Four Men, Three Eras

You can change world history!

How?

Check out the lives of four men whom God used to change the world!

You are a part of the final phase of a historical movement! Do you feel inadequate, or think that your education or work background rules you out? Wrong! Anyone can be used mightily by God. You need not even be a full-time Christian worker. College students, women, business people, parents, professionals… each of us have a role to play in God's global army.

As you go through the following article, notice the roles (whether prominent or behind-the-scenes) played by various people in this historical movement.

Over the past two hundred years three new mission strategies have refocused missionary effort to neglected people. Each new thrust to bring the Gospel where it had never gone before, was lead by a pioneer with a passion to pursue God's heart for the nations.

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Four Men, Three Eras
by Ralph D. Winter

Recently, Christians have thought a lot about trends in history and their relationship to events to come. People are responsive to a "where are we going" approach to life.

Christians actually have a lot to look back on, backed up by a mass of hard facts and heroic deeds. Yet for some reason, Christians often make little connection between discussion of prophecy (and future events) and discussion of missions. They see the Bible as a book of prophecy, both in the past and for the future. Yet, as Bruce Ker has said so well, "The Bible is a missionary book throughout. The main line of argument that binds all of it together is the unfolding and gradual execution of a missionary purpose."

The Biblical Basis of Missions

The story of missions begins long before the Great Commission. The Bible is very clear: God told Abraham he was to be blessed and was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth [Gen. 12:1-3]. Peter quoted this on the day he spoke in the temple [Acts 3:25]. Paul quoted the same mandate in his letter to the Galatians [3:8].

Israel, as far back as Abraham, was accountable to share that blessing with other nations. Since the time of the Apostle Paul, every nation which has contained any significant number of children of Abraham's faith has been similarly accountable. However, both Israel and the other nations have mainly failed to carry out this mandate.

The greatest scandal in the Old Testament is that Israel tried to be blessed without trying very hard to be a blessing. However, let's be careful: the average citizen of Israel was no more oblivious to the second part of Gen. 12:1-3 than the average Christian today is oblivious to the Great Commission! How easily our study Bibles overlook the veritable string of key passages in the Old Testament which exist to remind Israel (and us) of the missionary mandate: [Gen. 12:1-3, 18:18, 22:18, 28:14, Ex. 19:4-6, Deut. 28:10, 2 Chron. 6:33, Ps. 67, 96, 105, Isa. 40:5, 42:4, 49:6, 56:3, 6-8, Jer. 12:14-17, Zech. 2:11, Mal. 1:11].

Likewise, today, nations which have been singularly blessed by God may choose to resist and try to conceal any sense of their obligation to be a blessing to other nations. But that is not God's will. Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required. [Luke 12:48]

Some Churches Overlook Their Responsibility

How many times in the average church today is the Great Commission mentioned? Even less often than it comes up in the Old Testament! Yet the commission applies. It applied then, and it applies today. I believe it has been constantly applicable from the very moment it was first given [Gen. 12:1-3]. As individual Christians and as a nation we are responsible "to be a blessing to all the families of earth."

This mandate has been overlooked during most of the centuries since the apostles. Even our Protestant tradition plugged along for over 250 years minding its own business and its own blessings (like Israel of old) until a young man of great faith and incredible endurance appeared on the scene. Let us focus on the 1800-2000 period in which his life and witness kicked off. No other person can be given as much credit to the vibrant new impetus of the last two hundred years. He was one of four such influential men whom God used, all of them with severe handicaps. Three great "eras" of fresh outreach into newly perceived frontiers resulted from their faith and obedience (it took two of them to launch the third and final era). Four stages of mission strategy characterized each of these eras. Two perplexing "transitions" of strategy inevitably appeared as the last stage of one era contrasted with the first stage of the next. It is easier to see this in a diagram. Better still, the story.

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The First Era of Modern Missions: William Carey to the Coastlands (1792)

An "under thirty" young man, William Carey, got into trouble when he began to take the Great Commission seriously. When he had the opportunity to address a group of ministers, he challenged them to give a reason why the Great Commission did not apply to them. They rebuked him, saying, "When God chooses to win the heathen, He will do it without your help or ours." He was not permitted to speak again on the subject, so he patiently wrote out his analysis, "An Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens."

