Lesson 11: “Mission to the Unreached: Part 2”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author is twisting the gospel accounts to make them lessons in cross-cultural evangelism.
- The author completely misses the significance of Peter’s Acts 10 vision and the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.
- The Teachers’ Comments use a critical race theory model for teaching cross-cultural missions.
In Part 2 of “Mission to the Unreached”, the focus of the author is to teach the reader to see reality from a perspective of needing to change their perhaps habituated way of understanding cultures and ethnicities in order to be winsome in sharing Adventism.
In Saturday’s introduction to the week’s study, the foundation is laid for instilling the need to do ministry in the cities. Ironically, the author says this:
Yet, many of God’s people act as Jonah did when called to witness to a city: for whatever reason, they flee from the task. “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4, NKJV). That includes what was written about Jonah.
First, the feigned ignorance of Adventists’ resistance to city-living and city evangelism must be exposed. Adventists have a long tradition of leaving the cities based on Ellen White’s multiple commands to move to the country. Here are a couple of examples of her counsels:
Believers who are now living in the cities will have to move to the country, that they may save their children from ruin. Attention must be given to the establishment of industries in which these families can find employment (Country Living, 19:4).
Our restaurants must be in the cities; for otherwise the workers in these restaurants could not reach the people and teach them the principles of right living. And for the present we shall have to occupy meetinghouses in the cities. But erelong there will be such strife and confusion in the cities, that those who wish to leave them will not be able. We must be preparing for these issues. This is the light that is given me (The General Conference Bulletin, April 6, 1903).
As God’s commandment-keeping people, we must leave the cities. As did Enoch, we must work in the cities but not dwell in them (Evangelism, 78, 79 [1899]).
So, from the opening of the week’s lesson, we see that the author is conveniently “forgetting” or ignoring that it was the prophet herself who, over and over, counseled Adventists to leave the cities and to move to the country. While she did endorse some city work, the overall tone was that people were to leave the cities to avoid impending trouble and live in the country. If necessary, individuals could work in the cities, but the mandate was country living.
One last comment: where did EGW get the knowledge that Enoch lived in the country and worked in a city? This detail is simply nowhere in Scripture. Furthermore, he lived before the flood, and her subsequent paragraph comparing Enoch’s situation with Lot’s in Sodom is completely unwarranted. The two did not overlap nor live in the same world!
…the author uses Jesus’s taking His disciples from Gennesaret into Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 14 and 15) and a similar account in Mark 7 to develop a point that Jesus was culturally sensitive and that the two authors wrote these accounts to demonstrate cultural sensitivity in one’s language.
Further, the author uses Jesus’s taking His disciples from Gennesaret into Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 14 and 15) and a similar account in Mark 7 to develop a point that Jesus was culturally sensitive and that the two authors wrote these accounts to demonstrate cultural sensitivity in one’s language. In fact, this idea is not the point of these accounts.
The lesson says that Jesus took His disciples into these gentile-rich areas “to teach His disciples lesson that would help prepare them for their calling to reach all people groups, including urbanites” (p. 138). The author then refers to accounts from Judges and 1 Kings to illustrate that these areas were historically pagan and “a stumbling block to Israel”.
Yet the author states, “In this way [Jesus] initiated them in cross-cultural urban mission, confronting their bias and bigotry, and modeled for His followers wholistic urban mission to all cultures and nationalities.”
To be sure, Jesus took His disciples into gentile territory to prepare them for their work of planting the church after His departure. Mark records the feeding of the 4,000 gentiles as well as other interactions with gentiles including the Syro-Phoenician woman who begged Jesus to heal her daughter.
Jesus was preparing His Jewish disciples to work among the gentiles. The law had strictly forbidden Jews from socializing with gentiles. They were not to eat together, and gentiles were considered ritually unclean. This separation was not whimsical nor culturally driven. Quite the opposite; the Israelites were continually drawn to the gentile women and gods.
The law established rigid boundaries between Jews and gentiles, and these boundaries were God’s design for protecting His holy seed. His chosen people were to remain pure from the influence of pagan worship and immorality, and the law stated their clear set of boundaries they were never to cross.
The lesson’s author makes no mention of the historic, legally-demanded separation between Jews and gentiles.
What Jesus was doing was NOT primarily a cultural lesson; He was preparing his Jewish disciples for the fact that they would have to serve and evangelize gentiles. Jesus had them feed the gentiles—a behavior the law would not permit. Yet Jesus had them serve these people, walking among them and serving them food which He miraculously provided. He was showing the twelve that they would minister His gospel, His salvation, to all nations.
