May 01, 1997 by Ralph D. Winter

Dear Reader,

This issue is full of news of things past and things soon to come. The future includes our cover story, "Countdown to 2000." And that year 2000 is not very far in the future! What CAN be done by then?

On my heart at this point: both the mysterious, far-flung and incredibly potent work of God in the world today, and yet, the fact that the overall picture is not very beautiful.

Why? An evil "hideous strength" is still loose at every level. Kill- or-be-killed prevails at the level of the dinosaurs, at the level of the tiniest insects, and even at the level of the 24-hours-per-day wars out of sight in the world of the microbes.

Whence all this conflict, this destruction and distortion of life?

I cannot believe God once upon a time set out to create a world in which life forms of all kinds, large and small, would be "at each others' throats." Rather, the ominous, omnipresent murder and destruction we see at every level is clearly the work of the "god of this world," the ruler of the darkness of this earth, who roams around as a man-eating lion, seeking whom he may devour.

However, the Bible describes events as recent as 4,000 years ago which appear to be the beginning of a divine counter-offensive. It explains (Gen 12:1-3) that through Abraham the darkness will be wrestled to the mat in all peoples. The world's peoples will be re- inherited as God's own possession. This is what the key word "blessing" implies--inheritance, adoption.

So, are our missionaries really supposed to roll back the darkness "over there" somewhere, where it is "darker" than "here?" Is that the purpose of missions--crossing culture barriers to all peoples, and then evangelizing within those peoples once the missionary breakthroughs have taken place? Yes…

But, do we think that if our missionaries get "over there" and gather people together on Sunday to "worship," that will banish evil over there? Will it keep young folks from bunching up in gangs to brutalize and rape and spread harm, dope and disease to other people-- while an individualized Gospel does not prevent that very well here in our inner cities where actual church attendance is often higher than it is the suburbs?

No, not really. Even "back here" in our own Bible-saturated country our most perfect church services consist of people sitting there distracted from this world for a few moments while battles are raging for their souls "at every level."

When they emerge from the church they re-immerse themselves in a world at war "at every level." Even before they leave church--while they are still singing "Majesty"--they harbor in their blood-streams, in their hair follicles, even on the surface of their freshly brushed teeth, millions of good and bad bacteria battling to the death. Every person present carries diseases of one sort or another, truly gruesome diseases hardly mentionable in a nice Christian publication like this.

Yes, you recall, all of us carry little cancer cells zipping around like terrorists, victimizing healthy cells while multiplying their own number. Perhaps in your body the good guys are beating off the bad guys for the present. My doctor tentatively diagnosed two kinds of cancer for me. Further tests showed nothing. Great, I might have a few more days to live! But, don't we still "speak as dying men to dying men?" (Not so good for Roberta. Her bone-cancer lab symptoms are still climbing).

In other words, realistically, with God's help we are not out to end evil in all its forms. In God's army we are definitely "beating down" but not "beating out" all evil. For thousands of years all forms of life, human and otherwise, have existed enshrouded in fear and inspired by hate. The United Nations---whatever its vote--is not going to end that ghastly reality.

What DO We Look For?

What we are looking forward to at some time in the future, in His timing, is the awesome, resplendent return of Christ. He will at that time "wipe away every tear (Rev 21:4)." That will then be the final judgment against "that hideous strength" which has been ravaging at every level for thousands of years the beauty of God's creation .

How long has "that hideous strength" been around? The newspaper's list of all nine films that have ever sucked in over $100 million in the first two weeks of their release is a list of films which highlight the massive struggle of good and evil. Is there no "other" subject? Is Spielberg likely to point out the Satanic factor in this pervasive, all-out war?

Dinosaurs and Missions

His two films right at the top explore the most luridly violent of all life forms: the dinosaurs. Yes, the presence--the puzzle--of total violence in all of life and all of earth's history is ever with us. Satan is not given the credit he deserves!

Another case, in the same May 30th issue of the L.A.Times reporting on these films, we read of a new discovery of vastly earlier evidence of hominids. And, sure enough, it notes:

One unusual aspect of the fossils is that the bones show tool marks, indicating that flesh had been scraped away just as with animals killed for meat. Such markings are normally associated with cannibalism.