The resulting small book convinced a few of his friends to create a tiny missions agency, the "means" of which he had spoken. The structure was flimsy and weak, providing only the minimal backing he needed to go to India. However, the impact of his example reverberated throughout the English-speaking world, and his little book became the Magna Carta of the Protestant mission movement.

William Carey was not the first Protestant missionary. For years the Moravians had sent people to Greenland, America and Africa. But his little book, in combination with the Evangelical Awakening, quickened vision and changed lives on both sides of the Atlantic. Response was almost instantaneous: a second missionary society was founded in London; two in Scotland; one in Holland; and then still another in England. By then it was apparent to all that Carey was right when he had insisted that organized efforts in the form of missions societies were essential to the success of the missionary endeavor.

Students and Women Play Key Role

In America, five college students, aroused by Carey's book, met to pray for God's direction for their lives. This unobtrusive prayer meeting, later known as the "Haystack Prayer Meeting," resulted in an American "means", the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. Even more important, they started a student mission movement which became the example and forerunner of other student movements in missions to this day.

In fact, during the first 25 years after Carey sailed to India, a dozen mission agencies were formed on both sides of the Atlantic, and the First Era in Protestant missions was off to a good start. Realistically speaking, however, missions in this First Era was a pitifully small shoestring operation, in relation to the major preoccupations of most Europeans and Americans in that day. The idea that we should organize in order to send missionaries did not come easily, but it eventually became an accepted pattern.

Carey's influence led some women in Boston to form women's missionary prayer groups, a trend which led to women becoming the main custodians of mission knowledge and motivation. After some years, women began to go to the field as single missionaries. Finally, by 1865, unmarried American women established women's mission boards which, like Roman Catholic women's orders, only sent out single women as missionaries and were run entirely by single women at home.

Love and Sacrifice Beyond Comprehension

There are two very bright notes about the First Era. One is the astonishing demonstration of love and sacrifice on the part of those who went out. Africa, especially, was a forbidding continent. All mission outreach to Africa, prior to 1775, had totally failed. Of all Catholic efforts, all Moravian efforts, nothing remained. Not one missionary of any kind existed on the continent on the eve of the First Era. The gruesome statistics of almost inevitable sickness and death that haunted, yet did not daunt, the decades of truly valiant missionaries who went out after 1790 in virtually a suicidal stream cannot be matched by any other era or by any other cause. Very few missionaries to Africa in the first 60 years of the First Era survived more than two years. As I have reflected on this measure of devotion I have been humbled to tears, for I wonder if I or my people today could or would match that record. Can you imagine our urban students today going out into missionary work if they knew that for decade after decade, 19 out of 20 of those before them had died almost on arrival on the field?

New Mission Insights Develop in the First Era

A second bright spot in this First Era is the development of high quality insight into mission strategy. The movement had several great missiologists. In regard to home structure, they clearly understood the value of the mission structure being allowed a life of its own. For example, we read that the London Missionary Society experienced unprecedented and unequaled success, due partly to its freedom from ecclesiastical supervision and partly to its formation from an almost equal number of ministers and laymen. In regard to field structure, we can take a note from Henry Venn who was related to the famous Clapham evangelicals and was the son of a founder of the Church Missionary Society. Except for a few outdated terms, one of his most famous paragraphs sounds strangely modern:

"Regarding the ultimate object of a Mission, viewed under its ecclesiastical result, to be the settlement of a Native Church under Native Pastors upon a self-supporting system, it should be borne in mind that the progress of a Mission mainly depends upon the training up and the location of Native Pastors; and that, as it has been happily expressed, the "euthanasia of a Mission" takes place when a missionary, surrounded by well-trained Native congregations under Native Pastors, is able to resign all pastoral work into their hands, and gradually relax his superintendance over the pastors themselves, till it insensibly ceases; and so the Mission passes into a settled Christian community. Then the missionary and all missionary agencies should be transferred to the regions beyond."

Note: unfortunately no thought here of the national church launching its own mission outreach to new pioneer fields! Nevertheless, we see here something like stages of mission activity.

Slow and painstaking though the labors of the First Era were, they did bear fruit, and the familiar series of stages can be observed which goes from no church in the pioneer stage, to infant church in the paternal stage, and to the more complicated mature church in the partnership and participation stage.

Samuel Hoffman of the Reformed Church in America Board puts it well: "The Christian missionary who was loved as an evangelist and liked as a teacher, may find himself resented as an administrator."

