WE ARE LIVING—AND LONGING—
FOR THE END OF THE WORLD.
I was sitting in a small room on the most unevangelized island on earth. As I looked out the window, I saw the sun rising over shanties that spread across the landscape for miles. The mist began to disappear over the millions of men and women who inhabited this massive city in the middle of the island. Beyond the city limits, multitudes of other people were spread throughout rural villages, many of which require days of travel to reach.
As I watched the city begin to awaken, I heard the early morning call to prayer. Religious incantations resounded from loudspeakers stationed throughout the city so that everyone could hear them. Everywhere people began their day by solemnly going to prayer rooms and sacred sites to bow and worship.
Most of the forty-five million people on the island are Muslim, and most of them have never heard the gospel. Nearly fifty different people groups on the island have no church to speak of in their midst. Many of the people have never known a person who has confessed faith in Christ.
What is interesting, though, and unfortunately ironic, is that the most unevangelized island on earth is also home to millions of Christians. One of the largest tribes on the island is filled with professing believers. I wrote about them in Radical.
Years ago a Baptist couple came to this island to share the gospel with the tribal leaders. Those leaders did not like what they heard, and so they killed—and cannibalized—the two missionaries. Years later a Lutheran from Germany came to the same tribe. This time, when he proclaimed the gospel, the tribal leaders listened and believed. Within months the majority of the tribe had professed faith in Christ.
The problem, however, is that in the years since their mass conversion to Christianity, this tribe has turned inward. Due to a variety of factors, including cultural isolation and religious persecution, these Christians have virtually kept Christ to themselves.
Take the issue of pork. Muslim tribes across this island do not eat pork because they believe it is unclean. This Christian tribe, on the other hand, loves to eat pork. Naturally, any Christian wanting to reach Muslims with the gospel would be wise to abstain from pork around Muslims. Yet most Christians here are not willing to take even this small step. One believer succinctly said to a friend of mine on the island, “I would rather a Muslim go to hell than for me to have to stop eating pork.”
Reaching Muslims here would not only be uncomfortable for Christians; it would also be costly. Many Muslim tribes on this island are devout, and one state practices shari’ah law. Anyone caught trying to lead people to Christ in that state will be imprisoned or likely even killed. Any Muslim caught converting to faith in Christ in that state will immediately be executed. Indeed, the price is high for any believer here who desires to engage the unreached with the gospel.
And so the Christians sit back. They are living next to multitudes of unreached peoples, yet they are unwilling to share Christ with them. Instead, they focus on church activities among themselves. They have constructed large church buildings all over the city. They have numerous denominational conventions, nearly thirty theological seminaries, and even mission boards organized among themselves throughout the island. My friend who lives here said, “David, they have all the trappings of the church. The only thing they are missing is the heart of Christ.”
As soon as my friend said this, I was stunned into silence. I thought, Is it really possible to have all the trappings of the church and yet miss the heart of Christ? Is it possible for church people to be so focused on personal comforts and so fearful of the potential cost that they virtually forget the purpose of God among all the peoples of the world?
As I asked the questions, I realized the answers. Of course this is possible. Much of what we have seen in American Christianity proves it. We have massive resources, megabuildings, multitudes of programs, and a myriad of conferences and activities. Meanwhile, thousands of people groups around us in the world still haven’t even heard the gospel. From most appearances in the church, however, we seem to be okay with that. We seem content to let these people groups continue church-less, Christ-less, and gospel-less. To seriously engage them with the gospel would be uncomfortable and costly.
That day when my friend told me about the attitude of the Christian tribespeople on the island, I looked at the city that surrounded me, and I wondered some more. What if things were different here? I thought. What if this Christian tribe was willing to take some risks? What if they were willing to change their lifestyles in order to seriously engage the unreached on this island? What if their churches were willing to sacrifice their resources in order to creatively extend the gospel to people who have never heard it? Could every one of these people groups be penetrated for the glory of Christ?
And that’s when I begin to realize that the same potential resides in the church in my context. God has given great grace to the church I lead and to many other churches like it. He has given us vast resources, varied gifts, innumerable skills, immeasurable talents, and billions of dollars. If we were willing to take some risks, if we were willing to alter our lifestyles, and if we were willing to organize our churches around taking the gospel to people who have never heard of Christ, we could see every people group on the planet reached with the gospel. And in the process, we could be a part of the end of the world.
