Introductory
Comments
My thesis is that since our human
beginnings, God has unceasingly been seeking and calling humanity to a
relationship of love with Himself. Both Old and New Testaments are united in
portraying God’s love through the people of God, (the patriarchs, then Israel
and finally the church). Like God, God’s people go-out and call-in
representatives of the nations to this same relationship of love with God.
God’s relationship to His people includes His intent that the surrounding world
honor Him as God. International students in our time have become a key to the
glory and honor of God being perceived throughout the nations in a time of
unprecedented expansion of the human race.
Strategic
Importance of International Students
Let me start off with a significant
quotation from Dr. Carl Henry:
(C.F.H.Henry, a founding father of Fuller
Seminary and a leading evangelical theologian in the latter half of the 20th
century).
“Is it not a fair test of missionary concern whether or not we share
the eternally Good News with distant peoples who in God’s providence have come
to our own shores and community? The imperative toward non-Christians involves
forging constructive contacts by manifesting love and compassion, sharing
biblically revealed truths, and personally mirroring the vitalities of redemption.
The neglect of such involvement will almost surely foster increased
paganism.”
This statement highlights how
important international students are for the mission of the church and health of society
today. They are strategic for missionaries like you and me for other reasons as
well:
1. They are important to their nations. The so-called “developing nations” look to these
students as the future under-girding of their nation-building efforts. They are
key to the economic development of these nations, which long to achieve the
status and standards of modern states. This is one reason for large numbers
taking the sciences, engineering and management. Also many of the world’s
political leaders have been educated here. So they are important to their
nations.
2. They are important to their families as well as, of course, to themselves in terms of
their own personal advancement. For many coming from relatively impoverished
backgrounds, a good paying job and a competitive edge at home or abroad in the
job market depends on their academic achievement. Their families often make
great sacrifices to help them get this education, and then look to them for
substantial support financially later on.
3. They are important to the Christian Church in their nations. Many internationals are Christians
and studying not only in Seminaries with a view to Christian ministry, but also
studying in our universities. These will have an obvious impact on the churches
they return to, as well as on the missionary enterprise of those churches.
A
surprising new fact of recent decades is that the number of missionaries being sent out from
non-western churches has grown from 13,000 in 1980 to over 50,000 at the turn
of the century (with some estimates much higher). With the western Protestant missionary
force slowed somewhat as colonialism waned, new missionary forces have emerged
from developing-world nations, especially nations where the church is strong
such as Korea, the Philippines, South India, and east and west Africa. The
burden of the mission of the church and of world evangelization is being shared
increasingly with these churches. Who are the leaders of these churches going
to be? Many will be the international students currently on our campuses!
Less
obvious, but equally important perhaps, is the impact of changed attitudes on
the part of many non-Christian world-leaders educated in the so-called
“Christian West.” These may never become Christians in their personal faith,
but they can wield immense power politically and socially in their countries
where they have leadership roles in the society.
Some
years back my wife and I spent a year in Benares, now called Varanasi, in
India. I was a graduate student for a year at Benares Hindu University. (By the
way, I recommend a year abroad like this to any student or recent graduate if
possible…it’s very-eye opening to experience being a foreign student
while trying to learn how to effectively minister among internationals).
We
lived in a faculty hostel on campus and a faculty man was one of the first to
call on us for afternoon tea. Yadav was the head of the Education Department in
this Hindu university. As we got acquainted one of the first questions he asked
was, “What are the spiritual foundations of western culture?” As I started to look for ways to share how
the gospel influenced our western cultural roots, he anticipated me saying,
“Jesus Christ is central to this gospel isn’t he?” With some astonishment I began to explain who Jesus is. Before I
got very far along he said,” The resurrection is foundational to belief in
Jesus isn’t it?”
