Perspectives: Day 4

Yes, I realize I never wrote anything for Day 3. I was sick last week and wasn't able to make it to class. But I did listen to the podcast of the national Perspectives speaker, so I'll give a quick overview of what Section 3 was about.

The title for Section 3 was Thy Kingdom Come. The main idea is that God's "kingdom" is not the geographic area He has power over, but the the power itself. God's kingdom is His reign, His sovereignty; anywhere His name is known and glorified and His will is being done, that is where His kingdom is being established. In the end, the kingdom of God will consume the entire earth, and all peoples will acknowledge Jesus as God and will worship Him. Our purpose in life is to expand God's kingdom by bringing the gospel to the unreached. All nations will know His name, His power will be made complete, and evil will be completely eradicated. But that is the end point of a work in progress. We resist temptation to eliminate sin and give Christ power over that area of our lives. We preach so that more people would have the opportunity to be a part of God's kingdom and to worship our King. And we worship Him because He is the only One worthy of praise. "Thy kingdom come" is a prayer that God would rule all the earth in His awesome power.

Section 4 is titled Mandate for the Nations. When I read the title, I didn't know what to expect. I thought it was just going to be an explanation of why we are commanded to go to all nations with the gospel. It was that, but it was so much more. The speaker systematically picked apart the foundations of the gospel, of missions and showed just how messed up American Christianity has become.

The speaker presented an iceberg as an analogy for the foundations of missions: if an iceberg has a foundation below the water, the cap of the iceberg isn't necessary; if the Titanic has run into the foundation of the iceberg without the part that was above water, it still would have sunk. With Christianity, the mandate is represented by the cap of the iceberg: we have so much foundation in the Bible that if Jesus had never given His disciples the Great Commission, the ultimate conclusion the disciples made still would have been to take the gospel to all peoples. But because so many American Christians aren't going to the nations with the gospel, something is wrong; we obviously don't have a very strong foundation. If the foundation of a pyramid is weak, it won't stand for very long, so we have to go back and reinforce the foundation of our gospel pyramid. That's not to say that the gospel is weak and not enough to motivate us; I'm saying that our foundation is not based on the gospel at all, and we have to rebuild with the gospel as the foundation.

In China, Christians meet together in underground house churches, dodging government officials who would have them killed for gathering in secret to worship God; yet they risk their lives because they know eternal life is worth more than this temporary life. In Korea, Christians meet together in the dead of night in stadiums to praise God because they know He deserves all the glory at all times. In many Asian and Middle Eastern countries, Bibles have to be smuggled across borders in order to bring the gospel to the unreached. And in America, where the gospel is readily available for all people to hear, we Christians attend church on Sundays—some people attend Bible studies and/or youth groups at other times throughout the week too, while others don't attend church at all—and then continue with our lives. We Americans don't know what it means to worship God; we don't know what it means to pray; we don't know what it means to witness to others. Here in America, the most "Christian" nation in the world, where Bibles are more readily available than clean water in some countries, we don't know how to respond to the gospel. In Africa, people will beg missionaries to stay with them and continue teaching the Word to them. In India, native missionaries are being trained to be sent out into the rest of the country and the world to spread the gospel. And most astonishing of all, China, one of the most anti-Christian countries in the world (when it comes to the government), is mobilizing missionaries to come here. Chinese missionaries coming to America to preach to us what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Missions is not only supported by the Bible, but it is also the purpose of the Bible; God gave us the Scriptures so we would come to know Him and His great love for us, so that we would go out into the world and tell others about Him. We have more Bibles, more churches, and more people who claim to be Christians than China does, and yet they see us as still being lost in the world. And it's true. America is full of Christians, but the majority of them are lukewarm Christians, and God says that He will "spit [lukewarm Christians] out of [His] mouth" (Revelation 3:16). The speaker at Perspectives last night quoted an Arab proverb that explains the motivation of Jesus' disciples, then and now: "The greatest crime in the desert is to find water and keep silent." If you have found life in Christ, yet you don't tell anyone about it, you are committing a crime; as James 4:17 says, "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."

We blow off Christianity as just one of many paths to heaven. One analogy I've heard is this: Religions are like spokes on a wheel, all leading from several points on the outside to a single point in the middle. But that view of religion could not be any more wrong. Jesus said, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No on comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). Jesus was (and is) the Son of God. If the SON OF GOD says He is the only Way, you'd better believe He's telling the truth. I would describe religion—specifically, Christianity—like this: Life is a maze, and Jesus is the only path that will lead you out of the labyrinth; all other paths will get you lost.

The great thing about the maze analogy is this: Even if you get lost in the maze of sin and false religions, you can always find your way back to the one Way. God forgives us when we repent and turn to Him. But unless you get back on track, you will be trapped in the labyrinth forever.

Now imagine that you and a group of your friends are placed in the middle of this labyrinth. You find your way out of the maze, only to discover that your friends are still lost inside. If a giant platform is being lowered on top of the maze, slowly crushing it with everyone inside, what would you do: run inside to lead your friends out, or leave them to die? Let me make that easier: You have an hour to find your friends and show them the way out; will you sit and wait for them, or will you run back in, marking out your path so that you don't get lost on the way, and find your friends and show them the path marked out for them? I hope the answer is obvious and convicting.

The kingdom of God will include all peoples of the world. Not all people, meaning every single person will go to heaven; all peoples, meaning at least one person from every nation, people, language, and tribe will go to heaven (Revelation 5:9). The end will not come until all peoples have been reached (Matthew 24:14), so it is our responsibility to take the gospel to the entire world. Our job is not complete until we, as the body of Christ, have done so.

We monitor the progress of missions by the people group system. A people group is a specific people in a certain country, with one particular language out of the many in existence in that country, and a certain tribe or neighborhood of people that speak that language. The speaker explained it like this: We can't say that, once the gospel has reached every country, our work is done because not everyone in the same country speaks the same language. If you throw a rock in a pond, the ripples won't affect a neighboring pond separated by a barrier of land. In missions, language is the barrier between "ponds," or people groups, not geographic boundaries that are constantly being disputed.

97% of all missionaries go to areas where the gospel has already been preached. The remaining 3% are the brave few who are bold enough, who have been convicted by the Spirit, to take the gospel to those who have never heard it before. There's something wrong with that. The gospel MUST be preached to ALL peoples, but we're keeping it to ourselves and to those who have heard it but haven't accepted it yet. The Bible is readily available here in America, but where the Bible is illegal, the gospel is not being preached. But that's exactly where it's needed. If Americans want to hear the gospel, they can knock on their neighbor's door or drive down the street to a local church.

Our foundation in missions is not solid. We need to reinforce it, rebuild it on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "Worship must precede mission"—until we have a proper understanding of the gospel and the reason we worship God, well will never have a proper understanding of missions. We need to come back to Christ, and then we need to take Him to the world. That's why we were made: to make His name known in all the earth.