The end of the world?
Absolutely. That’s what we’re living—and longing—for. Now, before you think I’ve lost it, let me explain.
One day Jesus was having a conversation with his disciples about the end of human history when he will come back. His discussion with the disciples on that day has sparked all kinds of debate since then about what he meant. Yet tucked away in the middle of a host of interpretive quagmires is a verse that is crystal clear. It is a statement that New Testament scholar George Eldon Ladd called “perhaps the most important single verse in the Word of God for God’s people today.”1 As recorded in Matthew 24:14, Jesus said to his disciples, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Here Jesus uses the same phrase that he would use later when commanding his followers not just to make disciples but to make disciples “of all nations.”2 Nations in the original language of the New Testament is ethne. It refers to all the ethnic peoples of the world.
This is important because, obviously, at the time Jesus said these words, the geopolitical boundaries that divide nations in our day didn’t exist. More than 190 nations exist in the world today, but that is not what Jesus is referring to. When Jesus talks about the nations, he is talking about clans, tribes, and other groups of people united by common languages and cultural characteristics. Scholars have translated this term as “ethnolinguistic groups” or more simply as “people groups.”
This makes sense, because one nation may be composed of many different people groups. Take India for example. India is a country made up of a diverse array of people groups with different languages and customs and cultures and religions. Numerous people groups are spread across India.
Anthropological experts have identified more than eleven thousand people groups in the world. We can’t be sure that their definition of people groups squares precisely with what Jesus had in mind when he referred to ethne, but they offer our best estimate. Regardless of how one defines people groups, though, the reality is that in Matthew 28:19 Jesus specifically tells his disciples to go to all the world’s people groups, and in Matthew 24:14 he promises that all of them will hear the gospel. Indeed, he is not coming back until all of them have heard.
I wonder if many of us have missed something very important here. Let me rephrase that: in countless studies and sermons on the Great Commission, I have missed something very important here. What we need to understand is that Jesus did not command us simply to take the gospel to as many individual people as we can. Instead, he made it clear that his followers are to make disciples among every people group in the world. The end of the age will not come when a certain number of people in one ethnic group come to Christ. The end of the age will come when people from every single ethnic group have come to Christ.
This has been God’s plan from the beginning. He blessed Abraham and the people of Israel with the specific purpose of bringing his blessing to all people groups. He brought his children out of slavery in Egypt and settled them in the Promised Land for the purpose of his praise among all people groups. He sent them into exile and brought them out of exile in order to spread his glory among all people groups. Jesus promised that the gospel would be preached to all the people groups. The story of the church is the story of the spread of the gospel toward every people group, and leaders in the early church possessed consuming ambitions “to preach the gospel where Christ was not known.”3
The apostle John puts an exclamation point on God’s passion for praise from among all people groups when he records the song resounding from heaven to Jesus in the book of Revelation.
I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.… And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”4
There it is. In the end, just as God planned before time began, every ethnic group will be represented around the throne of Jesus, exalting his name and having received his salvation. In anticipation of that day, John closes the Bible by crying, “Come, Lord Jesus.”5
He will come when every people group has heard the gospel. For this reason he has charged his church, not just generally with getting the gospel to as many people as we can, but specifically with getting the gospel to every people group on this planet. Indeed, he is not coming back until this assignment has been accomplished.
You might be wondering what amount of work is yet to be done. Well, mission leaders around the world have tried to identify which people groups are still unreached with the gospel. According to their definitions, a people group is classified as unreached if less than 2 percent of the population is made up of evangelical Christians. This means that if you are a part of an unreached people group, likely you will be born, you will live, and you will die without ever hearing the gospel. And out of more than eleven thousand people groups in the world, more than six thousand of them are still unreached.
Our task, therefore, is massive and unmistakable. Thousands of people groups have not yet been reached with the gospel, and Jesus has commanded (not merely called but commanded) us to get the gospel to them. So for you and me not to be intentionally engaged in taking the gospel to unreached people groups is disobedience to the command of Christ. Our churches are in the wrong before God if we are not prioritizing the spread of the gospel to every people group.
