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What Missionaries Actually Preached: A Gospel History · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I'm your host and I'm so glad
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  you're with us for another deep dive.
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  It's good to be here. We have a lot of ground to cover
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  today. We certainly do.
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  You know, usually on this show we'll pick apart a specific
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  doctrine or maybe a cultural trend, something pretty focused.
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  But today we're doing something different.
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  We're looking at a history that spans, what, 2000 years?
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  At least we're looking at the engine of the church itself, how
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  it takes the gospel out into the world.
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  We call this missions. It's a huge scope, but we're not
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  just looking at names and dates, you know, like you'd get in a
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  standard history textbook. No, not at all.
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  As Reformed Protestants, we hold to the Westminster Confession of
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  Faith, and that means we have a very specific starting point for
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  how we view the world and and history itself.
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  It gives us a. Framework.
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  It does. We believe Scripture is the
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  supreme authority. It's the lens through which we
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  have to view everything else. Correct.
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  So when we look at the history of missions, we're judging it by
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  that standard. We have to ask the question, did
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  the church stick to the Bible or or did it move away from it?
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  Our listener today is someone we like to call the Learner.
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  Maybe you're prepping for a theology exam, or maybe you're
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  just someone who wants to understand why the church today
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  looks the way it does. Our goal is to help you see the
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  balance, or well often the lack of balance, between telling the
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  truth on one hand and fitting in on the other.
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  And that is the core tension, isn't it?
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  Truth versus fitting in. Let's introduce our source
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  material for today. We're primarily examining a text
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  called Biblical Missions, Principles, Priorities, and
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  Practices. And specifically a section
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  within it by Mark Tatlock and Chris Burnett.
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  It's described as a concise reference guide to the history
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  of missions. Now, concise might be an
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  understatement given what we're about to unpack.
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  Oh, absolutely. The authors use the word
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  concise, but the implications of what they've written are just
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  enormous. We also have a couple of really
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  fascinating inserts we'll get to later on.
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  One is about the history of the Church in India by an author
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  named Sammy Williams. And another on recent Slavic
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  Christian History by Robert Provost.
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  These will give us some real world examples of the principles
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  we're talking about. So we've got a global
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  perspective for this deep dive, but let's start with the big
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  picture. Tatlock and Burnett.
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  They lay out a thesis right at the beginning of their section.
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  They do. They talk about a spectrum of
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  cultural engagement. OK, a spectrum.
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  Explain that. Imagine a line, a continuum.
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  On one end you have what they call biblical proclamation.
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  Biblical Proclamation. This pole represents all the
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  activities where the Church asserts the expressions and the
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  concepts of Scripture directly to non believers.
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  So this is the meat and potatoes.
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  It is preaching, teaching, translating the Bible using a
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  literal interpretation. It's basically just saying here
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  is what God says and and letting the chips fall where they may.
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  Precisely. You're not apologizing for it,
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  you're just declaring it. Now look at the other end of
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  that line. This is what they label cultural
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  accommodation. This poll represents engagement
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  where Scripture is not the primary means of communication.
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  So what is that? Well, instead the church might
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  use philosophy or cultural norms or just human reasoning to try
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  and make the faith more acceptable, more palatable to
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  the culture. Making it smooth, making it easy
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  to swallow. But often that leads to a
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  delusion of the truth. The sharpness of the gospel gets
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  sanded down. So the mission for us today in
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  this deep dive is to trace this tension.
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  We're going to watch this pendulum swing from the time of
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  the apostles all the way to the present day.
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  We will. We're going to see where the
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  church held the line and, frankly, where it compromised.
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  Let's get into The Time Machine, then we're going back to the
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  very beginning. The source calls this section
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  the early anchors from 8095 to 165.
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  This is the Suppostolic age. The apostles, Peter, Paul, John,
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  they've just passed off the scene.
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  We're looking at the years, say 8070 to 110.
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  OK, the men leading the church here are the immediate
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  successors to the 12. They learn directly from them or
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  from those who did. It's like the second string
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  coming in. So what did they do?
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  Did they try to innovate? No, and that's the key.
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  They did what they were taught. The source material highlights
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  writings like 1 and 2 Clement. OK, I've heard of those.
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  And what stands out when you read them is that they quoted
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  the Old and New Testaments extensively.
