everlasting-gospels.gif

 And Why Europe?
letter-text.gif
line.gif
guide_img.gif

July 18 - And Why Europe?

 guide_img.gif

 

line.gif

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles. Matt. 10:5.

The question has often been asked why Seventh-day Adventism should have chosen Central Europe. . .as the first for their foreign mission oepration," B. L. Whitney stated in 1886 in the first paragraph of Historical Scketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, the first Adventist book on overseas missions. Part of the answer has to do with "Czechowski's preparatory mission," but there is more to it than that.

J. N. Andrews provides us with a crucial insight into Whitney's query in his first letter home after arriving in Europe. He wrote that "I firmly believe that God has much people in Europe who are reday to obey his holy law and to reverence the Sabbath, and to wait for his Son from heaven. I came here to give my life to the proclamation of these sacred truths concerning the near advent of Christ and the observance of the Sabbath."

In other words, Andrews believed that his task was to present the Adventist doctrines to those who were already Christian. His was not a mission of general Christianity to pagans. Responsibility to the latter would remain outside the scope of Adventist missiology until the 1890s.

Borge Schanta accurately summarizes the Adventist attitude between 1874 and 1890 when he observes that "mission to non-Christians was approved of and parised" by the Adventists, but "it was regarded as the task that other evangelical mission societies could take care of. When they had brought people to Christ, the SDAs were committed to bringing them the last warning" and the distinctive Adventist doctrines.

Such an approach grew out of the Adventists' understanding that they were to call people "out of Bybylon." James White had earlier expressed that viewpoint explicitly wen he wrote that Adventists needed a missionary spirit, "not to send the gospel to the heathen, but to extend the warning throughout the realms of corrupted Christianity."

With that perspective in mind, it is not surpirising that the denomination began its mission work  in the heartland of Christian Europe. It echeod the early missionary labors of Paul, who preached to the Jews first, and only later to the Gentiles.

         line.gif
guide_img_bottom.gif guide_img_bottom.gif

Thank You, God, for light. As You have given Your church a wider vision across tiem, we pray that in the same way You will widen and deepen our own personal visions.
line.gif
이 게시물을...