I
asked him where he’d learned all this! He said that he’d been a student in
London before teaching in Kenya and then India, and as he described his
experiences in England I discovered he’d met Christians and been to a retreat
strikingly similar to one of our Inter Varsity International Conferences or
“Houseparties!” Later I was talking
with other Hindu faculty in our hostel about the fact that this man was from
Haryana Pradesh, one of the most staunch Hindu parts of north India. “Oh that
makes no difference,” one of them said off-handedly. “He thinks like a
Christian, talks like a Christian and acts like a Christian…he might just as
well be one!” Yadav is the man who has taught many generations of school
teachers in this strongly Hindu area of eastern Uttar Pradesh. His attitudes
and even his life style was radically affected for a lifetime by his
experiences with God’s people in England.
The fourth reason for the strategic
importance of internationals for the church’s ministry in western nations is
the “Biblical Mandate.” It’s here I want to spend the major portion of our time
together.
Biblical Mandate
You are all fully aware of most of the
salient arguments for a Biblical Basis of our ministry to internationals, and
many of you could do as good or better a job of standing up here and talking
about it. So why talk about it? Like you, I believe that the Bible is our
bedrock of motivation and encouragement in this ministry, especially when we get
discouraged from what some might think of as a lack of “results,” or
discouraged by the indifference of fellow Christians we wish dearly to partner
with in this ministry. We need to continually exhort each other to love and
good works and remind ourselves of the encouragements of scripture.
In any presentation of this ministry,
however, it’s important that we think of more than simply the “nooks and
crannies” as I call them…the “proof texts” as it were such as Leviticus
19:33-34 or Deuteronomy 10:18-19.
If all we do is point to these more explicit texts,
such as those on the “aliens” in Israel, the overall significance of the alien
may seem meager, even anemic, compared to the huge body of the rest of
scripture where aliens are not explicitly mentioned. It’s important we also
grasp and teach the larger themes of what God has been doing in
and through Israel, and then His Church, if we are to make a powerful
presentation of International Student Ministry.
We need to keep in mind in all our Biblical studies
that this book is about an almost unimaginatively Holy Creator-God, and about a
human family totally alienated from Him with universally disobedient hearts and
deeply imbedded sin. Apart from God’s grace, the moral chasm separating us from
God is wide and deep. Keeping this in mind will help explain the severity of
temporal judgments (not to mention eternal judgement), and will make us
periodically ask not why so much judgement, but why such mercy
and restraint by God?
Even the most committed follower of God will confess
with Isaiah: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean
lips” (Isaiah 6:5). This explains why the Hebrew community, increasingly
blinded by self-centeredness over time, viewed the very revelations and
blessings of God as a reason to become self-absorbed and to feel superior to
others. We see this moral chasm again in the New Testament where even the
Apostles of God, unaided by the Holy Spirit, would have kept their new faith
confined to the Hebrew community. In this sense, our calling to reach out to
cultures and peoples other than our own goes against every natural
self-centered instinct unaided by the Spirit of God. Reminders of this should
drive us continually to dependence on God, both for ourselves and for others.
I’d like to take you through a number
of selected passages of scripture focusing on a few of the grand themes as well
as specifics. I can touch only lightly on the riches in each of them but will
try to apply them as we go along to our current ministry situation. We’ll get
an overview of the whole of the Bible this way as well as some practical ways
in which it strengthens and elucidates some of the issues we struggle with in
cross-cultural relationships.
The Human Family, God’s Special Creation
Genesis 1:26-28a
(New International Version, or NIV)
Then
God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule
over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all
the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God
created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and
increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”
Men and women of all the generations that have “filled the
earth” are image bearers of God and members of the human family. This idea of
one human family is not just an ancient or Old Testament idea: The Apostle Paul
reaffirms this in his Mars Hill sermon (Acts 17:26) “God hath made of one blood all nations.” It is even being
reaffirmed by present day secular scholars who are discovering through genetic
studies that the human race goes back to one original pair, and this is not
only traceable through the female line but through the male line as well (as
seen in the research of Dr. Luigi Michaelangelo-Sforza at Stanford University).