“Well,” some might object, “what if the way we define people groups is not how Jesus defines people groups? And what if our definition of ‘reached’ is not the same as his? Are you saying that Jesus won’t or can’t come back tomorrow because there’s still more than six thousand people groups (as we’ve defined them) who have yet to be reached (as we’ve defined that) with the gospel?”
I want to be careful here, for as I have already admitted, our definitions of unreached people groups may not be exact. The reality is that Jesus could come back as I write (or as you read) this sentence, and not one of us knows the time when he will come.6
But we do know this: Jesus hasn’t come back yet, which means there is still work to be done.
I can’t improve on George Ladd’s words at this point. He wrote:
God alone knows the definition of terms. I cannot precisely define who “all the nations” are. Only God knows exactly the meaning of “evangelize.” He alone … will know when that objective has been accomplished. But I do not need to know. I know only one thing: Christ has not yet returned; therefore the task is not yet done. When it is done, Christ will come. Our responsibility is not to insist on defining the terms of our task; our responsibility is to complete it. So long as Christ does not return, our work is undone. Let us get busy and complete our mission.7
When I first began to realize the weight of what Jesus was expressing in Matthew 24:14—“This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come”—I immediately thought, Satan must have this verse plastered all over the walls of hell as a warning! Why? Because when all the people groups of the world have been reached with the gospel and the end comes, that’s not good news for the forces of evil. For Satan and his demons, the end spells eternal doom. Without question, then, Satan is working feverishly with all the resources at his disposal to prevent the day when the gospel will be preached to all people groups. He does not want the end to come.
The question is, do we? Do we want to see our Savior surrounded by a throng of representatives from every nation, tribe, language, and people giving him the glory he is due?
If we do want the end to come, it will cost us. Right before Jesus gave the promise in Matthew 24:14, he said, “You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.”8 The reason so many people groups are still unreached is not because they are easy to reach and we just haven’t had the resources to get them the gospel. They are unreached because they are hard to reach and we haven’t had the resolve to get them the gospel. Any Christian and any church desiring to obey the command of Christ in the world and longing to see the coming of Christ at the end of the world must possess a God-centered, gospel-driven tenacity that is ready to endure an intense spiritual battle.
The scope of this spiritual battle is universal. And because it encompasses every tongue, tribe, language, and nation, there is no place on this planet where the war will not be waged.
The stakes in this spiritual battle are eternal. There is a true God over this world who desires all peoples to experience everlasting joy in heaven. And there is a false god in this world who desires all peoples to experience everlasting suffering in hell.
Our enemy in this spiritual battle is formidable. He is like a lion looking for his kill, and he is dead set on defaming God and destroying us. Where the church exists, he works to discourage us with trials and temptations. He lures us with possessions and prosperity, and he lulls us with comforts and complacency. He does everything he can to distract the church from knowing Christ and declaring his glory to the ends of the earth.
And his tactics are subtle; we could even say missional. Amid much talk in the church today about being missional, the Adversary may subtly be deceiving our minds about mission. We are exhorted to see ourselves as missionaries in our cities, and we are encouraged to engage our cultures with the gospel. These exhortations and encouragements are needed correctives for church mind-sets that have compartmentalized and limited mission. But, biblically, our mission is not only about loving our city or invading our culture with the gospel. Our mission is also about leaving our cities to infiltrate every culture with the gospel. I am convinced that Satan, in a sense, is just fine with missional churches in the West spending the overwhelming majority of our time, energy, and money on trying to reach people right around us. Satan may actually delight in this, for while we spend our lives on the people we see in front of us, more than six thousand people groups for generations have never even heard the gospel and remain in the dark.
But when we rise up as the church of Jesus Christ and give ourselves urgently, sacrificially, and radically to taking the gospel of the kingdom to all those people groups, we can expect to be met with the might of hell. There will be divisions within us, distractions around us, diversions in front of us, deceptions tempting us, and disease and death threatening us. It will not be easy. And it will cost. However, truly missional churches and truly missional
Christians will set their sights on the world, and they will overcome the Adversary “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” because they do “not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”9
If the ultimate goal of the church is to take the gospel to all people groups, then everything we do in the church must be aimed toward that end.
When I came to Brook Hills, I was encouraged to identify our target audience. “Who is Brook Hills Bob?” I was asked. In other words, what was the profile of the person we were most trying to reach?
