Marbaniang, Domenic

"Then they will heed your voice...." (Exo 3:18) Moses' second question also includes the concern about the "How" of doing this mission. Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them,`The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me,`What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" (Exo 3:13) He is already calculating the possible problems aforehand, which is not bad. Moses' question button turns on God's light on His plan of redemption. God tells him what he has to tell the elders and what they should do, how they should meet the Pharaoh, how he would refuse to let the people of Israel go, and then how God would bring them out. Usually, the man or woman called to divine mission knows what the mission really is all about. However, not all of us have an idea of the divine plan. Sometimes, God shows us the entire plan at a glimpse. Sometimes, He leads us step by step. But, nevertheless, ...

Then Moses said to God, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them,`The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me,`What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" (Exo 3:13) "So, who are You?" Moses asks the Lord. In response, God gives to Moses a three-fold revelation of Himself. 1. He IS that He IS. The FINAL Authority of Mission.  He replies, "I AM WHO I AM."..."Thus you shall say to the children of Israel,`I AM has sent me to you.'" (Exo 3:14). This reveals the ESSENTIAL IDENTITY of God. He cannot be identified with any definition because His existence is not dependent on anything outside Himself. My existence is dependent on many factors. So, if someone asks me who I am, I would reply saying, "I am the son of so and so, I live in such and such place, and I do such and such job or work for so and so...." This would still be only one aspect of the many things that makes me who I am. The...

Exodus 3 and 4 record God's call of Moses to deliver the people of Israel and lead them into the Promised Land. Background Hebrews 11:23 tells us that the parents of Moses were strong believers. Hebrews 11:24-26 tells us that when the time came for Moses to choose, he "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward. (Heb 11:24-26) In other words, Moses was a person who made a honest choice to follow Christ and His path of suffering. It is wrong to imagine that if Moses would have been patient and not killed the Egyptian he would have become the next Pharaoh. The Bible says that He actually made the choice to refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. It seems that Egyptian politics was deeply tied with their polytheistic religion that in a way also de...

Oswald J. Smith, The Challenge of Missions , pp.63,64 In Acts 19:8-10, 18-20, we have a marvelous example of the Pauline method. In two short years, we are told, all those in Asia heard the Gospel. Asia covered a territory of approximately 50,000 square miles. There was a mighty revival. Books belonging to various false cults were burned publicly. The upheaval was so great that books costing thousands of dollars were burned. How did it happen? Paul took charge of a school and taught every day. Most certainly he did not travel throughout Asia and evangelize the country himself. So far a the record goes, he stayed in one place, but he taught others; then they in turn went everywhere preaching the Gospel, with the results described in the 19th chapter. Wherever he went, he "preached and taught" (Acts 14:21). That method cannot be improved upon. It will work everywhere. The West Indies Mission has proved it. They started in Cuba with a Bible School. Not a church, mark you, but a ...

Whenever a new word enters the market, there are many who wish to grab it and use it to express or verbalize concepts that occur to them. However, it is important to avoid sporadic use of expressions without understanding them in their original usage. It can lead to confusion of language. Two terms that are becoming more popularly used, in addition to "mission", are "missions" and "missional", and they require proper definition. Let's look at some popular definitions of these terms: Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God's People --Mission is all that God is doing in his great purpose for the whole of creation and all that he calls us to do in cooperation with that purpose. (Analogy: Science) --Missions is the multitude of activities that God's people can engage in, by means of which they participate in God's mission. (Analogy: Sciences) --Missional is to have (Analogy: Scientific) Ed Stetzer, Missions vs. Missional? --Mission is the...

Pentecost has a number of theological implications for missions that cannot be ignored. The ethno-linguistic-geographical division that resulted at Babel was obliterated at Pentecost; and the pouring of the Holy Spirit entailed not only the transcending of linguistic barriers but also the ingathering of both Jews and Gentiles into one. "If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?"(Acts 11:17). Of course, though this doesn't mean that barriers and divisions are no more, it does certainly mean that missionary methods must honestly conform to the biblical picture of the Church. Theologically, we can recognize at least four distinctions in God’s ordering of the history of humanity: the original ordering, the divisive ordering, the in-gathering ordering, and the final ordering. 1. The Original Ordering. In the original ordering, humanity is one. Nationalities didn’t exist because plur...

Take for instance the case of your neighbor or a friend that you know is not a believer in Christ. What is the difference between you as a believer and the other? The constitutionalist would say that there is a constitutional or ontological difference: the unbeliever’s spirit is dead, or the unbeliever’s nature is totally wicked (though he may sometimes seem to be doing good), while your spirit has been made alive or recreated and you have been imparted a divine nature. Thus, there is a constitutional difference between you and the unbeliever. The non-constitutionalist, on the other hand, will say that there is no constitutional difference between the two of you; the only difference is faith, which in the believer is present, but in the unbeliever is absent. Christ and the Spirit indwell us by faith (Eph.3:17; 2:22). Faith is epistemic condition, involving free choice; it is not an ontic property related to nature and being. Now, the presence of doubts at times doesn’t...

Excerpt from "Globalization: A Theological Overview", Paper at CMS Consultation, UBS, January 2014 Theologically, we can recognize at least four distinctions in God’s ordering of the history of humanity: the original ordering, the divisive ordering, the in-gathering ordering, and the final ordering. 1. The Original Ordering. In the original ordering, humanity is one. Nationalities didn’t exist because plurality of language and culture was unknown. This original ordering began to break down after sin when man first understood the sense of shame and guilt as the man and the woman hid behind trees to hide their nakedness. Later, jealousy, murder, and lustful imagination employed the original ordering to infect the entire humanity to the extent that God desired to wipe off the entire human race. A global flood became the only resolution. 2. The Divisive Ordering. After the Flood, humanity was given a divisive ordering. ‘Confusion’ was the word used to describe this division bec...

1. Mission-field Unity. Mission-field unity is seen where mission boards agree to divide geographic or ethnographic mission fields to work in harmony and not in competition with each other. For instance, in North-East India, Baptist and Presbyterian mission boards divided areas of operation to effectively do missions. Thus, while we have the Garo Baptist Churches, we have the Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Churches in Meghalaya, because while the Baptist missionaries went to Garo Hills, the Presbyterians came to the Khasi-Jaintia Hills. Similar is the case where in Mizoram, Baptists and Presbyterians agreed upon the North and the South of Mizoram as separate mission fields between themselves. 2. Ecumenical Denominational Unity (Church Union). This occurs when various denominations merge into one denomination or organized Christian church. The Church of South India is an example of this model. "It came into being by a union of Anglican and Protestant churches in South India. It combin...

Paper presented at CMS National Consultation, Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, January 2014 ABSTRACT Globalization is not necessarily a threat to the Gospel; in fact, it must be utilized as the contextual environment of gospelization. At the same time, one must watch against fundamentalistic globalism as well as globalistic pluralism or skepticism. A theology of history that identifies Pentecost as the spiritual reversal of Babel confusion towards the final ingathering of all in Christ will not be alarmed at the trans-cultural dynamics of globalization. Defining Globalization There have been various approaches to defining globalization. Some are descriptive definitions, while others are normative and prescriptive ones. The descriptive vary according to the variation of approaches; the normative stand for or against a form of globalization. Descriptive theories of globalisation are those that inductively define the nature of globalisation by trying to identify its essential characteristi...