How does this apply to
international students? The most obvious is that internationals need to be
respected as part of that human family, indeed as equals. But even more than equals, they are part of that
dispersed humanity God has given a special role to in “ruling over” His Created
order. The specialness of their calling, Christian or non-Christian, is that
within this “Creation Mandate” given in Genesis to all human beings, most of
these students are the next generation of leadership in whatever
dimension of cultural, social, political, economic or religious life they may
end up.
What does this mean for us as ISM
workers? Clearly it means that minimally we need to respect them, “Male and
female,” as equally God’s image-bearers. There simply is no place for western
paternalism. An example may illucidate this:
Philip Prasad is a member of the Dalit or
“untouchable” community of India which is largely illiterate and oppressed. He
is one of the few Christian Dalits to
have gotten a PhD, which he got studying in the “West” some years back against
incredible odds both psychologically and economically. From a Hindu standpoint
he’s from the lowest of the low castes in India because of “sins in previous
lives,” and therefore at best only barely human in Hindu eyes. Yet God is
currently using this man to orchestrate an almost unbelievable mass movement of
tens of thousands of untouchables into the Kingdom of God. If missionaries in
India, and believers in the West had not respected, welcomed and loved this man
years ago as a student, he likely would not be what he is today.
The image is “male and female”… think of the women
students on our campuses from religious cultures… who are repelled by the loose
sexual standards of Western men but for whom respect by men of spiritual
stature is one of the few ways they will discern the difference a Christian
makes… or think of the female spouses of Muslim students, protected from social
contact with Christian churches and groups here, and therefore requiring a
special creative effort by Christian women for them to find respect, acceptance
and love while living in our Western cultures.
Respect for every individual as God’s “image bearer” is critical to our ministry… respect
regardless of differences in race, class, education, or any other set of
advantages or disadvantages by societal measurements. We need to ask ourselves
a serious question: Do international
students find communities of affirmation in our campus situations?
We’ve talked about the Creation Mandate, let’s talk
now about the Redemptive Mandate and
God’s Redemptive Purposes for the Human Family
Genesis 12:1-3
The
Lord said to Abraham, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s
household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great
nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a
blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will
curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
You must not neglect this passage in
any presentation of how the Old Testament undergirds International Student
Ministry. It is foundational to the New Testament understanding of salvation in
Christ, who is Abraham’s “Seed” (Galatians 3:16) and of God’s redemptive
purposes applied to the “nations” (Romans 4:17). The nation Israel later
confused these Abrahamic promises as focused only on themselves as children of
Abraham and sole recipients of God’s salvation. The fact remains that God
revealed, even before Moses and the Law, that “all the nations of the earth
would be blessed” because of Abraham’s faith. This cuts across all our
insularity as people of faith and calls us to be “World Christians.”
But then what of the rest of the
Pentateuch and its emphasis on the Law and the sacrifices? The Mosaic Law
is relevant as an expression of God’s desire that we reflect His moral nature
as His image in us is being repaired and restored. Particularly relevant is the sacrificial system, however
elemental, as a means of cleansing from the sins of breaking those laws. This
Mosaic Law, then, becomes part of the preparation of not just the Hebrews, but
the whole human family, for the “Suffering Servant” (Jesus) and his
death on the cross for the sins of the whole world.
We talk a lot about Jesus fulfilling Old Testament
prophecies, but actually Jesus fulfilled the entire Old Testament including
the Law! “If
you believed Moses, you would believe me,” Jesus said, “for he wrote of me.” (John 5:46). “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not ours
only, but also for the sins of the whole world”
says the
Apostle John. (I John 2:2).
Jesus fulfilled the entire legal system in terms of
its essential expectations. The sacrificial system is like a huge block of
“prophesy” of the Messiah, and together with the rest of the Old Testament
prophetic revelation, points solidly to Him and the whole world’s need for Him!