By 1865 there was a strong consensus on both sides of the Atlantic that the missionary should go home when he had worked himself out of a job. Since the First Era focused primarily upon the coastlands of Asia and Africa, we are not surprised that literal withdrawal would come about first in a case where there were no inland territories. Thus, symbolizing the latter stages of the First Era was the withdrawal of all missionaries from the Hawaiian Islands (then a separate country). This was done with legitimate pride and fanfare and fulfilled the highest expectations, then and now, of successful progress through the stage of missionary planting, watering and harvest.

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The Second Era of Modern Missions: Hudson Taylor to the Interior (1865)

A second symbolic event of 1865 is even more significant, at least for the inauguration of the Second Era. A young man, after a short term and like Carey still under thirty, in the teeth of surrounding counter-advice, established the first of a whole new breed of missions emphasizing the inland territories. This second young upstart, Hudson Taylor, was given little but negative notice. Like William Carey, he brooded over statistics, charts and maps. When he suggested that the inland peoples of China needed to be reached, he was told you could not get there, and he was asked if he wished to carry on his shoulders the blood of the young people he would thus send to their deaths. This accusing question stunned and staggered him. Groping for light, wandering on the beach, it seemed as if God finally spoke to resolve the ghastly thought: "You are not sending young people in the interior of China. I am." The load lifted.

With only trade school medicine, without any university experience much less missiological training, and a checkered past in regard to his own individualistic behavior while he was on the field, he was merely one more of the weak things that God uses to confound the wise. Even his early antichurch-planting missionary strategy was breathtakingly erroneous by today's church-planting standards. Yet God strangely honored him because his gaze was fixed upon the world's least-reached peoples. Hudson Taylor had a divine wind behind him. The Holy Spirit spared him from many pitfalls, and it was his organization, the China Inland Mission, the most cooperative, servant organization yet to appear that eventually served in one way or another over 6,000 missionaries, predominantly in the interior of China. It took 20 years for other missions to begin to join Taylor in his special emphasis, the unreached, inland frontiers.

Obstacles to the Second Era

One reason the Second Era began slowly is that many people were confused. There were already many missions in existence. Why more? Yet as Taylor pointed out, all existing agencies were confined to the coastlands of Africa and Asia, or islands in the Pacific People questioned, "Why go to the interior if you haven't finished the job on the coast?"

I am not sure the parallel is true today, but the Second Era apparently needed not only a new vision but a lot of new organizations. Taylor not only started an English frontier mission, he went to Scandinavia and the Continent to challenge people to start new agencies. As a result, directly or indirectly, over 40 new agencies took shape to compose the faith missions that rightly should be called frontier missions as the names of many of them still indicate: China Inland Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, Africa Inland Mission, Heart of Africa Mission, Unevangelized Fields Mission, Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Taylor was more concerned for the cause than for a career. At the end of his life he had spent only half of his years of ministry in China. In countless trips back from China he spent half of his time as a mobilizer on the home front. For Taylor, the cause of Christ, not China, was the ultimate focus of his concern.

Massive Student Movement

As in the early stage of the First Era, when things began to move, God brought forth a student movement. This one was more massive than before. The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was history's single most potent mission organization. In the 1880's and 90's there were only 1/37th as many college students as there are today, but the Student Volunteer Movement netted 100,000 volunteers who gave their lives to missions. Twenty-thousand actually went overseas. As we see it now, the other 80,000 had to stay home to rebuild the foundations of the missions endeavor. They began the Laymen's Missionary Movement and strengthened existing women's missionary societies.

However, as the fresh new college students of the Second Era burst on the scene overseas, they did not always fathom how the older missionaries of the First Era could have turned responsibility over to national leadership at the least educated levels of society. First Era missionaries were in the minority now, and the wisdom they had gained from their experience was bypassed by the large number of new college-educated recruits. Thus, in the early stages of the Second Era, the new college-trained missionaries, instead of going to new frontiers, sometimes assumed leadership over existing churches, not reading the record of previous mission thinkers and often forced First Era missionaries and national leadership (which had been painstakingly developed) into the background. In some cases this caused a huge step backward in mission strategy.