The profile seemed obvious. Businesspeople fill our community. Their average age is in the forties, and they have good educations and well-paying jobs that enable them to support families with multiple children in an upper-middle-class community. This sort of person, some would say, is who we need to focus on as a church.
I disagree.
It’s not that I think Brook Hills Bob is unimportant. He’s extremely important, and we want men and women like that and their families in Birmingham to come to Christ. But we decided our goal was not to reach Brook Hills Bob. Instead, our target was going to be Brook Hills Baruti.
Let me explain. Baruti doesn’t live in our community. Instead, he lives thousands of miles away in North Africa. He is illiterate and poorly paid. He attempts to survive on meager daily rations of food and water from outside sources. He was born into a spiritually and physically impoverished people group where almost no one knows Jesus or has even heard of him. And Baruti’s people like it that way. When a woman in Baruti’s people group heard about Christ and trusted in him for salvation, she was immediately killed—by her husband and her father. Baruti fervently worships a false god and is blinded to the reality of his sin and resistant to the message of a Savior.
That’s who we are setting out to reach at Brook Hills. We are going to live and plan and strategize and organize and work so that Baruti hears and receives the gospel.
This changes everything about how we do ministry at Brook Hills. If our goal is all nations, then our strategy cannot be defined by what will best reach people within ten miles of our church building. If our goal is all nations, then our strategy must always revolve around what will best reach people who are ten thousand miles from our church building.
This doesn’t mean we neglect Brook Hills Bob or anyone else who is right around us. Indeed, we are going to reach Bob and all kinds of other people in our community. But as they come to Christ, we are going to encourage them to spend their lives spreading the gospel to Baruti. We’re going to teach them to pray for Baruti and the billion other people like him who don’t have the gospel. We’re going to train them to know God’s Word so they will be ready to share it on the spot in our culture and in other cultures. We’re going to encourage them to stop using their resources for more comforts in Birmingham and start using their resources to get the gospel to people like Baruti. We’re going to dream with them about how they can leverage their businesses, their relationships, and the positions, possessions, influence, wealth, gifts, and talents that God has given them for the sake of God’s glory in Baruti’s life. We’re going to mobilize them to make disciples in simple, reproducible, cross-cultural ways here that will one day impact Baruti over there.
Someone might say, “It sounds like Bob is just a means to an end and Baruti is the end. Are you saying that Baruti is somehow more important, or more valuable, than Bob?” That’s a great question, and that’s not at all what I am saying. Bob and Baruti are equally valued by God and equally lost without God. They both need the gospel. But if the church I lead focuses only on Bob, then even if we are successful in reaching Bob, we will ultimately be disobedient to Jesus’ command to get the gospel to all people groups, including Baruti’s people group. Therefore, I want to make sure that the church I lead has its sights set on Baruti, not to the exclusion of Bob, but to the inclusion of Bob and everyone else in Birmingham. And once we reach Baruti together, we will equip Baruti to reach still other unreached people. And we won’t stop until the word unreached is no longer applicable to any people group!
This is part of the genius of making disciples. When we follow the pattern and precedent of Jesus, we will never have to choose whether to impact Bob or to impact Baruti. We will always be living for the spread of the gospel to Bob and Baruti.
Consider the life and leadership of Jesus. Surely he had a passion for the glory of the Father in all nations. Yet he spent his life with a small group of men in a relatively isolated geographic area. His ministry to them, however, was always for the purpose of the spread of the gospel beyond them. Jesus didn’t care only about needs in Jerusalem or Galilee. He cared about the nations so deeply that he poured his life into a handful of men in Jerusalem and Galilee who would one day turn the world upside down.10 Jesus cared so much about getting the gospel to Americans in the twenty-first century that he poured his life into twelve Jewish men in the first century. It was never an either/or for Jesus; it was always a both/and.
We and our churches never have to choose between impacting people with the gospel locally and impacting them globally. Disciple making frees us from having to make that choice. As we lay down our lives to multiply the gospel in the context of intentional relationships where we live, we are always doing it ultimately for the spread of the gospel far beyond where we live. And if we are faithful to Jesus’ command in the Great Commission, we will always be living and longing for the spread of the gospel to all people groups.
