dust, earth to earth, the sound of my voice echoed through the sugar cane fields as my wife Mere and I threw handfuls of freshly dug soil over the small coffin of our baby boy.

It was a sad and solemn moment, one that I had not planned for nor expected. We were eagerly looking forward to the birth of our second child. Expecting joyous news at any moment, the news I received from the hospital a few days earlier instead sent me to my knees in grief.

I cried out, Why Lord, why? We were praying for everything for this child and you faithfully provided. Why have you taken him away? Why would you provide everything we needed and then take him away from us? I don’t understand.

We were well prepared for the arrival of our second child. His baby clothes had come from as far as the United States of America! It was an amazing blessing for our little family.

Simple Living

We lived very simply in the dusty farming town of Labasa in the northern island of Vanua Levu. The Northern Division is fondly referred to by Fijians as the friendly north and known for the warm, close knit relationships between the indigenous Fijians or itaukei and those of Indian descent who originally came during colonial days. Years of hardship working on sugar cane plantations had created a bond between the two main ethnic groups. We needed to work side by side to ensure the thousands of hectares of sugar cane farms that spread across the Northern Division were harvested during the cane season and replanted in time.

Many of the workers joining us there in Labasa as we initially embarked to discover the call of God on our lives had learned to work on the sugar cane farms. Sugar cane jobs became a source of livelihood not only for their families but also for our growing ministry.

The main town of Labasa is also the center of government for the Northern Division and is home to the Labasa Hospital where Mere worked as a nurse and where three of our five children would be born.

A few years prior to the death of my son, I had come to Labasa as a young government employee with the Public Works Department. It was here that I discovered the call to leave the world of secular employment and become an evangelist to preach to anyone we came across the message of salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hand of God

It was while living in Labasa that I first saw the hand of God upon my life as I ministered the gospel to both young and old, wherever God provided an opening across the island of Vanua Levu.

Until the moment of my son’s death, I had always seen myself as an evangelist. But from a moment of great sorrow came a moment of great revelation which was to change the course of our ministry and lead to the establishment of Christian Mission Fellowship International (CMFI).

During Mere’s second pregnancy, I attended an international board meeting in the U.S. with Every Home for Christ, a ministry I’d been working with for six years. While there, I was invited to share the Word of God at an evangelical church in California. I was later told that family members of former President Ronald Reagan were in the service and they wanted to make a contribution to my wife’s impending birth. I returned to Fiji with a suitcase full of baby clothes and with great excitement because our small family was growing.

Using my engineering skills, I measured our hallway and bedroom entrances and then designed a baby bed that could be wheeled freely around our small house. Though there was no money to buy the material to make the baby bed, Mere and I continued to pray, believing that the bed would be provided. A few days after I designed the bed,