By 1925, however, the largest mission movement in history was in full swing. By then Second Era missionaries had finally learned the basic lessons they had first ignored, and produced an incredible record. They had planted churches in a thousand new places, mainly 'inland' , and by 1940 the reality of the "younger churches" around the world was widely acclaimed as the "great new fact of our time." The strength of these churches led both national leaders and missionaries to assume that all additional frontiers could simply be mopped up by the ordinary evangelism of the churches scattered throughout the world. More and more people wondered if, in fact, missionaries weren't needed so badly! Once more, as in 1865, it seemed logical to send missionaries home from many areas of the world.

Transition Period Between Eras

For us today it is highly important to note the overlap of these first two eras. The 45 year period between 1865 and 1910 (compare 1934 to 1980 today) was a transition between the strategy appropriate to the mature stages of Era 1 (the Coastlands era) and the strategy appropriate to the pioneering stages of Era 2 (the Inland era).

Shortly after the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, there ensued the shattering World Wars and the world-wide collapse of the colonial apparatus. By 1945 many overseas churches were prepared not only for the withdrawal of the colonial powers, but for the absence of the missionary as well. While there was no very widespread outcry, "Missionary Go Home," as some supposed, nevertheless things were different now, as even the people in the pews at home ultimately sensed. Pioneer and paternal were no longer the relevant stages, but partnership and participation.

In 1967, the total number of career missionaries from America began to decline (and it has continued to do so to this day). Why? Christians had been led to believe that all necessary beachheads had been established. By 1967, over 90 percent of all missionaries from North America were working with strong national churches that had been in existence for some time.

The facts, however, were not that simple. Unnoticed by most everyone, another era in missions had begun.

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The Third Era of Modern Missions: Unreached Peoples

This era was begun by a pair of young men of the Student Volunteer Movement: Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran.

Cameron Townsend 1934 Discovers Linguistic Barriers

Cameron Townsend was in so much of a hurry to get to the mission field that he didn't bother to finish college. He went to Guatemala as a "Second Era" missionary, building on work which had been done in the past. In that country, as in all other mission fields, there was plenty to do by missionaries working with established national churches.

But Townsend was alert enough to notice that the majority of Guatemala's population did not speak Spanish. As he moved from village to village, trying to distribute scriptures written in the Spanish language, he began to realize that Spanish evangelism would never reach all Guatemala's people. He was further convinced of this when an Indian asked him, "If your God is so smart, why can't he speak our language?" He was befriended by a group of older missionaries who had already concluded the indigenous "Indian" populations needed to be reached in their own languages. He was just 23 when he began to move on the basis of this new perspective. For almost a half century he waved the flag for the overlooked tribal peoples.

Surely in our time one person comparable to William Carey and Hudson Taylor is Cameron Townsend. Like Carey and Taylor, Townsend saw that there were still unreached frontiers, and for almost half a century he has waved the flag for the overlooked tribal peoples of the world. He started out hoping to help older boards reach out to tribal people. Like Carey and Taylor, he ended up starting his own mission, Wycliffe Bible Translators, which is dedicated to reaching these new frontiers. At first he thought there must be about 500 unreached tribal groups in the world. (He was judging by the large number of tribal languages in Mexico alone). Later, he revised his figure to 1,000, then 2,000, and now it is closer to 5,000. As his conception of the enormity of the task has increased, the size of his organization has increased. Today it numbers over 4,000 adult workers.

Donald McGavran 1935 Discovers Social Barriers

At the very same time Townsend was ruminating in Guatemala, Donald McGavran was beginning to yield to the seriousness, not of linguistic barriers, but of India's amazing social barriers. Townsend "discovered" the tribes, McGavran discovered a more nearly universal category he labeled "homogeneous units", which today are more often called "people groups." Paul Hiebert has employed the terminology of "horizontal segmentation" for the tribes which each occupied their own turf, and "vertical segmentation" for groups distinguished not by geography but by rigid social differences. McGavran's terminology described both kinds even though he was mainly thinking about the more subtle vertical segmentation.

Once such a group is penetrated (diligently taking advantage of that missiological breakthrough along group lines), the strategic "bridge of God" for that people group is established. The corollary of this truth is the fact that until such a breakthrough is made, normal evangelism and church planting cannot take place.

McGavran did not found a new mission (Townsend did so only when the existing missions did not properly respond to the tribal challenge). McGavran's active efforts and writings spawned both the church growth movement and the frontier mission movement, the one devoted to expanding within already penetrated groups, and the other devoted to deliberate approaches to the remaining unpenetrated groups.