Israel becomes our “object lesson,” with the sacrificial system educating us
all to trust in the “sacrificial shedding of blood for the remission of sins”
and thus preparing us for the final, once-and-for-all sacrifice that Jesus will
make for the sins of the whole world.
Some Christian thinkers have applied this
“preparation” idea to the other major religions as well, seeing some religions
as pointing toward the need for God, and Jesus as the fulfillment of the
highest religious asperations within the religious system. In our sinful
condition, however, even our highest spiritual impulses become distorted, so
what we end up with is far from the clarity we have here in the “high ethical
monotheism” of the Bible. So back to Abraham:
The promise to make Abraham a “great
nation” had a twofold intention: 1) to create a nation-people (the people of
Israel) as a temporary witness to the surrounding nations, and 2) for
this nation-people of Israel to be the vehicle through which the promised
“Messiah” or Savior would eventually come.
In like manner today the people of God, the Church, are those called to
bear witness to the surrounding communities of those who are not-yet-believers.
The focus of this witness is Jesus, now the risen and living Christ, the
promised Messiah.
When you and I bear witness to Jesus among the
students gathered from the nations of the world here to study, we are at the
very center and core of God’s Biblical purposes of redemption for the world,
revealed in both Testaments. Our witnessing groups on campus become like little Israels or
little churches! It’s a great temptation to think that God was primarily
interested in Israel, or worse that Israel’s God was merely a tribal God.
That’s not what a careful
reading of scripture tells us. God’s involvement with Israel was not for its own sake alone, but
for a watching world!
Israel as God’s witness to the “Nations” or “Peoples”
Let’s
unpack this idea of Israel as God’s witness to the nations a little more. I
call this “centripetal missions.” The primary witness in the Old Testament was “centripetal,”
that is, the drawing in (ie: movement toward the center) of whole nations of
people needing to see God in action, so that they could observe the life-transforming effects of God’s presence in
the believing community. With notable exceptions the focus was on God’s actions
within Israel.
By analogy, our
universities attract huge numbers of the world’s “young and brightest” where
they can observe God’s presence in our believing student and community groups.
The
obvious implication for our work with international students is that God is to
be glorified among internationals as representatives of these nations, and this is done by
drawing them in to see the
effects of His presence in our changed lives now, and then hear the stories of His laws, His power and His various
deliverances.
The
Psalms capture the essence of this. The word “nations” or “peoples” occurs
throughout the Psalms. God’s ultimate concern and desire is that He be
glorified through Israel among the nations. Let’s look at one of these
passages:
Psalm 66:4-8; 67:1-7 (Living Bible)
(Just for fun, I’m going to substitute the world
“internationals” for the word translated “nations” or “peoples”):
All the earth shall worship
you and sing of your glories. Come, see the glorious things God has done. What
marvelous miracles happen to his people! Because of his great power he rules
forever. He watches every movement of internationals (the nations). How everyone throughout the earth will praise the Lord! How glad the
internationals (nations) will be, singing for joy because you are their King
and will give true justice to their people. Praise God, O World! May all the
internationals (peoples) of the earth give thanks to you. For the earth has
yielded abundant harvests. God, even our own God, will bless us. And
internationals (peoples) from remotest lands will worship him.”
It’s
surprising really that in the Biblical literature most given to devotional
worship of God Himself, in the quiet time literature if you will, the “nations”
should be such a major focus. It’s as if the closer one gets to God the more
one perceives His mission heart! It is clear in these Psalms that God’s
blessing on Israel was not simply for its own sake as an object of his covenant
love and care, but also on how the surrounding nations would perceive Him and
give him glory and praise.
There are at least three ways that this happens in the Scripture. I
characterize these as three images: the Temple Image, the Theater Image and the
Lawcourt Image. The first is through the “Temple image.”
Temple Image
Israel’s Priestly Role
In
the “temple image”
Israel is seen as a community of
“priests” interceding before God for the surrounding world of “nations”
or “peoples.”