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  So they weren't trying to reinvent the wheel.
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  Not at all. In First Clement, for example,
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  there's a huge fight happening in the church at Corinth.
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  Some things never change. Right descent, arguing, chaos,
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  Clement writes to them. And he doesn't use, you know,
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  clever psychology or some kind of management theory.
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  He quotes the Old Testament. He uses Scripture to persuade
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  them to make peace. It's just so direct, so
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  practical. It is, and into Clement the
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  presbyter quotes both the Old and New Testaments to instruct
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  the church on how to live. So the analysis here is pretty
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  simple. They didn't try to be clever
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  philosophers, they just appeal to the text.
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  That simplicity is really striking.
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  Yeah, it didn't last long, did it?
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  No, once we get into the 2nd century, things start to split.
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  We see a divergent what? Was the cause.
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  Well, this is where the pressure starts to mount.
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  The church is expanding deeper into the Roman Empire and
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  persecution is heating up. So the stakes are higher.
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  Much higher and you have a group emerge called the Apologists,
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  men like Aristides, Theophilus of Antioch and and Irenaeus.
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  Now an apologist isn't someone who says I'm sorry.
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  It comes from the word apologia, right?
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  A defense. That's right, they were
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  defending the faith, and for the most part their method was still
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  largely scriptural. They used the Bible to attack
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  false religion and to point people to divine revelation.
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  But the source says there was an outlier.
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  There was a man named Justin. Martyr.
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  Justin Martyr. That's a famous name.
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  He lived around AD 100 to 165. What makes him different?
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  What makes him an outlier? Well, Justin Martyr wanted to
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  defend the faith absolutely, but he took a different approach.
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  He tried to use Greek philosophy, specifically Middle
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  Platonism and Stoicism, to make Christianity relevant to his
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  audience. He's trying to speak their
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  language. He was.
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  And on the surface that sounds smart, doesn't it?
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  Meet people where they are it. Seems like a good strategy.
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  But the critique from our source here is sharp.
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  By using the language and more importantly, the concepts of
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  Greek philosophy, he started a slip, a slide toward that other
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  pole. Cultural accommodation.
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  So he was trying to win the argument by using the opponent's
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  worldview. Instead of simply standing on
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  God's revelation. That's the key difference.
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  It's the classic trap, isn't it? You want to be respected by the
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  intellectuals of your day, so you start sounding like them,
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  and before you know it, you've given up the very thing that
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  makes you distinct. It raises a question for us even
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  today. Are we, are we trying to
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  convince people by being smarter than them according to their
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  rules, or are we confronting them with the word of God?
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  Justin Martyr marks the beginning of a drift that just
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  gets much, much wider in the 3rd century.
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  Let's move to that 3rd century then.
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  The source calls this the battle for the mind, and we have two
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  major geographic centers in play here, Alexandria in Egypt and
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  North Africa. And they represent the two poles
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  almost perfectly. In Alexandria, we see the
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  accommodation pole in full swing.
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  The key figures there are Clement of Alexandria and
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  Origin. And we should clarify, this is
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  not the same Clement who wrote 1 and 2 Clement.
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  Right, different guy. Clement of Alexandria, who lived
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  around AD 1:50 to 2:15 was Well, he was obsessed with finding
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  common ground between Greek history and Christianity.
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  He used Stoic logic. He wanted to present Christ as
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  the fulfillment of human virtue, as the ultimate goal of all
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  philosophy. Again, that sounds Jesus is the
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  answer to all your philosophical questions.
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  What's the problem with that? The problem is the method.
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  The source argues that his desire to win pagans through
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  their own reasoning actually Hanford his ability to
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  communicate accurate theology. Also.
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  Well, if you explain Jesus using only Stoic terms, you end up
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  with a stoic Jesus, not the biblical one.
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  You've reshaped the content to fit the container.
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  And then there's origin. Origin.
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  He's a heavyweight, a brilliant mind, but also a source of so
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  much confusion. He adopted what the source calls
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  a Gnostic type, spiritual meaning.
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  What does that mean? A gnostic type meaning.
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  It means he heavily allegorized the text.
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  OK, you need to explain allegory for the listener who might not
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  be familiar with that term in this context.
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  Sure, Allegory in the sense is reading the Bible and assuming
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  the plain literal meaning isn't the real meaning.
