UNWITTING FULFILLMENT OF "CARGO CULT" PROPHECY OPENS DOOR FOR GOSPEL

THEN, JULY 1997: A missionary's unwitting fulfillment of a strange Pacific island prophecy had led to a unique "adoption" program linking tribal villages and First World churches.

John Rush had no idea that he would signal the end of a 50-year wait by members of a bizarre "cargo cult" when he visited Tanna, one of the remote Vanuatu islands in the South Pacific, in 1993.

But the director of the Pacific Ruby - part of Youth With A Mission's Mercy Ships fleet - was hailed by locals as John Frum, the benefactor they had been waiting for since the end of the Second World War.

Up to 15,000 people were part of the John Frum group - taking their name from "John from America" - which built landing strips and docks for the anticipated return. They modeled their villages after military bases and marched with bamboo replica rifles.

Then Rush - from California - arrived with the Pacific Ruby and was invited to the main John Frum village, where he was allowed to tell the people about Christ. Subsequently he founded New Song ministries, to coordinate a sponsorship program through which Western churches could fund the construction of church/community centers on the island.

Rush told his story in the book The Man With The Bird On His Head, published by YWAM Publishing.

NOW: New Song opened a permanent office in Port Vila, Vanuatu last year to oversee the sponsorship program that is well-established in New Zealand and is now being introduced to churches in the United States.

Rush, who last visited the islands last year, said that his unknowing arrival with the ship had turned out to be "a major opening among the John Frum villages to the gospel; now many of the Christian workers on the ground have said that John Frum is finished in terms of the movement as a whole".

While some villages continue with their traditional services - which over the years have drawn international media attention, and tourist trade - "it seems that virtually every John Frum village has Christians there now and perhaps as many as two-thirds of the John Frum people are Christians".

A regular speaker at missions conferences, Rush said that his Vanuatu experience had made him realize how much "God is in the business of making people's dreams come true, and even though we look at these people and say, 'How crazy', yet he loves them so much he will work dramatically within their culture to bring about enough fulfillment that it will open the door to the truth".

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