Exodus 19:5-6 (incl. exilic witness)
Although
the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a whole
nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”
Here Gods primary intention in
bringing them into the promised land is that they be as “priests” in the midst
of “the whole earth” that God says “is mine.” This is not a tribal God speaking
here, but the God of all people on earth, appointing Israel as holy
intercessors. Peter picks up on this theme in the New Testament as applicable
to the church as well when he says we should be “living
such good lives among the pagans … that they may see your good deeds and
glorify God…”
(I Peter 2:5,9-12).
You
and I in our “priesthood of all believers” roles may not be called to suffer
redemptively as Jesus did, but we do know how much it counts when
internationals observe our sacrificial life-styles and see some contrast
between us as Christians and the materialistic culture surrounding us. A simple
lifestyle is an authentication to many internationals of the truth of our witness. And certainly as international student workers, our
intercessory or “priestly” prayer life is critical to the fulfillment of God’s
purposes for us in our ministries. We should constantly examine our
intercessory life. Do we intercede
regularly for our campus and for the students He’s giving us?
Many of the “exiles” in the Old Testament were godly Jews who were
scattered among the surrounding nations much like the church in the New
Testament at several points was scattered through persecution and “preached the
word wherever they went” (Acts 8:1-4). Like in Egypt, and later in Babylon and
Persia, certain Israelites like Joseph, Daniel and Esther in God’s providence
became profound intercessory influences both with God and for their captor
nations. One could also think of Christian internationals seeking refugee
status in Western nations as like some of these exiled Israelites. If you’ve
ever had an on-fire Christian international in one of your groups, you know
what a powerhouse of intercessory prayer they can be!
King
Solomon exemplifies the intercessory role of Israel in his prayers at the
dedication of the first Temple.
I Kings 8:41-43
As for the foreigner who
does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because
of your name – and your outstretched arm – when he comes and prays toward this
temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the
foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name
and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have
built bears your Name.
When the first Temple is finally built
and dedicated by Solomon, it is striking that this leader, the leader of a
people at the height of their success and wealth compared to other nations,
should glory not only in God’s blessing on them but also in the importance of
this for the faith of strangers or aliens observing it, and even to the extent
of God hearing and answering the prayers of non-Israelites! Solomon perceived that God is the God for
all the peoples of the Earth!
Similarly, when Jesus quoted Isaiah 56:7 “My house shall be a house of
prayer for all nations,” he was not simply angry at the money changers, but
jealous for the honor of God to be upheld for all humanity. This temple court
was even named the “Court of the Gentiles.” Certainly we are following in
Solomon’s footsteps with God when we join students in praying for their
international student friends and the many “aliens” in our midst on campus.
So,
that’s the “Temple Image” with believers in God seen in a priestly or
intercessory role. The second image is the theater image. As Israel’s role in
the world was meant to be an intercessory one, so God’s role is a Kingly one.
Theater Image God’s Role
as King
Zechariah 8:20-23; 9:9-10 (incl. Messianic Vision of Israel’s “King”)
(Here I’d like to substitute the word “Asian” for “nations”
or “peoples” and a few other substitutions just to contextualize it a bit):
This
is what the Lord Almighty says: “Many Asians (peoples) and the inhabitants of
many cities will come, and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and
say, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the Lord and seek the Lord Almighty. I
myself am going.’ And many peoples and powerful Asians (nations) will come to
spiritual and intellectual centers (Jerusalem) to seek the Lord Almighty and to
entreat him.” This is what the Lord Almighty says: “In those days ten men from
all languages of Asia (nations) will take firm hold of one international
student worker (Jew) by the hem of his sweater (robe) and say, ‘Let us go with
you, because we have heard that God is with you.’”
And then the Messianic promise in Chapter 9:9-10
…See your King comes to you,
righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the
foal of a donkey…He will proclaim peace to all Asia (the nations). His rule
will extend from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific (sea to sea) and from the
Himalayas to Mount Fugi (the River to the ends of the earth).”