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  It assumes there's a secret hidden spiritual code underneath
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  the surface. So Abraham traveling to a new
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  land isn't just a story about a guy moving his family.
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  Right. To an allegorist like origin, it
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  might represent the soul moving from ignorance toward
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  enlightenment or some other abstract philosophical idea.
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  It basically turns the Bible into a Riddle book.
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  It does, and you need the enlightened philosophical
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  teacher to decode it for you. And the theological fallout from
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  this method was severe. In what way?
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  Because Origin relied so heavily on Platonic concepts of reality,
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  he ended up confusing key expressions of the Trinity.
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  He was using a broken compass Greek philosophy to try and
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  navigate the very nature of God. And there was one more from
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  Alexandria. Minutius, Felix.
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  Yes, he wrote a dialogue called Octavius, and it's interesting
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  because it argued for Christianity entirely from
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  natural reason, not from scripture.
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  So no Bible verses. None.
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  The verdict from our source is harsh, but I think fair.
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  It might work as a pre evangelism tract, a conversation
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  starter, but it completely lacked the gospel presentation
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  necessary for salvation. It was all bridge and no
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  destination. So that's Alexandria.
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  High intellect, high accommodation, but low biblical
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  fidelity. A dangerous combination.
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  Now let's travel across the Mediterranean to North Africa
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  and look at the heavy hitter on the other side, the proclamation
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  pole Tertullian. Tertullian is the man.
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  They call him the father of Western Christianity, and for
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  good reason. His method was radically
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  different from the Alexandrians. How so?
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  He cited scripture in nearly every single chapter he wrote.
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  He wasn't interested in playing nice with Plato.
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  Not in the slightest. He had this powerful concept he
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  called the rule of faith. The rule of faith, What was
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  that? Think of it as a set of core
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  creedal affirmations that define the gospel, the essentials that
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  God is 1 the Creator, that Jesus is his Son, born of a virgin,
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  crucified, resurrected, the basics.
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  The non negotiables. Exactly.
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  And his argument was that all customs, all culture, all
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  philosophy must bow to the rule of faith, not the other way
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  around. The gospel shapes the culture.
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  The culture doesn't get to reshape the gospel.
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  Now, the source makes a really, really important distinction
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  here that I think we need to slow down and unpack.
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  It talks about linguistic accommodation versus cultural
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  accommodation. This seems crucial.
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  Break this down for us. This is the key to understanding
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  the difference between good missions and bad missions.
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  I think it's a razor's edge. Tertullian practiced linguistic
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  accommodation, meaning he used philosophical words.
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  He was writing in Latin for a Roman audience.
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  He had to use terms that people understood to explain complex
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  doctrines like the Trinity. He needed words for concepts
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  like substance and person. So using a Latin word that
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  philosophers also used is fine. Yes, that's linguistic
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  accommodation. You're using the language of the
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  people to explain biblical truth with as much precision as
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  possible. But he did not practice cultural
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  accommodation. Correct, he did not adopt Pagan
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  concepts. He didn't say oh you know the
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  Trinity is just like your 3 headed God.
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  He never compromised the text meaning to make it fit their
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  worldview. He maintained A literal
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  hermeneutic against the allegorists.
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  In short, he used their words to tell them their worldview was
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  wrong and the Bible was right. That is a massive difference.
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  One is translating, the other is rewriting.
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  It is, and that tension carries right on into the 4th century.
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  The plot thickens here because Christianity becomes legal under
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  the Emperor Constant. You'd think this would be the
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  golden age for the church. You would, but the source calls
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  this period giants and compromises.
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  It was a mixed bag. OK, let's start with the Giants,
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  The Proclaimers. Who's first?
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  Jerome. Jerome, Of course.
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  Jerome gives us the Latin Vulgate.
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  He undertook the monumental task of translating, putting the
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  entire Bible into the common language of the people in the
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  Western Empire. What was his philosophy behind
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  that? His philosophy was clear.
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  He opposed speculative allegorical theology.
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  He advocated for a sense for sense translation.
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  Meaning he wanted the translation to make sense to the
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  reader, but only for the sake of clarity.
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  Right clarity, not syncretism. He wanted to preserve the
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  original meaning for the common person, not change it to fit
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  some philosophical system. And who else is on the list of
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  giants? John Christmelstam, the famous
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  preacher. Christostam means golden
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  mouthed. Use an Expositor.
