TIMES ARE A CHANGING, SO ALSO
OUR METHODS, NOT OUR MESSAGE.

• “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of Go d has come near, repent, and believe in the good news”
• Luke 4 v 18-21 “this scripture is fulfilled”
• Matt 5,6,7 characteristics of the Kingdom

• ACTS 28 V 31
• …preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ.
• Luke 4 v 18-21
• …to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
• ..this day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears.

• Dallas Willard says: The last command Jesus gave the church before he ascended to heaven was the Great Commission, the call for
Christians to "make disciples of all the nations." But Christians have responded by making "Christians," not "disciples." This has been the church's Great Omission.

•
• His miraculous deeds are signs that the
Kingdom of God that he was announcing had indeed arrived.
• This kingdom is open to all, unlike being born
a JEW and all are invited to enter into it, but it is given especially or “preferentially” to those who are marginalized , that is, the poor, the afflicted, the oppressed, the captives (Luke 4:
18).

• The eschatological events of Jesus‘ death/resurrection are a powerful validation by God of Jesus‘ message about God‘s power over sin, corruption, injustice, and violence .
God‘s rule is and will be characterized by universal peace, justice, and love, and it is already here

• Jesus taught us to pray......thy kingdom come, thy will be done, so the kingdom has arrived, is arriving and will eventually arrive to fill the earth!!!!! This is our mandate, to serve the
Kingdom.

• These approaches to the Bible and theology came to be called "contextual theologies" within the Western academy. This term in itself betrayed the arrogant ethnocentricity of the West, for the assumption was that other places are contexts and they do their theology for those “contexts”; we, of course, have the real thing, the objective, contextless theology. Changeless and eternal.

• Chris Wright says:
• Theology was not to be done in the study and then applied in the world. Rather, action for and on behalf of the poor and oppressed undertaken as a first priority , and then out of that commitment and praxis theological reflection would follow.

• Again Chris Wright says:
• What is a sinner, in the vocabulary of first
century Judaism? A sinner is simply a person who is apathetic to the law and disinterested in its application to daily life. Thus, then as now, sinners are folk who simply do not wish to, or try to, live out the fullness of the will of
God.
Are not participating in the Kingdom

• Q: Who are the sinners? They are the folk who will never have time for God until they realize that God has time for them. When will they realize this?
• Ans: When the rather dull-of-wit disciples of
Jesus act like their master instead of the
Pharisees. The gospel is evil spoken of because of the way God’s people choose to live.They are the new pharisees.

• The church has no self-identity except as rooted in and derived from the mission that
Jesus received from his Father.
And given the centrality of the reign of God in Jesus‘ mission, as we have observed above, it would be theologically wrong to subordinate the reign of God to the church, as it was done in the old theology of mission

• Mission defines what the church is and what
it must do. Consequently, the whole church is missionary, : “The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is
• Missio Deo
• ….mission of the Son and the,mission of the
Holy Spirit in obedience to the Father that she draws her origin,

• Hence, it would be wrong to regard “mission primarily as “foreign mission and that only an elite few are called to this mission. “there is a new awareness that missionary activity is a matter for all Christians , for all dioceses and parishes, Church institutions and associations .
Hence, the hallowed distinction between the sending church and the receiving church is thereby invalidated.

• 1. Christ and His Gospel are not known, or
which lack Christian communities sufficiently mature to be able to incarnate the faith in their own environment and proclaim it to other groups. EG Libya, Morroco.
• The Glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas

• 2. “Christian communities with adequate and
solid ecclesiastical structures. They bear witness to the Gospel in their surroundings and have a sense of commitment to the universal mission. 7 churches in Crowborough alone.
• 3. Where entire groups of the baptized have lost their living sense of the faith , or even no longer consider themselves members of the
Church, and live a life far removed from Christ

• • foreign mission does not constitute the entire mission of the church but is only a part, albeit necessary, of it. Furthermore, its principal goal is no longer “saving souls and
“church planting but bearing witness to the
Kingdom of God. BUT!
•
• More than two-thirds of the people in the world have never heard of Jesus Christ, and that they are slipping into a Christless eternity at the rate of more than 3 every second, should show that this is not enough

• when Protestants as a whole average giving 3 pence per week to missions.
• when it takes up to 20 churches to support one missionary.
• when some denominations have less than 10 missionaries
• when Orthodox, Bible-believing churches with hundreds of members give less than 1% of their income to missions.