Consider Jack and Sarah, a couple in our faith family. In many ways Jack would fit the profile of Brook Hills Bob. He is a successful, middle-aged businessman living in Birmingham. When Jack and Sarah came to faith in Christ, they began inviting other couples into their home, where they helped these husbands and wives come to Christ and grow in Christ. After a time of intentional investment in these couples, Jack and Sarah began sending them out of their home to start making disciples on their own. Meanwhile, Jack and Sarah found new couples to invest their lives in.
But their story goes deeper. Jack and Sarah understand that disciple making is the avenue for the accomplishment of the global purpose of God. So Jack began mobilizing his business and leveraging his assets to be a part of spreading the gospel in spiritually and physically impoverished places around the world. Then, in the context of their relationships with other couples in their home, Jack and Sarah began leading these other families to do the same thing in their spheres of influence. As a part of this process, Jack and Sarah have taken these couples overseas on short-term mission trips to expose them to God’s heart for the world, and then Jack and Sarah have challenged each of them to consider how their lives and families can be used for the spread of the gospel in the world.
Because they are making disciples, the fruit of Jack’s and Sarah’s lives is unmistakably local and global. Though they live in the same place where they have lived for the last twenty years, their home has become a ministry base to the world. Some of the couples who have been discipled by Jack and Sarah now live in low-income communities in Birmingham, where they are investing in people in the same way Jack and Sarah invested in them. Other couples have moved overseas. We currently have couples living in Africa and Asia who were impacted by the disciple making of Jack and Sarah. Some of the other couples who have shared life with Jack and Sarah haven’t moved anywhere, but they are spending their lives making disciples and using their resources for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth, just as they’ve seen in Jack and Sarah.
Jack has never asked me, “Pastor, why don’t we care about people in Birmingham?” because he realizes that true disciple making in Birmingham will have an impact on the nations with the gospel and vice versa. For Jack and Sarah, the plan of God is never about ministering here or among the nations. For Jack and Sarah, the plan of God is always about ministering here for the sake of the nations. By the way, one of the couples that Jack and Sarah discipled is now leading our church-planting team that serves among an unreached people group in North Africa.
Brook Hills Bob has been reached for the sake of Brook Hills Baruti.
This is part of the reason I am a strong believer in short-term mission trips. I can talk until I am blue in the face about setting our sights on the nations, but until someone actually goes and sees the nations in person, he or she is likely to underestimate the urgency of God’s global purpose in our lives. For this reason, at Brook Hills we are intentional about encouraging people in the church to take concentrated time every year possible to go into another context and spread the gospel.
We hear many criticisms of short-term missions, and some are valid. Short-term mission trips are often nothing more than glorified vacations. They can be sightseeing tours filled with sporadic service opportunities that give people an opportunity to pat themselves on the back while doing little to advance the gospel in a reproducible, sustainable way in another culture.
Successful short-term missions must be a part of fueling a long-term disciple-making process in another context. Clearly, no one is going to make disciples in another country over the span of one week. To expect to make disciples in just a few days is both impractical and unbiblical. However, we can partner with believers in other contexts who are intentionally making disciples, and our time serving alongside them can help move their disciple-making processes along in exponential ways.
At the same time, successful short-term missions must also be a part of fueling long-term disciple making in the sending church. As we go together into other contexts, we grow together in Christ. Our eyes are opened and our hearts are transformed as we serve in situations that make us uncomfortable. Whether we’re serving impoverished brothers and sisters or sharing the gospel with people who have never heard it before, God does a work in our hearts that will not leave us unchanged. Part of the purpose of short-term missions is to walk through situations like this alongside others who will help us, challenge us, serve us, and spur us on toward Christ in the midst of it all.
I remember one trip to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I had been on mission trips before, but this one was different. We were working with a church that was making disciples in the midst of extreme poverty, and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw on a mountainside one day.
As we came over a ridge on the outskirts of this sprawling city, my eyes beheld seemingly endless hills covered with piles of smoldering trash. My nose burned with the smell of household waste and human excrement. For most of the people in the region, this place was known as the city dump. For an unfortunate few, though, this place was known as home.
When we walked into the dump, we discovered makeshift houses made of sticks and plastic tarps nestled in the piles of trash. Families lived here—men, women, and children—whose sustenance each day depended on finding a livelihood in the stench of others’ leftovers. I will never forget seeing a young girl of maybe five or six years standing knee deep in the garbage she called her front yard.
