According to Philip Jenkins, “one central fact in the changing religious picture is massive relative decline in the proportion of world’s people who live in the rationally advanced nations (in Europe and America).
Philip Jenkins again said that when the Western Christian leaders look at the non-Western world, they see what they want to see. He also said “Who knows, Non-Western world change, perhaps some of their churches too will someday favor ordaining women, and even blessing the marriages of homosexuals. If a single lesson emerges from all the recent scholarship on the rising churches, it is they define themselves according to their own standards despite all the eager efforts to shape them in the mold of the Old Christendom.”
The new streams of Kingdom mission of the future will not be from the old Christendom but from the new Christendom. And the center of that mission will be eschatological mission until He comes on earth for the final judgment of the world. The missionary task in the final age of mission is not to do project enterprise mission but to proclaim clearly that He is Coming Soon! And to prepare to do battle with the work of Satan, to defeat Satan.
We are in a tumultuous time. Much of the world is becoming increasingly dark as we move toward the future. Most of the peoples are living and moving without clear direction. The only light in this hopeless dark world is the Word of God which was given to us to proclaim to every people, every language and every culture of the world.
Many prophetic writers have called our time the end of the world. This is very much true. At the brink of the last age of an old world, we should not attempt earthly, humanitarian ways of mission which we were accustomed to historically. The Kingdom mission is shifting back to the Biblical and Apostolic way of mission.
The Apostle John saw a new heaven and a new earth; we too must proclaim the coming of a new heaven and a new earth. The old heaven and the old earth will disappear.
The Apostle John saw “a great multitude that no one could count, peoples and languages, standing before the throne and in the front of the lamb.”
What will be the DNA of the missionary task in the future? What should be our voice of proclamation in the future? We must proclaim that the old things will pass away very soon. There will be no more works of Satan. A new heaven and a new earth, a paradise, will be coming soon. His angel said that this “must happen soon.” Jesus himself says “I am coming soon. Happy are those who obey the prophetic words in this book.”

I would like to indicate three essential factors to study mission as followings:
The first factor is the Anatomical Study. If we justify without anatomize the history of Christian mission, our activities will cause misleading missionaries. And they would believe with cautiousness on their mission activities, weakness or mistake of mission history and over-stating of the achievement of mission history.
Through re-thinking and examining mission history as a part of world history by analyzing the connection between the ruling power, the nation, culture and religion, we have to anatomize the old history of expansion of Christianity of two thousand years very carefully and search for a way to remove obstacles and justify what should be succeeded in the future of mission, particularly to find accurate relationship between state and religion, as well as between nation and culture.
Therefore, accurate study of mission history needs to attempt anatomy of the power encounter between Christian religion and Roman Empire and Papacy until reformation era. The changing power encounter or relationship of church and history during the Reformation and Revolutionary age in the Western Christendom are to be anatomized.
Anatomical study of mission history means digging out every facts of the past very carefully with searching even very minor symptom within mission history and secular history of the world at the same time.

The second factor is the Clinical Study of actual spot of mission history. In actual spot of mission, there are many things to be observed and test the facts and realities of the environment and actual matters of mission history,
Without check and test the environment and actual matters of mission history, we will mis-measure and cause misjudgment.

Third factor is the Diagnostics Study of mission history. In all kinds of illness, distress and disability facts, the proper and accurate diagnosis is needed. In the mission history, there are also many facts of ill, distress which need diagnostic study to cure symptoms of all illness of mission in the history.

Thus, to have accurate and proper study of mission history, we should diagnose to cure the fails, mistakes, and illness of mission in the history.

Because all races and nations and countries, whether big or small, whether rich or poor, whether strong or weak, are called from their natural place to minister within the kingdom of God, no one should use any humanitarian prejudice or denominational ambition, or any traditional Christian system or structure, to hinder or oppress our independent, indigenous and spontaneous efforts.

As the world is divided into many philosophies, cultures and social structures, we must recognize and respect that fact that we think differently and our situations are different from one another. But at the same time, because we know that the One God called us and commands us, we have to understand one another, respect one another, share one another’s burden and accomplish our common goals by sharing resources with the weaker, the poorer,the less powerful among us to meet each other’s needs.

The world of differences between East and West, between North and South are disappearing. They had to work separately in those days. It was difficult to create a common structure for working together. And we could leave all the work to the “have’s” and the stronger people. But now it is impossible to have vertical or subordinate relationships among races and nations. Now, we are “workers of the sunset” called for the last harvest in our global village, this last age requires a mutual approach anc co-existence, in which East and West are side by side, North and South are front to back. We have to work shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand. we cannot delay any longer. We should not stay outside the vineyard. The end of the world is approaching. We have to call the last mission forces without holding back any reserves.

Indeed our untied front for Third World Missions Advance is a new movement. We represent new forces. It is unwise to put new wine into old wineskins. We are making a new wineskin to hold new wine. To speak of a new age and a new world means new times and new places replacing an old age and an old world.

From the age of Mediterranean nations, the 16th Century, and the finding of a new world. The 19th and the 20th Centuries seems to have been age of North Atlantic countries. They have worked so hard for their plans for a new world. Those two wineskins now seem old, too old for the new world of, nearly 300 independent nations. The world is changing so fast, so much, in so many ways that we cannot repair some of these old structures to meet our needs today.

The door of a new age is opening to us. This is the age of the small, the little and the weak replacing the big and the strong. It could be called the age of the ants or the grasshoppers. I saw big houses of ants in Africa and Latin America. Such small insects were building structures twice as tall as any human being, and as strong as rock. maybe the people of the Third World are to be like those ants and our cooperative network as the house of ants.

I certainly believe that if we can join together our strengths and resources, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will see a miraculous outcome. We have learned from the teaching of the mustard seed in the New Testament and the fearful power of the grasshoppers in the Pentateuch. We are approaching the age in which we will discover the power of the weak and the poor. The years beyond 2000 may well be the age that will belong to the powerless and the weak of today. The coming new age is the age when the weak will join together to be the strong, and the weak will disgrace the strong. The new age will be the last age of the Holy spirit in which the nucleus of life will be exploded.

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The theme of the Forum was “Discern What is Right” based on Luke 12:57. 

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