As with Carey and Taylor before them, for twenty years Townsend and McGavran attracted little attention. But by the 1950's both had wide audiences. By 1980, 46 years from 1934, a 1910-like conference was held, focusing precisely on the forgotten groups these two men emphasized. The Edinburgh-1980 World Consultation on Frontier Missions was the largest mission meeting in history, measured by the number of mission agencies sending delegates. And wonder of wonders, 57 Third World agencies sent delegates. This is the sleeper of the Third Era! Also, a simultaneous youth meeting, the International Student Consultation on Frontier Missions, pointed the way for all future mission meetings to include significant youth participation.

As happened in the early stages of the first two eras, the Third Era has spawned a number of new mission agencies. Some, like the New Tribes Mission, carry in their names reference to this new emphasis.

More recently, many have begun to realize that tribal peoples are not the only forgotten peoples. Many other groups, some in the middle of partially Christianized areas, have been completely overlooked. These peoples are being called the "Unreached Peoples" and are defined by ethnic or sociological traits to be people so different from the cultural traditions of any existing church that missions (rather than evangelism) strategies are necessary for the planting of indigenous churches within their particular traditions.

If the First Era was characterized by reaching coastland peoples and the Second Era by inland territories, the Third Era must be characterized by the more difficult-to-define, non-geographical category which we have called "Unreached Peoples" – people groups which are socially isolated. Because this concept has been so hard to define, the Third Era has been even slower getting started than the Second Era.

We know that there are about 8,000 people groups in the "Unreached Peoples" category. Each individual people will require a separate, new missionary beachhead. Is this too much? Can this be done?

Can We Do It?

The task is not as difficult as it may seem, for several surprising reasons. In the first place, the task is not an American one, nor even a Western one. It will involve Christians from every continent of the world.

More significant is the fact that when a beachhead is established within a culture, the normal evangelistic process which God expects every Christian to be involved in replaces the missions strategy, because the mission task of "breaking in" is finished. Thus, establishing a beachhead in each "Unreached People" group is a goal readily within our grasp.

Meanwhile, key Second Era mission agencies are turning their attention to new fields. Dozens of examples could be given. More than 70 mission agencies are networking with the Adopt-A-People Clearing House. In well over half of all remaining 8,000 groups work has already begun or is soon to begin.

But our work in the Third Era has many other advantages. We have potentially a world-wide network of churches that can be aroused to their central mission. Best of all, nothing can obscure the fact that this could and should be the final era. No serious believer today dare overlook the fact that God has asked us to reach every nation, tribe and tongue and intends for it to be done. No generation has less excuse than ours if we do not do as He asks.

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Summary

History reveals in a dramatic way the great success of the Gospel and how great movements began as pioneer efforts. Each missionary movement to new areas, as it matured, resulted in resources being given for the expansion of the newly formed church. Although good, this attention on growing the church distracts the church from going where it is not. Fortunately, a few frontier mission movements have always emerged to send the Gospel where it has never gone.

Sometimes this task seems overwhelming, but history reveals the great progress of the gospel. This brief historical tour is encouraging as we see the big picture of the great advances of God's Kingdom.

Many mission experts think that we are in the last era of missions. The missionary task of establishing a church in each people group can be measured and completed. The task is getting smaller and smaller while at the same time the resources of the worldwide church are getting larger.

The momentum is growing. Now, more than ever, missions are targeting the unreached people groups. The newer mission agencies are able to apply all their resources towards frontier missions. Many of the Indian mission agencies started in the third era of missions are focusing on reaching the unreached people groups.

The mission field has become the sending base. Korea, Brazil, Singapore, India, Indonesia and many other countries are beginning to extend the blessing they have received.

The great success of the spread of the gospel has changed the world. No other movement has: shaped the way people think, developed such an educational system, done so much humanitarian work, alleviated so much suffering, ended wars and transformed individual lives. We can be encouraged that God is at work. Let us not miss out on His plans.

 

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The 3 Eras Of Modern Missions

 

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The 4 Stages Of Mission Strategy

1. Pioneer stage – no church (missionary planting)

2. Paternal stage – infant church (watering)

3. Partnership – (harvest)

4. Participation stage – mature church

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Verses in Lesson 5

Genesis 12:1-3
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Acts 3:25
And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, `Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.'

Galatians 3:8
The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."

Genesis 18:18
Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.

Genesis 22:18
and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

Genesis 28:14
Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.

Exodus 19:4-6 4
`You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."

