Refugees and God’s “Go-Come Mechanism”
WCIU Journal: Social Justice Topic
October 16, 2020
by Roberta and Ralph Winter (excerpts from the Foundations Course Reader)
Ralph Winter speaks of the “Go-Come Mechanism” of missions. That means that throughout the whole Bible [and all of history], you have the sense of God sending people, and also bringing people back to where his people are resident, where the gospel is resident (Roberta Winter 2009, 57).
This redemptive history is a continuous story running from Abraham to Christ and up to the present time in ten epochs. The theme that links these ten epochs of redemptive history is the grace of God intervening in a “world which lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19), contesting an enemy who temporarily is “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4) so that the nations will praise God’s name. God’s plan for doing this is to reach all peoples by conferring an unusual “blessing” on Abraham and Abraham’s seed (Abraham’s children-by-faith), even as we pray “Thy Kingdom come.” By contrast, the evil one’s plan is to bring reproach on the Name of God. The evil one stirs up hate, perhaps authors suffering and all destruction of God’s good creation. Satan’s devices may very well include devising virulent germs in order to tear down confidence in God’s loving character.
This “blessing” of God is in effect conditioned upon its being shared with other nations, since those who yield to and receive God’s blessing are, like Abraham, those of faith who subject themselves to God’s will, become part of God’s Kingdom, and represent the extension of his rule, power, and authority within all peoples
The First Half of the 4,000-Year Story
The story of the “strike back” as we see it in Genesis 12 begins in about 2000 BC. During roughly the next 400 years, Abraham was chosen, and moved to the geographic center of the Afro-Asian land mass. The time of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph (often called the Period of the Patriarchs) displays relatively small breakthroughs of witness to the surrounding nations even though the central mandate to restore God’s control over all nations (Gen 12:1-3) is repeated twice again to Abraham (18:18, 22:18), and once to both Isaac (26:4) and Jacob (28:14,15).
Joseph observed to his brothers, “You sold me, but God sent me.” He was obviously a great blessing to the nation of Egypt. Even Pharaoh recognized that Joseph was filled with the Spirit of God (Gen 41:38, TLB). But this was not the intentional missionary obedience God wanted. (Ralph Winter 2009, 8).
The next four periods, roughly 400 years each, are: 2) the Captivity, 3) the Judges, 4) the Kings and 5) that of the Babylonian Exile and dispersion (diaspora). During this rough and tumble, the promised blessing and the expected mission (to extend God’s rule to all the nations of the world) all but disappear from sight. As a result, where possible, God accomplished His will through the voluntary obedience of His people, but where necessary, He accomplished His will through involuntary means. Joseph, Jonah, the nation as a whole when taken captive represent the category of involuntary missionary outreach intended by God to force the extension of the blessing. The little girl carried away captive to the house of Naaman the Syrian was able to share her faith. Naomi, who “went” a distance away, shared her faith with her children and their non-Jewish wives. On the other hand, Ruth, her daughter-in-law, Naaman the Syrian, and the Queen of Sheba all “came” voluntarily, attracted by God’s blessing-relationship with Israel.
Note, then, the four different “mission mechanisms” at work to bless other peoples:
1) going voluntarily
2) involuntarily going without missionary intent
3) coming voluntarily
4) coming involuntarily (as with Gentiles forcibly settled in Israel—2 Kings 17).
Thus, we see in every epoch the active concern of God to forward His mission, with or without the full cooperation of His chosen nation.
When Jesus appears, it is an incriminating “visitation.” He comes to His own, and “His own receive Him not“ ( John 1:11). He is well received in Nazareth until He refers to God’s desire to bless the Gentiles. At that precise moment (Luke 4:28) an explosion of homicidal fury betrays the fact that this chosen nation—chosen to receive and to mediate the blessing (Ex 19:5, 6; Ps 67; Isa 49:6)—has grossly fallen short.
The Second Half of the Story
The next 2,000-year period is one in which God, on the basis of the intervention of His Son, makes sure that the other nations are both blessed and similarly called “to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.” In one sense the next five epochs are not all that different from the first five epochs. Those nations that are blessed do not seem terribly eager to share that unique blessing and extend that new kingdom. The Celts are the most active nation in the first millennium to give an outstanding missionary response. As we will see—just as in the Old Testament—the conferral of this unique blessing will bring sober responsibility, dangerous if unfulfilled. And we will see repeated again and again God’s use of the full range of the four missionary mechanisms (Ralph Winter 2009, 9).
There is good reason to suppose that the Christian faith spread in many areas by the “involuntary-go” mechanism, because Christians were often dispersed
as the result of persecutions. We know that fleeing Arian Christians had a lot to do with the conversion of the Goths. We have the stories of Ulfilas and Patrick whose missionary efforts were in each case initiated by the accident of their being taken captive (Ralph Winter 2009, 12).
No wonder the Anglican prayer book contains the prayer, “From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us.” Once more, when Christians did not reach out to them, pagan peoples came after what the Christians possessed. And once more, the phenomenal power of Christianity manifested itself: the conquerors became conquered by the faith of their captives. Usually it was the monks sold as slaves or Christian girls forced to be their wives and mistresses who eventually won these savages of the north. In God’s providence their redemption became more important than the harrowing tragedy of this new invasion of barbarian violence and evil which fell upon God’s own people whom He loved. After all, He spared not His own Son in order to redeem us! Thus, again, what Satan intended for evil, God used for good (Ralph Winter 2009, 17).
Conclusion
By mechanisms of going or coming and whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it would seem that God is in the mission business whether God’s people fully understand that fact or not. It seems like today most believers “live and move and have their being” with only the slightest awareness if any at all of the grander plans of God. It is terribly unfortunate that the overall purposes of God are either unknown or nearly totally ignored by believers in the contemporary church (Ralph Winter 2008).
Sometimes God’s people go, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes kicking and screaming like Jonah did. Sometimes the people who did not know God came voluntarily, like the Queen of Sheba. Today, they may come involuntarily, like the people arriving in our country as refugees (Roberta Winter 2009, 57).
References
Winter, Ralph D. 2008. Foundations Course Lecture Four: “The Unfolding Story of Scripture, Part 1.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b3157f3b40b9d21a8096625/t/5ecd83ca29db2e1e760d19f2/1590526923228/Foundations+Lectures%27+urls.pdf.
______. 2009. “The Kingdom Strikes Back.” In Foundations of the World Christian Movement: Course Reader, rev. ed., edited by Ralph D. Winter and Beth Snodderly. Pasadena: Institute of International Studies, 7-24. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b3157f3b40b9d21a8096625/t/5ed13d18cfba127f3c41f09d/1590770998243/Foundations+Reader.pdf.
Winter, Roberta H. 2009. “The People of God and Other Nations.” In Foundations of the World Christian Movement: Course Reader, rev. ed., edited by Ralph D. Winter and Beth Snodderly. Pasadena: Institute of International Studies, 57-62. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b3157f3b40b9d21a8096625/t/5ed13d18cfba127f3c41f09d/1590770998243/Foundations+Reader.pdf.