This was not cultural sensitivity training. This was learning to act as servants to people they had previously felt were out-of-reach and inferior to them.
The lesson, however, turns these events into a form of “critical race theory” training.
Acts 10 and 15
The lesson mentions Peter’s vision in Acts 10, when three times a sheet of unclean animals was let down from heaven and he was commanded to “Kill and eat.” In context, this vision was connected with Peter’s being sent to gentile Cornelius’s household where he preached the gospel and witnessed these gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit without ever coming under the law.
The lesson, however, simply says Peter was told not to consider any person unclean. Similarly the Council of Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15 was also mentioned in the Teachers’ Comments, and the author simply says,
That event and the subsequent lengthy deliberation on the meaning of this new thing that God was doing (Acts 15) convinced the early church that the admission of the Gentiles into the commonwealth of believers, as full beneficiaries of God’s redemptive work in Christ, was ordained by God. As such, there was nothing they could do to invalidate this divine decree. Rather, it was now their responsibility not to overlook anybody in the sharing of the gospel.
This was not the point at all! Acts 15 shows that the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, proclaimed that gentiles were not to be circumcised and brought under the law! The laws of Moses were never to be required of gentiles believers. After all, Peter had witnessed the first gentiles being filled with the Hoy Spirit without ever being under the law!
Sabbath was never required of the gentiles, nor were the levitical food laws.
Similarly, the Teachers’ Comments refer to Melchizedek, the ing-priest who is shown to be a type of Christ to whom Abraham, the recipient of God’s promises, paid tithe. Hebrews 7 explains that the lesser pays tithe to the greater; Melchizedek, a priest-king before there ever was the law, became the type of the Lord Jesus who is a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek, not of Levi.
In other words, Jesus, like Melchizedek, does not have a priesthood defined or explained by the levitical law. He is ABOVE the law.
The lesson does NOT make this point. Instead, they say this:
Abraham’s acceptance of Melchizedek’s blessings and his gift of his tithe to the Canaanite priest suggest that Abraham legitimized Melchizedek’s priesthood (Gen. 14:19, 20).
According to Hebrews 7, this evaluation is utterly wrong. Abraham did not legitimize Melchizedek. Quite the contrary; Melchizedek legitimized Abraham. Hebrews 7 is unequivocal about this fact. Melchizedek was a higher authority than Abraham, and he foreshadowed the Lord Jesus who was a higher authority than both the law and the patriarchs!
“Woke” Appeal
The Teachers Comments end with this statement:
There are, in every context of life, people who have not yet responded to the gospel. They may be our next-door neighbors, our colleagues, our classmates, our customers, our patients, or our students. We may encounter them as immigrants, refugees, international students, diplomats, or international businesspeople. Whatever the social, cultural, and religious background of the unreached people we encounter and minister to, we need to acknowledge that we cannot effectively minister to any group of people without first freeing ourselves from stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination toward them. We, therefore, need to pray that God will liberate us from any such prejudice.
This statement is anti-gospel. We are never called to free ourselves from stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination before ministering—and that fact is not because we are already free from prejudices. On the contrary, none of these things can resolve apart from Christ.
Adventism does not teach the gospel of Jesus’ finished work. It teaches a false gospel that demands Sabbath-keeping and a healthy lifestyle in order to show that one loves God.
When we understand, however, that we are born spiritually dead in sin and must be made alive through faith and belief in the Lord Jesus, when we trust His finished work of atonement, we are born again. We pass from death to life, and the Holy Spirit seals us and indwells us.
The Lord Jesus literally resides in us and takes the place of the law in teaching us to live in trust and godliness.
No person is more oppressed than another spiritually. We are all born dead in sin, and we must be made alive in Christ.
No person is more oppressed than another spiritually. We are all born dead in sin, and we must be made alive in Christ. When we are, we find that we are born of God just as everyone else who believes. All who do not yet believe are equally dead in sin.
The prerequisite for being able to minister is not trying to overcome stereotypes and prejudices; it is submitting our identities to the Lord Jesus. When we do that, we are made new, and we have new hearts and new spirits and the indwelling Holy Spirit. He places His own love in our hearts and gives us His love for the lost.
Adventism sees everything from a great controversy, human-centered viewpoint. Our call is to believe God’s word and submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus who defines reality and brings us to life when we believe. †
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