• By committing ourselves to His mission. Jesus doesn’t say anything about saving sinners and getting them into heaven. The primary priority of his mission:
• 1. to preach good news to the poor , the kingdom has arrived with it's king!.
• 2. to bind up the brokenhearted ,
• 3. to proclaim freedom for the captives and
•
• 4. release from darkness for the prisoners.”

Christianity has been a repressive force against the advancement of civilization
• Karl Marx termed Christianity an "opiate" of the masses, a tool of exploitation.
• Sigmund Freud called Christianity an illusion, a crutch, a source of guilt and pathologies.
• Bertrand Russell : "I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of the moral progress in the world."

• Renaissance popes are not Christianity ; St.
Francis of Assisi is.
• Pizarro and Cortez are not Christianity ,
Bartolome de Las Casas is.
• Captain Ball, a Yankee slave captain, is not Christianity , Wilburforce is.
• Jesus Himself foretold that "tares" would be won among the "wheat." (Matt. 13:25-39 ff).

The Rise of Modern Science Science rose in the
West, not in the East. Why?
• Whitehead and Oppenheimer insisted that modern science could not have been born except in a Christian milieu.
• Awareness of order (i.e. cause/effect, cf. Rom. 1:20). Views of man as a superintendent of nature.
• In 252 A.D., the Christians of Corinth saved the city from the plague by responding to the needs of those who were simply dragged into the street.
• In 312 A.D., half of the Roman Empire came under the political and social influence of Christianity under the rule of
Constantine.
• Early Christians stood in opposition to infanticide, degradation of women, gladiatorial combats, slavery, etc.

Examples in the Middle Ages
(Consider the Monks, not the knights.)
• Monasteries served as hospitals, places of refuge.
• Monastic schools trained scribes to preserve manuscripts.
• Monasteries also developed agricultural skills and knowledge.
• The Scholastics remain a pivotal period of intellectual growth.
• A time of major artistic development: architecture, music, literature

Wesley preached the social responsibilities of
Christian piety:
• 1772 - Slavery was judicially excluded from England,
14,000 freed
• 1792 - Conditions aboard slave ships were regulated by law
• 1808 - The English slave trade was abolished.
• 1831 - All European slave trade abolished. England spent 15 million pounds for enforcement, even making payments to Spain and Portugal to stop the trade .

• 1833 - Slavery abolished in British Empire: 45 million pounds paid in compensation to free
780,933 slaves. Wilberforce, along with Buxton,
Macaulay, and Clark . . . all evangelicals who were converted under Wesley's ministry, were the top leaders in ending slavery (This British action in the
1830's profoundly affected American attitudes which resulted in the Civil War).
Prison reform : John
Howard, Elizabeth Fry (England); Fliedner
(Germany). Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing, was trained in one of Fliedner's schools in Kaiserswerth.

• Labor reform : Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of
Shaftesbury, self-described "Evangelical of the Evangelicals" pioneered child-labor laws, prohibited women working in the mines, established mental health sanitarium, built parts and libraries).
• TUC.

• Barnardo's Homes (world's largest orphanage system); ·
• William Booth's Salvation Army; ·
• Henri Dunant , a student evangelist in Geneva, founded the Red Cross in 1865; ·
• YMCA was founded in 1844 and grew greatly;· The
Missionaries from William Carey on:·
• CMS (Christian Missionary Society) taught 200,000 to read in East Africa