Just
as the nation Israel is placed in a geographic center of world trading routes,
so in passages like these Israel is metaphorically placed in the center of a
world-wide amphitheater. Israel is like a group of actors on God’s stage, God
writing, directing and even playing the lead role in His drama as their true
King, and the watching world looking on in awe at the acts of God in Israel’s
midst. Israel is seen as a touchstone or by-word, symbolic of God’s blessing
for its degree of faithfulness in worship and obedience to His laws, or cursing
for its degree of unfaithfulness and disobedience. She is to be a model, the
law of God taking incarnate form in her daily community life both among the
native children and among the strangers or sojourners constantly living and
traveling through her. Even when she sins, God’s temporary judgements upon her
glorify Him and show them and the world His righteous as well as his loving
nature.
I’ll
illustrate first his loving nature from the Psalms, then his righteous nature
from Jeremiah.
Psalms 95:3;
96:13; 97:1; 98:1-4
For
the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods.
He will judge the world in
righteousness and the peoples in his truth.
The Lord reigns, let the
earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice.
Sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked
salvation for him. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his
righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his
faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
As
sin progressed while the nations developed, rather than judge them as he had
done once by a devastating flood, God decided to show His love by creating a
new and purified nation, Israel, where His true nature of righteousness and
love would be exemplified. Israel is seen also as a model of the goodness of
being a people under the rule of God as their true King. In spite of all the
mess the human Kings of Israel made of things, God was still the true King
calling all to account to Him. It was only when Israel itself became hopelessly
corrupt and idolatrous that God unleashed some of his severest judgements on
them as well.
Jeremiah 26:4-6; 25:26-33 (Israel’s judgement is everyones’)
“Say
to them, ’This is what the Lord says: If you do not listen to me and follow my
law, which I have set before you, and if you do not listen to the words of my
servants the prophets, whom I have sent to you again and again (though you have
not listened), then I will make this house like Shiloh and this city an object
of cursing among all the nations of the earth.’”
…and
all the kings of the north, near and far, one after the other – all the
kingdoms on the face of the earth (will drink the cup of my wrath).
The
“fierce anger” of the Lord is mentioned (vs. 38) and not simply against his
disobedient people, the Hebrews, but against all the peoples of the earth! This
is like the NT teaching on Hell in an Old Testament context…a temporal hell on
earth, with the “nations,” all
of them, being included as objects of God’s wrath. What happens to Israel is
extended to everybody…with God saying: If I punish my own children severely for
their sin, should I allow everybody else “off the hook” and not punish them as
well for their sins? (Jeremiah 25:29).
Sermons
and commentators do not often analyze what actually happened in the world at
large during this period, but it is one of my areas of concentrated study as it
is precisely at this moment in human history, in and around the 6th
century BC, when bloodshed around the world reached new depths and
universality. Tribes and feudal kingdoms fought on unprecedented scales
everywhere in this period, with stories coming down to us about warlords and
conflicts in Confucian China, the Gangetic plains of India and the Pelopanesian
Wars of Greece. If you’d like to engage me further on my research in this area,
I’ll be happy to talk with you over a meal or whatever.
I
point all this out to you so you’ll see that God made Israel an object lesson
to the nations, both in their prosperity under His blessing but also in His
judgements for their sin. He also reveals Himself as profoundly sovereign over
the entire human family here, with the fate of His people being intricately
interwoven with the fate of all humanity. What the world sees as observers of
Israel’s drama in God’s ”theater” is what they also can expect to experience
themselves from God!
The
fact that God does not utterly destroy Israel shows the merciful side of His
nature and covenant-keeping love. He severely chastens Israel both in the
wilderness of Sinai and later with two waves of exile from their land, but
these are just for a particular generation that was unfaithful. In the long
term, God is a loving, covenant-keeping God who never forsakes His people,
always restoring them after a severe chastening!