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  Through and through, he preached through books of the Bible,
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  verse by verse. And he preached for a verdict.
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  He wanted a response from the people.
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  He wasn't just giving a lecture. And he didn't just stay in his
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  pulpit in Constantinople, either.
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  No, he send evangelists to the Goths.
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  This was cross cultural missions based squarely on the
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  proclamation of the word. OK, so we have Jerome and
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  Chrysostom holding the line, but then we have the mixed legacy
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  Ambrose of Milan and, dare I say it, as a reformed Protestant,
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  Augustine. This is tough for us because we
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  appreciate Augustine's theology of grace so much.
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  It was foundational for the Reformation.
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  But we have to be honest with the history.
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  So let's start with Ambrose. Ambrose was a great speaker, a
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  powerful rhetorician and evangelist.
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  He was the one who was instrumental in Augustine
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  conversion, but he practiced that same allegorical
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  hermeneutic we warned about earlier.
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  From the Alexandrian school. Yes.
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  His work Hexameron, which is a commentary on the six days of
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  creation, basically capitulated biblical authority to Greek
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  poets. He was more interested in
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  showing how Genesis aligned with classical literature than with
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  what it actually said. And now Augustine.
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  A truly complex figure. On the positive side, after his
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  conversion, he fell in love with the eloquence of Scripture.
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  He urged personal Bible study. He wanted people to read it for
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  themselves. That sounds good.
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  It is, but in his very influential work, The Doctrina
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  Christiana or On Christian Doctrine, he allowed for
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  allegorical interpretation whenever the plain literal text
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  was difficult. There it is, the escape hatch.
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  If I don't understand this, or if it's embarrassing to my
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  sophisticated friends, it must be a metaphor.
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  Exactly. And the consequence, according
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  to our source, was that this tendency compromised solid
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  exposition. It opened the door to doctrinal
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  inconsistencies that plagued the church for centuries.
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  It really did set the stage for the Middle Ages.
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  Which brings us to our next major section, the Dark Ages
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  paradigm shift. From roughly 8500 to 1500, the
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  source lists 4 big reasons why the lights, so to speak, went
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  out on biblical missions. It wasn't just one thing, it was
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  a systematic shift away from the proclamation pole.
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  What was the first reason? Imperial conformity.
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  After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the church in Rome
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  stepped into the power vacuum. It merged church and state OK
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  and so the goal changed. It wasn't about spiritual
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  conversion anymore, it was about socio political compliance with
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  Latin culture. So being a Christian just meant
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  being a good civilized subject of Christendom.
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  You've got it. Which leads to the second
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  reason, a loss of proclamation. Persuasive expository preaching
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  was largely replaced by moral instruction and monasticism.
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  Why preach the gospel for conversion when you can just
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  tell people to behave and obey the monks?
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  It's a much more manageable system now.
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  There were exceptions and the sources careful to note them.
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  Like who? A few bright spots in the
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  darkness. Patrick in Ireland.
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  A missionary named Alopen who went to China.
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  Boniface in Germany, Cyril and Methodius among the Slavic
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  people. And what did they have in
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  common? They were translating Scripture
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  and preaching the Gospel. They were still operating at the
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  proclamation pole, but they were the exception, not the rule.
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  OK, so we have imperial conformity, loss of
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  proclamation. What's the third?
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  Reason syncretism. This is the ugly.
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  One This is where Pagan ideas get blended in, yes.
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  As the Church expanded into Germanic and Byzantine
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  territories, it didn't confront paganism so much as it just
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  absorbed it. So instead of contrasting with
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  the local magic, the church just offered its own better version
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  of magic. Right.
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  Miracles, relics, the veneration of Saints.
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  All of this replaced solid scriptural teaching.
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  Christianity became ubiquitous. It was everywhere.
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  But it was uncompelling. It offered no real alternative
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  to the paganism it supposedly replaced.
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  And the fourth and final reason for the shift?
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  The rise of Scholasticism. You could call this the ivory
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  tower problem. The disconnect between the
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  theologians and the people in the pews.
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  A massive disconnect, and Thomas Aquinas is the prime example
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  here. He's was brilliant, but he
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  proposed that natural theology using reason and observation of
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  the world was the proper starting place for evangelism.
