A Light to the Gentiles
Isaiah's mission was far larger than just reforming Judah. He also cast a vision of Jerusalem as a light on a hill, a witness to all nations about the one true God, and His commandments: "the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established . . . and all nations will stream to it" (Isa. 2:2).
How do we, as Adventists, understand our role in the outreach to the world? See Rev. 14:6.
Read Isaiah 42:6, 7. What role does God call Judah to play? How do we see ourselves in that role today?
Read Isaiah 49:6. What does this have to do with us, as Seventh-day Adventists?
It was not until the late 1860s that the Seventh-day Adventist Church realized it had a mission to foreign lands. Early Adventists had assumed the gospel commission extended only to the various people groups within North America. America was a multicultural society, and early Adventists thought they were reaching out to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people right there at home. Arthur Spalding suggests that it was a "comforting rationalization" for the early Adventist Church to assume that its mission was only to North America.—Arthur Whitefield Spalding, Origin and History of Seventh-day Adventists [Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald® Publishing Association, 1962], vol. 2, p. 193).
But it was not long before the young church realized that its vision was too limited, and it launched out and began establishing the church in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Pacific, and all over the world, a work that we, individually, can be a part of, one way or another. What are ways you, or even your local church, could be more involved in outreach, in bringing "salvation unto the ends of the earth" (Acts 13:47)?
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