If international students want to know
how God will deal with them or their people as believers, they need only look
at how He deals with the people of God in the Bible. There are either blessings
of personal and sometimes corporate salvation, or various forms of judgement
inevitably triggered by their willingness either to love or reject Him!
And
so we have the “Theater Image” in scripture in which the whole world is an
audience looking on as God’s people interact with their representatives, with
each other and with God as their King. This leads us now to our third and final
Biblical image, the Lawcourt Image, in which Israel has a prophetic role as a
“witness to the truth.”
Lawcourt Image
Israel’s Prophetic Role
In
this image, Israel is seen as “witnesses” to the truth of God, arguing God’s
case as it were in the courtroom of the world, with God as the Judge and Israel
(and also sometimes God Himself) as the Advocates for His truth and
righteousness.
Isaiah 43:9-13; 44:8; 9:1,6-7a
All the nations gather
together and the peoples assemble…Let them bring in their witnesses…You are my
witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you
may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was
formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from
me there is no savior. I have revealed and saved and proclaimed – I, and not
some foreign god among you. You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, “that I am
God.”
“Do not tremble, do not be
afraid. Did I not proclaim it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God
besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
In the past he humbled the
land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor
Galilee of the Gentiles…For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and
the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful,
Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of
his government there will be no end.
Israel
in its own time was to be a “witness” (43:10)…and to what? … to God as a
“Savior” (vs.11). “You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, that I am God”
(vs.12)! Then in chapter 44:8ff God gives His own arguments for idols being
nothing but the creation of human craftsmen. The familiar Messianic passage of
Isaiah 9 includes an astonishing affirmation of His future commitment to “honor
Galilee of the Gentiles” as the place where the Messiah will appear to
establish an enlarged, spiritual and unending government.
God advocates for justice in this lawcourt. “I will be quick
to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who
defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless and
deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me, says the Lord Almighty” (Malachi
3:5). He gets very upset with Israel when they “oppress the poor and needy and
mistreat the alien, denying them justice” (Ezekiel 22:29). “And what does the
Lord require of you?” asks Micah (6:8), To act justly and love mercy and
walk humbly with your God.” Doing justice especially for the poor, the orphans
and the aliens, becomes a witness in itself where impressions are constantly
being made and good (or bad) stereotypes changed through what is done.
Advocacy,
however, entails reasoned argumentation as well as action. Western cultures
with their protected freedoms and democracy are an already well-established and
appealing reality especially to many students from more oppressive cultures.
They want to know why these freedoms and democracy have taken place in the West
and to what extent Christianity is responsible for them.
Today the largest nation on earth, the
People’s Republic of China, is looking on the western world and its church in
much the same way as God intended the world to see Israel. In the “temple” and
“theater” images, it is what they see,
especially in the Christian community. This counts as much as words spoken.
But
internationals also need to hear
the truth of God prophetically spoken by His “witnesses.” As representatives of
the Christian community we in various ministries need to be interpreters of
this love they experience, to give them answers to some of their most searching
questions, not only on the Gospel itself, but also on the ways in which this
Gospel can impact and change our societies, both theirs and ours.
Samuel Ling puts this well in the lead article in a recent
book, which he edited with our former staff, Stacey Bieler, Chinese
Intellectuals and the Gospel (P & R Publishing, 1999 pbk., pg. 7-8):
“Since Christian liberal theology lost the
distinctiveness of Christ and fundamentalism withdrew from engaging the
culture, both proved to be inadequate. What can the Church offer China? As
Chinese students meet Christian teachers in English classes in China, or
international student workers on campuses in the West, they want to know: What
does Jesus Christ have to say to China’s political, economic, cultural,
educational, and family needs? Will Christianity offer a viable voice to shape
China’s future?