Actually, this is not really unusual at all. The oldest skulls have often displayed blows to the skull.

So will all this change by the end of the year 2000? Our cover refers to "Countdown," but to what?

I was overjoyed when the Promise Keepers magazine recently came out with an article on global Christian mission. But then I was sorry to see how rather fuzzily it treated the subject of the countdown to A.D. 2000. The generally newsworthy article was given (perhaps by an editor) a pessimistic title and a lead-in sentence, as follows:

Mission Impossible. A decade ago, missions groups targeted the year 2000 as the completion date for the Great Commission. Will it be a mission accomplished?

First, I know of no reputable mission agency which has ever spoken officially of completing the Great Commission by any particular date. The Great Commission is an undefined concept, although agencies may refer to some one aspect of the Great Commission, usually to the complete outworking of some ministry in which they are involved.

But, secondly, I will admit people have talked about "world evangelization" by the year 2000, a phrase which is even more difficult: Not only is there no widely-accepted definition for the phrase, but if it means evangelizing every individual PERSON by a particular date, it will be an achievement immediately undone one single second later as more children grow into the age of accountability, thus needing to be evangelized. That is, you can't "finish" evangelization in this sense, ever.

Well, WHAT CAN BE FINISHED BY THE END OF THIS CENTURY?

Missions! In today's terminology, "getting a beachead in every pocket of mankind." Missions in the classical sense is the Apostle Paul formulating a Gospel which was intelligible to Greeks and employing it in leading whole households to Christ within that new cultural tradition. This key reformulation of Paul's faith took him three years in Arabia.

His resulting "missiological breakthrough" was for him a double blessing: 1) It stripped him of the legalism which he had deeply imbibed--the false idea that true religion is a matter of religious activity: and 2) It flooded his soul with a passionate, personal knowledge of a Christ who had uniquely demonstrated in the flesh the dynamic meaning of the law, the rule of God.

As with all good missionaries, Paul went beyond that key achievement (the formulation, the "missiological breakthrough" to the Greeks) and went on tirelessly to implement the amazing and powerful significance of a truly Greek way of comprehending the Gospel. That is, he also evangelized whole households, acting out what Dawson Trotman in our day taught the Navigators, Campus Crusade, and Billy Graham--that converted souls need follow-through and fellowship.

But, the inherently pioneer, breakthrough activity of missions fades automatically into relevant, powerful evangelism, which, remember, is never ending, which by definition cannot be completed once for all.

So what is the most important, barely possible goal for the end of the year 2000? I don't want to be dogmatic, but I'll certainly continue to suggest that the end of missions is worth shooting for. It would mean a "missiological breakthrough" to every group in the world. That would in turn mean that every person in the world could hear the Word from someone within his own group, on the wavelength of his own culture.

Meanwhile, stepping down from the ivory tower of speculation, we can stand awed by the immense, magnificent AD2000 Movement spawning new hope and energies all over the globe, focusing on every aspect of the specific outreach necessary. Once the dark powers are decisively confronted within every human people…that's something concrete and worth shooting for! But is that really within reach during the next three and a half years--maybe even if you and I do nothing?

How We May Succeed

• The first stage goal is the "1739 Joshua Project Peoples." Pioneer work already exists in two-thirds of these groups. -Many of these groups are actually the same groups from a mission standpoint: they got on this list twice because they just happened to be cut into two or more pieces by a political border between two countries, and thus only one "missiological breakthrough" may be necessary.
• Virtually all of these groups have "kissing cousins" in similar, smaller groups.
• More than at any time in history, bilingual/biculturals abound. (These are people like Paul who had roots in both Jewish and Hellenistic culture.)
  It is both fun and folly to try to figure out if a short-term team can make it to the doorway of every remaining group by 2000. That's fine, but that is not the usual way the Gospel spreads. The New Testament is very clear on this. Not the Peter and James types but the Paul and Barnabas types (biculturals) are especially essential in working out the new shape of faith in the new culture. But note that in both cases some "Peter" or "James" or some other person went after these biculturals and recruited them to the specific cross-cultural task. Can we do that?
• Furthermore, we can expect advance assistance from God Himself. Don Richardson's Eternity In Their Hearts describes over two-dozen examples of groups where it is clear that God had already been at work before the missionary arrived. Missionaries may mainly be helping God keep His promise where He said, "Seek me and you shall find me when you search for me with all your heart." Can you believe that there are true seekers in every remaining people? Why not?