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  Not the Bible. Not special revelation.
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  In his work Summa Contra Gentiles, he basically argued
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  that you could reason your way to God without ever opening a
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  Bible. And crucially, he he denied
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  salvation by grace through faith alone.
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  Which is the very heart of the Gospel.
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  So you have a church that is politically powerful,
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  spiritually synchronistic, and theologically drifting into
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  human reason. That is a recipe for a dark age.
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  But God does not leave His church in the dark forever.
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  This brings us to Section 5, the road to Reformation.
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  We start to see dissenters cropping up.
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  Long before Luther nailed his thesis to the door, there were
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  tremors of reform. You have Peter Waldo in the
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  1100s. What was his focus?
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  The public reading of vernacular scripture, Scripture in the
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  language of the people, and memorization.
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  Getting the word back into the hands and heads of laypeople.
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  Then you have the Lollards in England with John Wycliffe.
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  Wycliffe is a huge figure. He's an Oxford professor who
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  oversaw the translation of the Vulgate into English.
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  He directly opposed scholasticism and argued that
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  the Bible belonged to the people, not just the clergy.
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  And yon who's in Bohemia? Same story, vernacular
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  translation again, free preaching of the gospel.
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  These men were all trying to drag the church kicking and
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  screaming back to the proclamation pole.
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  Then boom, the Reformation era, roughly 1500 to 1650.
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  What was the catalyst that made their efforts finally catch
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  fire? Two things really.
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  One was technological. The printing press which?
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  Allowed the Bible and Reformation ideas to spread like
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  wildfire. Absolutely, and the other was
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  intellectual the humanist concept of advantis, which means
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  back to the sources the. Scholars started learning Greek
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  and Hebrew and reading the Bible in its original languages for
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  the first time in centuries. Yes, and they discovered how far
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  the Latin Vulgate and Church tradition had drifted from the
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  original text. And the engine of this whole
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  movement and the engine of missions that came from it was
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  the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone.
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  It wasn't just a slogan, it was the entire method.
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  Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Tyndale, they all believed and
• 19:19
  taught that the Bible was the sole final authority for faith
• 19:24
  and life. And this commitment to Scripture
• 19:26
  actually fueled missions. Some people argue the reformers
• 19:29
  didn't care about missions. That's a myth, the source points
• 19:32
  out. You had Huguenots, French
• 19:34
  Calvinist sailing to Brazil to evangelize.
• 19:37
  You had a man named Buddha vets going to minister to Muslims in
• 19:39
  Istanbul. There were treatises being
• 19:41
  written on foreign missions. But the Empire Strikes Back, so
• 19:44
  to speak, the Counter Reformation.
• 19:46
  The Roman Catholic Church did not take this lying down at the
• 19:49
  Council of Trent. They formally cursed and
• 19:51
  mathematized the biblical gospel of justification by faith alone.
• 19:55
  And they sent out their own missionaries.
• 19:56
  Primarily the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus.
• 20:00
  The source has a strong warning about the Jesuit method.
• 20:03
  It does. It says they were commissioned
• 20:05
  to supplant Protestantism wherever it appeared and their
• 20:09
  method strategic, culturally accommodating activities.
• 20:13
  So back to the other poll. Full swing.
• 20:15
  They were masters of fitting in to advance a false gospel.
• 20:19
  They would dress like the locals, adopt their customs,
• 20:22
  learn their philosophy, and even plan their theology with local
• 20:25
  beliefs just to get a foothold. This all sets the stage for the
• 20:29
  modern world. Section 6 in our source the
• 20:31
  Modern divergent from about 1650 to 1910.
• 20:36
  The source calls this the Great Century of Missions.
• 20:39
  It was on one side. The proclamation poll is
• 20:42
  incredibly strong during this period.
• 20:44
  You have the Pietists and the Moravians, people like Spinner
• 20:47
  and Count Zinzendorf. What was their contribution?
• 20:49
  They refocused the church on the need for personal conversion and
• 20:52
  heartfelt devotion, which naturally led to a passion for
• 20:55
  cross cultural service. The Moravians sent out more
• 20:58
  missionaries in 20 years than all of Protestantism had in the
• 21:01
  previous 200. And then you have the individual
• 21:04
  missionaries, the heroes we often hear about, who packed
• 21:06
  their belongings in a coffin because they never expected to
• 21:08
  come home. John Elliott and David Brainard
• 21:10
  working with Native Americans. William Carey in India, Adoniram
• 21:15
  Jensen in Burma, Hudson Taylor in China.