Duet. 28:10
Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you.

2 Chron. 6:33
then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

Psalm 67

1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine upon us,
Selah
2 that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.

3 May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the peoples praise you.

4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples justly
and guide the nations of the earth.
Selah

5 May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the peoples praise you.

6 Then the land will yield its harvest,
and God, our God, will bless us.

7 God will bless us,
and all the ends of the earth will fear him.

Psalm 96

1 Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.

2 Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.

3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

4 For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.

5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.

6 Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.

7 Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.

8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.

9 Worship the LORD in the splendor of his [a] holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.

10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.

11 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it;

12 let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them.
Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy;

13 they will sing before the LORD, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his truth.

Psalm 105

1 Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.

2 Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.

3 Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.

4 Look to the LORD and his strength;
seek his face always.

5 Remember the wonders he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,

6 O descendants of Abraham his servant,
O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones.

7 He is the LORD our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.

8 He remembers his covenant forever,
the word he commanded, for a thousand generations,

9 the covenant he made with Abraham,
the oath he swore to Isaac.

10 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant:

11 "To you I will give the land of Canaan
as the portion you will inherit."

12 When they were but few in number,
few indeed, and strangers in it,

13 they wandered from nation to nation,
from one kingdom to another.

14 He allowed no one to oppress them;
for their sake he rebuked kings:

15 "Do not touch my anointed ones;
do my prophets no harm."

16 He called down famine on the land
and destroyed all their supplies of food;

17 and he sent a man before them—
Joseph, sold as a slave.

18 They bruised his feet with shackles,
his neck was put in irons,

19 till what he foretold came to pass,
till the word of the LORD proved him true.

20 The king sent and released him,
the ruler of peoples set him free.

21 He made him master of his household,
ruler over all he possessed,

22 to instruct his princes as he pleased
and teach his elders wisdom.

23 Then Israel entered Egypt;
Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham.

24 The LORD made his people very fruitful;
he made them too numerous for their foes,

25 whose hearts he turned to hate his people,
to conspire against his servants.

26 He sent Moses his servant,
and Aaron, whom he had chosen.

27 They performed his miraculous signs among them,
his wonders in the land of Ham.

28 He sent darkness and made the land dark—
for had they not rebelled against his words?

29 He turned their waters into blood,
causing their fish to die.

30 Their land teemed with frogs,
which went up into the bedrooms of their rulers.

31 He spoke, and there came swarms of flies,
and gnats throughout their country.

32 He turned their rain into hail,
with lightning throughout their land;

33 he struck down their vines and fig trees
and shattered the trees of their country.

34 He spoke, and the locusts came,
grasshoppers without number;

35 they ate up every green thing in their land,
ate up the produce of their soil.

36 Then he struck down all the firstborn in their land,
the firstfruits of all their manhood.

37 He brought out Israel, laden with silver and gold,
and from among their tribes no one faltered.

38 Egypt was glad when they left,
because dread of Israel had fallen on them.

39 He spread out a cloud as a covering,
and a fire to give light at night.

40 They asked, and he brought them quail
and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.

41 He opened the rock, and water gushed out;
like a river it flowed in the desert.

42 For he remembered his holy promise
given to his servant Abraham.

43 He brought out his people with rejoicing,
his chosen ones with shouts of joy;

44 he gave them the lands of the nations,
and they fell heir to what others had toiled for-

45 that they might keep his precepts
and observe his laws.
Praise the LORD.

Isaiah 40:5
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Isaiah 42:4
he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope."

Isaiah 49:6
he says: "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth."

Isaiah 56:3, 6-8
Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say, "The LORD will surely exclude me from his people." And let not any eunuch complain, "I am only a dry tree." 6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant– 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." 8 The Sovereign LORD declares– he who gathers the exiles of Israel: "I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered."

Jer. 12:14-17
14 This is what the LORD says: "As for all my wicked neighbors who seize the inheritance I gave my people Israel, I will uproot them from their lands and I will uproot the house of Judah from among them. 15 But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to his own inheritance and his own country. 16 And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, `As surely as the LORD lives' – even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal – then they will be established among my people. 17 But if any nation does not listen, I will completely uproot and destroy it," declares the LORD.

Zech 2:11
"Many nations will be joined with the LORD in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me to you.

Mal 1:11
My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations," says the LORD Almighty.

Luke 12:48
But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

Genesis 12:1-3
1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."