ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR

To boldly go where no man has gone before
By Jessica Hill

Lying on the floor doing his geography homework in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, 12-year-old Terry Law had a strange sense that one day he would go to the countries he saw in his textbooks.

And although he wanted to become an attorney and politician in the Canadian government, when Law was 14 God confirmed the true call on his life through an evangelist at a summer camp on Vancouver Island, and through the angel that visited a local farmer and told him to pay Law’s way to attend Oral Roberts University.

Law (69) was a member of ORU’s first full graduating class, and for more than 30 years since he’s been going where no one else goes: the closed nations of the world, where confessing Christianity is tantamount to a death sentence and where Bibles must be smuggled in and churches are forced underground. With the group Living Sound and later with his own ministry, World Compassion, Law was one of the first to go into the U.S.S.R. and other Communist nations like China, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Living Sound, an international missionary team that Law, his wife, Jan (69), and fellow alumnus Larry Dalton (69) founded while at ORU, ministered in 40-plus countries and saw thousands of people accept Jesus Christ as Savior for the first time. (See the Fall 2002 issue for more on Dalton.)

After pioneering Christian missions in Communist countries since the 1970s, Law’s ministry has shifted focus in the last few years to the Middle Eastern Muslim nations. He has been to Afghanistan five times since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom and has been to Iraq once.

“Last summer (2002) I was in Cyprus, and God told me to go to the Middle East. The Muslim world is the next frontier,” Law said. “Working with the Muslim people is very different from working in the Communist nations because the Muslims are so closed to Christianity. The governments have said that anyone who converts to Christianity will be executed.

“We are praying that the new constitution of Afghanistan, which our country is helping to write, will include a clause that will allow some freedom of religion,” Law said. “We are opening an underground church in Kabul, Afghanistan, the first one, working with Ulf Ekman (a member of the ORU Board of Regents and pastor of Livets Ord Church in Uppsala, Sweden).

“We are the only ones called to raise up a church in these areas. We want to do the same thing in Iraq. If we go in before the war in Iraq, then when the regime changes there will be more openness during the transitional period.

We can position ourselves and make contacts before the war, and then we will be ready to take advantage of our moment of opportunity.”

Such a calling is no easy thing. Law remarks that he almost lost his life twice in the last year (once with his son, Scot [96]), but he hasn’t lost his resolve to take the truth of Christ wherever God tells him to go. And go he does. Boldly.