As we worked atop that mountain, we served alongside the local church and learned what it means to love people on their own turf. At the same time, a man who had come on that trip helped me process what was taking place. And on that day it clicked for me. All the statistics about hundreds of millions in desperate poverty, all the facts about men, women, and children dying from preventable diseases or lack of food and water, and all the truths I had resisted came crashing down on my heart. I realized that the rest of my life must be different.
In light of the potential and power of short-term missions in long-term disciple making both here and around the world, every year we challenge every member of our faith family to give 2 percent of his or her time (which works out to be about a week) in some other context outside of Birmingham to spread the gospel. We relationally connect with disciple making taking place in other contexts while we intentionally focus on the disciple-making processes in our church. In this way, that 2 percent of our time in another context ends up radically changing the 98 percent of our time in our own community. As one church member put it, “My time overseas has transformed my time across the street.”
The inevitable result of short-term missions done right is radically changed lives. Some from our church have returned to say, “I believe God is calling me to spend 98 percent of my time in another context and come back to my current context for a 2 percent visit each year.” In this way, short-term mission trips end up fueling long-term commitments.
For example, in the last month we have commissioned a journalist, a teacher, and a businessman to move overseas. Over the last year we have sent out a diverse group of disciple makers, from an engineer to a school administrator. Some are going through traditional avenues, others through unconventional ones. Some are going through mission organizations, others through business platforms.
Recently a couple told us, “We don’t really see ourselves as missionaries. We’re just Christians with transferable job skills who thought, Why not work in Asia and live out the gospel there among people who have never heard of Jesus?” That’s a great question, and I praise God for how people are answering it all across the church.
We are currently in the process of sending teams of students and senior adults, businesspeople and church planters, who will work together to see churches planted and disciples made among those who have never heard the gospel. Every time we prepare to send a team, I challenge every member of the church (myself included) to ask God if he desires for us to go and then to wait for an answer. God can be trusted with these kinds of prayers from his people, and he will be faithful to provide those he leads with everything they need to accomplish the task he puts before them.
As I share these stories from our faith family, I want to say clearly that we are not doing things perfectly. These past few years have been filled with some incredible joys as we have engaged the world, but we have also experienced some discouraging struggles. At times we have jumped too fast into opportunities overseas, and at other times we have moved too slowly. We have a long way to go and a lot more to learn about how to most effectively make disciples in other contexts. But we’re not going to stop. We want to see the unreached reached with the gospel.
I know you desire the same thing. Who could imagine the impact if a few thousand churches decided to pray for, give to, and go to just one or two unreached people groups apiece? Consider what would happen if each of our churches adopted (or a couple of churches joined together and adopted) an unreached people group and decided to organize an intentional strategy for leveraging the resources of the church here for the spread of the gospel there. This is the plan of God—penetrating every nation with the gospel—and he has promised to bless it! If we are obedient to his plan, could we not see the accomplishment of the Great Commission in our day? Is this not worth the sacrifice of our lives and our churches?
I was born into a context where the gospel of Jesus is relatively accessible. I have heard about Jesus’ death on the cross practically since the day I was born. I am overwhelmed whenever I think about where I would be without the gospel. And I am humbled when I consider that I had nothing to do with where I was born. The only reason I have heard the gospel of God is because of the grace of God.
Meanwhile, more than six thousand people groups equaling nearly two billion people still do not have access to the gospel. For generations they and their ancestors have been born, have lived, and have died without even hearing the name of Jesus. I am even more humbled when I consider that they had nothing to do with where they were born either.
So why have I heard the message of the gospel when they have not? Why have I received such mercy from God? This question is not just for me but for all who live where the gospel is accessible and who participate in churches where the gospel is abundant. Why have we been given such immeasurable grace when none of us has done anything to deserve it?
I do not presume to know all of God’s motives, but I will propose this: you and I have been given the great mercy of God for a global mission from God. He has called, commissioned, and commanded each of us as Christians to give ourselves to the spread of his gospel in every part of the earth. All nations, all tribes, all language groups, and all peoples will one day hear this news, and then the end will come. As a result, every church that passionately loves the gospel of Christ and patiently longs for the coming of Christ will purposefully live for the glory of Christ among those who have never heard his name.
We are living—and longing—for the end of the world.