• 21:18
  The list goes on and on and. What was their method?
• 21:21
  Did they try to accommodate the culture?
• 21:23
  Look at what they did. It's the same pattern as the
• 21:26
  early church learning the local languages, translating the
• 21:29
  Scripture, preaching the gospel for conversion, training local
• 21:33
  leaders to take over the work. It was all about the Word.
• 21:36
  And the source mentions the rise of Bible institutes in the
• 21:38
  1880s. Yes, this was a direct response
• 21:41
  to what was happening on the other side of the divergent The
• 21:43
  universities were being lost to liberalism, so these institutes
• 21:47
  were created to train missionaries away from secular
• 21:49
  critical methods and ground them in the Bible.
• 21:52
  So let's talk about that other side.
• 21:53
  The accommodation pole gives birth to Protestant liberalism.
• 21:57
  By the mid 18th century a new movement was gaining steam,
• 22:01
  liberal Protestantism. It took that old medieval
• 22:04
  philosophical theology and those Jesuits style methodologies and
• 22:07
  introduce them into Protestant universities, especially in
• 22:10
  Germany. And this led to a concept called
• 22:12
  cultural relativism. Exactly.
• 22:14
  For the first time you have Protestant scholars critiquing
• 22:18
  Protestant missionaries. They started saying you
• 22:21
  shouldn't preach scripture as the one primary authority.
• 22:24
  You should respect their culture more.
• 22:27
  Who are you to impose your beliefs?
• 22:29
  It's the same old song from the 2nd century with Justin Martyr
• 22:32
  just dressed up in new academic robes.
• 22:35
  Precisely. And that clash leads us right
• 22:37
  into the 20th century, which the source calls the Ecumenical era
• 22:41
  from 1910 to 2020. The merger.
• 22:44
  Things get messy here. Very messy.
• 22:46
  It kicks off with the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary
• 22:49
  Conference. IT started with good intentions,
• 22:52
  bringing different denominations together for the cause of world
• 22:54
  evangelization. But it opened the door to
• 22:57
  creating a platform based on political and social activity
• 23:00
  that began to ignore soteriological doctrine.
• 23:03
  The doctrine is salvation. The very core of the mission.
• 23:05
  Then you combine that with Vatican 2 in the 1960s.
• 23:08
  Specifically a document called Lumen Gentium.
• 23:11
  Right. And the result of these
• 23:13
  movements was a massive push for institutional unity that often
• 23:16
  came at the expense of doctrinal truth.
• 23:19
  The source calls this the current crisis.
• 23:21
  It is. You now have so-called
• 23:23
  evangelicals partnering with liberals who openly deny the
• 23:27
  gospel, all in the name of social action or political
• 23:30
  engagement. We also hear new terms being
• 23:33
  used like contextualization and enculturation.
• 23:36
  And we have to be very careful with these terms.
• 23:38
  The source warns that a lot of modern contextualization
• 23:41
  theories are just a Protestant version of Roman Catholic
• 23:44
  enculturation. Which is 1.
• 23:46
  It's the idea that prioritizes culture over the text.
• 23:49
  It's the belief that the Bible has to change its shape to fit
• 23:53
  neatly inside the container of a given culture.
• 23:56
  Rather than the Bible shattering the container and remaking it
• 23:59
  from the pieces. Beautifully put.
• 24:00
  Yes, and the source warns that Christian higher education today
• 24:04
  often prioritizes socio cultural theory over solid exegetical
• 24:08
  preparation. We're teaching future
• 24:10
  missionaries how to be good anthropologists instead of how
• 24:13
  to be faithful preachers of the Word.
• 24:15
  OK, that's a lot of theory in history.
• 24:17
  Let's ground this in reality. The source material gives us 2
• 24:20
  case studies. First up is India from the work
• 24:22
  by Sammy Williams. India is a fascinating and
• 24:26
  complex case because the Christian witness there goes
• 24:29
  back so far. Tradition holds that Saint
• 24:32
  Thomas, one of the 12 disciples, landed there in AD 52.