“Evangelical outreach to Chinese
intellectuals today needs to be… undergirded with a philosophy of history
grounded in the Bible. Evangelistic fervor and fidelity to the gospel of the
cross of Jesus Christ need to be complemented with intellectual rigor and
integrity. As the late Francis Schaeffer called upon Christians in the 1970s to
provide “honest answers to honest questions,” so twenty-first century
evangelicals must be prepared and equipped with a biblical, compassionate, and
relevant apologetic. What Christian ideas can guide China? What does the Bible
have to say about constitutional democracy? (or about) economic progress,
business ethics, divorce and remarriage, and postmodern art and literary
criticism – not to mention the challenge of New Confucianism and folk religion
in China? This is the church’s second chance to bring hope to China, by
presenting a Christian worldview to her leaders. Let us not miss it…. Again.”
We
may not all be Sammy Lings or have learned many of the answers to these
questions, but we can structure our ministry with international groups so that
the right people can be brought in over time to address these issues.
In the New Testament this major Old Testament theme of
“witness” becomes full blown. This process of sending out witnesses, or
“centrifugal missions,” becomes central, though the local church wherever it
was established also continued to become a centripetal force attracting
surrounding people in and,
like the Old Testament, revealing God’s holy nature and works in the moral life
and loving actions of the new community of believers.
Jesus
sends them out two-by-two early on as witnesses for the Kingdom equipped with
His authority to speak for him and with the special powers of the Kingdom to
bring others into it. He turns his disciples into “apostles” (or “sent ones”)
with his departing words of the “Great Commission” in Matthew 28: 16-20. And
just prior to his ascension he says: “But you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8). Here, at the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus
is talking about their “witness” being “to the ends of the earth.”
They
are all filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2) where Peter preaches
and thousands of the gathered representatives of surrounding nations are
converted. (…similarly, internationals are a kind of “captive audience” on our
campuses!).
There are
constant movements outward by these Apostles, particularly Paul whose calling
at his conversion is to the Gentiles (Acts 9). In Acts 13 Paul and Barnabas are
actually commissioned by a multi-cultural church in Antioch for their first
missionary journey. In Athens, a university community of that day by any
standards, Paul “reasoned in
the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the
marketplace day by day (including)…a group
of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers…” (Acts 17:17-18).
“The
disciples were first called Christians at Antioch,” says Luke (Acts
11:26). I’ve often wondered if the reason this was so is because they were
among the first to be a truly multi-cultural church in the New
Testament. It makes sense since they could no longer be referred to simply as Jewish
followers of Christ or Messianic Jews. This Antiocan church is one of
the best models we have in the New Testament for a typical multi-cultural
church or international student group on campus. It was replete with
variously gifted leaders from West Africa (“Niger”), North Africa (“Cyrene”),
Israel (“Herod”/Judea) and Asia Minor (“Cilicia/Tarsus”). Striking isn’t it
that we are all called “Christians” today because in the first century a
multi-cultural Christian community developed in what is now Syria!
And
who is not moved by John’s vision of the multi-cultural church present before
the Lamb’s throne at the end of this age: “After this I looked and there before
me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe,
people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb…and
they cried out with a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on
the throne, and to the Lamb.’” (Revelation 7:9-10).
To Summarize and Recapitulate:
My
thesis is that since our human beginnings, God has unceasingly been seeking and
calling all humanity to a relationship of love with Himself. Both Old and New
Testaments are united in God’s love being experienced through the people of
God, (the patriarchs, then Israel and finally the church). Like God, God’s
people go-out from their center and also call-in representatives of the nations
to this same relationship of love with God. God’s relationship to His people is
always with the intent that the surrounding world will honor Him as God.
International students in our time have become a key to the glory and honor of
God being perceived throughout the nations.
A
century ago God raised up a centrifugal mission movement of over 30,000 young
missionaries from the western world in what was then called the Student
Volunteer Movement. Since the end of the second world war a crescendo of young
international students have come to the intellectual centers the western world.
Surely we can see God’s hand in this too as a centripetal movement in our time.
As we take the initiative in reaching out and then welcoming internationals
into our Christian communities, we are, in effect, fulfilling the vision of
both Testaments. May we have the grace to take full advantage of it.
