One of the great disasters of history took place in 1271. In 1271 Niccolo and Matteo Polo (the father and uncle of Marco) were visiting the Kubla Khan. Kubla Khan at that time was a world ruler, for he ruled all China, all India, and all of the East. He was attracted to the story of Christianity as Niccolo and Matteo told it to him. And he said to them: "You shall go to your high priest and tell him on my behalf to send me a hundred men skilled in your religion and I shall be baptized, and when I am baptized all my barons and great men will be baptized and their subjects will receive baptism, too, and so there will be more Christians here than there are in your parts." Nothing was done. Nothing was done for about thirty years, and then two or three missionaries were sent. Too few and too late. It baffles the imagination to think what a difference to the world it would have made if in the thirteenth century China had become fully Christian, if in the thirteenth century India had become fully Christian, if in the thirteenth century the East had been given to Christ. In that, we have seen man frustrating God's purpose in history.
Note: This is true. One of the grandest opportunities that the Church of Christ has ever had presented to it, and it must be remembered this was before the rise of Protestantism, is connected with Kublai Khan. There are letters still extant, preserved in the French archives, relating the remarkable fact that Kublai Khan actually requested the Pope to send one hundred missionaries to his country "to prove by force of argument, to idolaters and other kinds of folk, that the law of Christ was best, and that all other religions were false and naught; and that if they would prove this, he and all under him would become Christians and the Church's liegemen." "What might have been" is a question that cannot but rise in the hearts of those who read this extract. The death of the Pope, however, and faction among the cardinals, with the subsequent failure of the two missionaries sent — they turned back because of the hardships of the way—lost to Asia an opportunity such as the Church has seldom had. (From Wikisource)