• 24:36
  That just blows my mind. The Apostle Thomas in India in
• 24:40
  the 1st century. He apparently preached to
• 24:42
  existing Jewish colonies there. But here's the catch.
• 24:45
  And it connects directly to our theme.
• 24:47
  The early converts were from the high caste Brahmins.
• 24:51
  The social elite. Yes, and they brought their
• 24:54
  cultural baggage with them. They continue to view the lower
• 24:56
  castes as untouchable. So they didn't evangelize the
• 25:00
  whole nation, they kept the gospel with in their own social
• 25:03
  class. For the most part, yes, and that
• 25:05
  is a form of cultural accommodation, accepting the
• 25:07
  unbiblical caste system rather than challenging it with the
• 25:10
  gospel truth that all are one in Christ.
• 25:12
  And then, centuries later, the European colonizers arrived the
• 25:16
  Portuguese in the 1500s. And this is a very dark chapter.
• 25:19
  The source mentions the Goa Inquisition, which was led by
• 25:22
  the Jesuit Francis Xavier. What happened?
• 25:24
  They destroyed Hindu temples and forced mass conversions at
• 25:28
  swordpoint. It created a deep, lasting,
• 25:31
  indigenous bitterness toward the name of Christianity.
• 25:35
  When you use the sword instead of the word, you don't make
• 25:38
  converts, you make enemies. But then the Protestants
• 25:41
  arrived. People like Ziegenbolg and of
• 25:44
  course, William Carey. The golden age of missions.
• 25:48
  They did the hard work. They learned the languages.
• 25:51
  Kerry's team translated at least portions of the New Testament
• 25:54
  into 35 different languages. Incredible.
• 25:57
  But there was still a critical weakness.
• 25:59
  They didn't focus enough on training national leadership to
• 26:02
  carry on the work. Which began a huge problem in
• 26:04
  1977. It did.
• 26:06
  The Indian Supreme Court issued A ruling that declared
• 26:09
  evangelical work a threat to freedom of conscience.
• 26:12
  Essentially, it made foreign missionary work almost
• 26:14
  impossible. So foreigners were kicked out.
• 26:16
  Many of them were, but that actually turned out to be a
• 26:19
  blessing in disguise in some ways.
• 26:21
  Well, so the nationals had to take over, and they did.
• 26:24
  Organizations like the Indian Evangelical Mission flourished.
• 26:27
  The Church in India began to stand on its own feet.
• 26:30
  But what's the modern threat in India?
• 26:32
  It's that same pressure of ecumenism again.
• 26:35
  The National Christian Council of India joined the World
• 26:38
  Council of Churches. You had big movements like Dawn
• 26:41
  Discipling a Whole nation and AD 2000 that focused heavily on
• 26:46
  numerical success. Let's reach everyone by the year
• 26:48
  2000. Right.
• 26:50
  And that rush to get decisions often led to a very anemic,
• 26:54
  shallow doctrine. You get a church that is a mile
• 26:57
  wide and an inch deep. OK, Let's turn to our second
• 27:00
  case study, the Slavic nations. This is from the work by Robert
• 27:04
  Provost on recent history there. And this is a story of sudden
• 27:07
  dramatic change. The turning point is the fall of
• 27:10
  the Berlin Wall in 1989 and then the.
• 27:12
  Collapse of the USSR in 1991. Exactly.
• 27:15
  The Commonwealth of Independent States is formed.
• 27:17
  The old Soviet bloc is gone. The Iron Curtain is gone.
• 27:20
  And what was found behind it was a harvest that was ready.
• 27:23
  Groups like the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists
• 27:25
  and the Slavic Gospel Association were there to step
• 27:28
  up. The source highlights Ukraine
• 27:30
  specifically. Yes, in the years after
• 27:33
  independence, the source describes Ukraine as having more
• 27:36
  freedom to preach the gospel than almost any country in the
• 27:38
  world. It was a time of incredible
• 27:41
  opportunity. Fields white for harvest.
• 27:43
  Truly. But it's not a story without
• 27:46
  tragedy. The source mentions the horrific
• 27:48
  Beslan school massacre in North Ossetia in 2004.
• 27:52
  I remember that, it was awful. Chechen terrorists took over a
• 27:55
  school. 335 people were killed, most of them children, and the
• 28:00
  source points out that local Baptist Church members were
• 28:02
  among the victims. How did the church respond to
• 28:05
  something so devastating? They ministered.