How We May Fail

Disturbingly, the greatest assistance we need right now is to re-read the New Testament and discover the fact that the missionary crossing of cultural boundaries has almost always produced new church movements distastefully foreign to those who stay home and pray. And, one of the biggest battles rages between 1) those who insist on an extension of the sending culture in order "to make sure" the Gospel is really understood, and 2) those who would work within a new group for the freedom of God's will from the sending churches' way of life, sensing that inappropriate cultural carry-overs are the essence of legalism, whether they are handed down from the past or imported from afar.

In Poland today, I am told, thousands of young people--perhaps hundreds of thousands--are "too Evangelical" to be acceptable to Catholics, and "too Catholic" to be acceptable to Evangelicals. Is this not to be expected? Doesn't the New Testament prepare us for this?

Greek followers of Christ resulting from Paul's ministry were, sadly, uneasy and disdainful of the Jewishness of Jewish followers of Christ. That's why Paul in Romans 14 had to insist that the Jewish tradition was still perfectly legitimate. Equally, he insisted that the Greek followers of Christ were legitimate. Probably he did not convince very many on either side. Early Christianity soon became non-Jewish or anti-Jewish, and vice versa.

Today, missionaries in Indonesia are hoping to develop a Muslim way of life which will be fully Christian, or, we might say, fully Biblical (the word Christian in most of the world today implies all kinds of negative things, and was never employed by the New Testament believers in Christ). Of course, there is difficulty with this on both sides! Will the missionaries' supporters back home refuse to support that kind of missionary work? Similar breakthroughs are being attempted all over the world.

Would you like to hear a 45-minute testimony of an Evangelical missionary working in France who through 18 years of earnest struggles with the real situation has developed a ministry which is "too Catholic" for some? He spoke to our staff last week. This is a moving, powerful story. (See response page.)

This story holds the key, I feel, to a massive, unexpected, and astonishingly different "Second Front" to the non-Christian world in which we really do find that we are "giving our faith away."

But, while mature mission leaders in the Navigators, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Campus Crusade, Evangelical Covenant Church, the Missionary Church, SIM International etc., are thinking along these lines--in some cases for years--these are not things that are easily explained to the folks back home for whom often the slightest difference between denominations is too much to swallow.

Indeed, as I see it, the new, younger generation of missionaries may perpetuate much of what has failed in the past. Indeed, the greatest mission mobilization activity today seems to be focused on "more of the same"--Westernizing methods that have never really worked with the "major religions" of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc. Drumming up more of the same is not a solution.

However, this is another subject--are these new forces up to date? We'll deal with it in our next issue. Right now we only have space to mention one or two more things.

• Current international news brings up some interesting developments affecting missions: The most extensive impact of the West on the rest of the world is not the extensive penetration of the Gospel. It is the glitter of Western freedoms. Zaire has chosen a new name embodying "democracy." Indonesia has turned away from the stridently Muslim political party to a more Western path. Iran has tenuously voted a landslide for a more Westernized leader.
  Do the millions behind these massive yearnings for the glitter of the West really want a society like ours, in which pre-marital sex encompasses over half of all teenagers, and 360,000 per month contract venereal disease? What a treacherous glitter! These ugly facts are brushed aside by both Americans and the rest of the world. Curious. But, is this why devout Hindu families are afraid of Western Christianity?
• The United World Mission recently hosted a conference of over a dozen agencies which are moving toward a joint effort in pre-field training. This may expand into training for mission pastors. This is terrific.
• Along the same line, one of the very largest global mission operations--that of the Southern Baptist Convention--is making remarkable strides in the direction of field studies, taking full advantage of the many new "off-campus" methods of education.
• June 30-July 5: Ten global consultations are meeting simultaneously in Pretoria, South Africa. One will be the first global meeting of exclusively mission executives since Edinburgh 1980. It is only the second since Edinburgh 1910 and it is sponsored by the AD2000 Movement. Read about all ten tracks in this issue.