Mission
Why did God elect Israel as His special people? Deut. 7:7, 8; Isa. 44:8; 49:6.
God chose Israel to be His witnesses. All nations of the earth were to share in the blessings that He was to bestow on His people. Israel was to show forth His praise (Isa. 43:21), declare His glory among the nations (Isa. 66:19), and be a light to the Gentiles.
What is the mission of the Christian church, and how well is it carrying out this mission? Matt. 28:19, 20.
The Christian church experienced two great periods of expansion in its history. The first period was the time of its establishment in the first and second centuries; the second was during the nineteenth century, also called the century of mission. Following the great revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Christian church established many Bible and missionary societies in Europe and America, and within 100 years it increased from 18 percent of the world population in the year 1800 to 34 percent in 1900.
In the early decades of Seventh-day Adventist history, it was believed that the church was fulfilling God’s command to teach all nations simply by preaching to the immigrants in North America. However, Ellen White in 1871 wrote: “Young men should be qualifying themselves by becoming familiar with other languages, that God may use them as mediums to communicate His saving truth to those of other nations.” —Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, p. 204.
Then in 1874 she had an impressive dream of giving the third angel’s message to the world. In the dream she was told: “You are entertaining too limited ideas of the work for this time. . . . The message will go in power to all parts of the world, to Oregon, to Europe, to Australia, to the islands of the sea, to all nations, tongues, and peoples. . . . Your faith is limited, it is very small. Your conception of the work needs to be greatly enlarged.”—Pages 208, 209.
In the same year J. N. Andrews became the first official Seventh-day Adventist missionary. He and his children went to Switzerland, and three years later the John G. Matteson family was sent to Scandinavia. Today, out of 229 countries of the world recognized by the United Nations, Seventh-day Adventists have an established work in more than two hundred of them.
| How do we strike the balance between working for souls overseas while at the same time not neglecting the mission field in our own backyard? |
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