• 28:07
  They didn't run. They served their devastated
• 28:10
  community. They mourned with those who
• 28:12
  mourned. That is biblical proclamation in
• 28:15
  action, faith working through love in the midst of unspeakable
• 28:18
  pain. There's a theological nugget in
• 28:20
  this Slavic section that I found really powerful, the theology of
• 28:23
  repentance. Yes, this is fascinating.
• 28:26
  In many Slavic churches, if you want to ask someone when were
• 28:29
  you saved, you don't use that phrase.
• 28:32
  What do you ask? You ask when did you repent?
• 28:34
  When did you repent? That is powerful.
• 28:36
  It's so biblical, it aligns perfectly with what Jesus says
• 28:39
  in Luke 24 and what Paul preaches in Acts 20.
• 28:42
  Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin.
• 28:46
  They are inseparable. In the West we often just say
• 28:49
  believe. Just accept Jesus into your
• 28:51
  heart. But the Slavic church, having
• 28:53
  been forged in the fires of persecution, remembers that you
• 28:56
  cannot truly embrace Christ without constantly turning away
• 28:59
  from your sin. It's a robust biblical view of
• 29:01
  what salvation entails. And the resilience is just
• 29:04
  amazing. The source notes that even with
• 29:06
  the war in Ukraine starting in 2022, the number of pastors
• 29:10
  supported by the Slavic Gospel Association actually increased
• 29:13
  by 7% across the CIS. War could not stop the
• 29:16
  proclamation. In fact, hardship and
• 29:18
  persecution often clarify the mission.
• 29:21
  When all the comfortable cultural props are knocked away,
• 29:23
  all you have left is the Word of God.
• 29:25
  So we have traveled from Clement in the 1st century to the modern
• 29:29
  Slavic church. Let's try to bring this all in
• 29:31
  for a landing. What's the synthesis here?
• 29:33
  What's the big take away from this 2000 year survey?
• 29:36
  The pattern is undeniable. History is a pendulum.
• 29:40
  It swings back and forth between these two poles.
• 29:42
  We started with biblical proclamation, trusting the
• 29:45
  sufficiency of God's Word and cultural accommodation, trusting
• 29:49
  human cleverness. And every time the church swings
• 29:52
  too far towards accommodation, the lights start to go out.
• 29:55
  Every single time. Whether it was the allegorists
• 29:58
  in Alexandria, the synchronous in the Middle Ages, or the
• 30:01
  liberals in the modern era. When we prioritize making the
• 30:05
  message palatable to the culture over making it faithful to the
• 30:08
  Word, we lose the Gospel itself. God's work is done best when the
• 30:13
  church stays anchored at that biblical proclamation pole.
• 30:16
  It is. It's the only safe place to be.
• 30:18
  The source ends with a pretty stark warning.
• 30:20
  It does. It says that if missionaries
• 30:22
  today do not advocate for the convictions of the earliest
• 30:24
  disciples, then future missions might cease to involve Scripture
• 30:28
  at all. We risk entering another dark
• 30:30
  age. A new one, a post Christian dark
• 30:33
  age. That is a chilling thought, a
• 30:36
  mission field with no Bible, just social work and good
• 30:39
  philosophy and empty religion. That's why that distinction we
• 30:42
  talked about earlier is so vital.
• 30:45
  We must know the difference between linguistic
• 30:47
  accommodation, which is simply making the unchanging truth
• 30:51
  clear, and cultural accommodation, which is changing
• 30:55
  the truth to fit in. So here's a provocative thought
• 30:58
  for you, the listener, to take away from our deep dive today.
• 31:02
  In your own life, when you share your faith with a neighbor or a
• 31:06
  Co worker, are you practicing linguistic accommodation or
• 31:10
  cultural accommodation? Are you working hard to explain
• 31:13
  the hard truths of sin and grace and judgement clearly and
• 31:17
  lovingly? Or are you softening those hard
• 31:19
  truths so people will like you or think you're reasonable?
• 31:22
  The future of the Church in many ways depends on us knowing the
• 31:25
  difference. Indeed it does.
• 31:27
  Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into reformed
• 31:29
  thinking. Keep the faith, We'll see you
• 31:30
  next time.