"You will be my witnesses. . ." According to Acts 1:8, these were Jesus’ parting words to his disciples. Witness, in word and deed, is what the Church is all about. What do we witness to and to what kind of world are we supposed to be witnessing? In the reflections that follow, I shall focus on six points that seem to me important for the Church’s witness in our day.

1) The first point is this: the Church is a missionary (apostolic) body in its very being.

2) The Church was born because of a mission from the Jews, God’s original missionary people; i.e. a people called to be sent. "Salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22).

3) The divine revelation that has come to the world by way of Israel is foreign to our pagan hearts, and to receive it requires a radical reorientation of life and thought.

4) Dualistic thinking (putting soul-winning over against social concern, for instance), leads to false contrasts and is contrary to the biblical vision.

5) Nazism constituted a re-emergence of ancient pagan ideas, and so do many neo-pagan manifestations in our contemporary culture.

6) What the world needs now is a Christian witness deeply rooted in the biblical (Hebrew) understanding of revelation. The key issue the Church must struggle with today is that of revelation, not religion. Resistance to the biblical view of revelation finds its source in two notions that many people find offensive: a) the idea that there is authoritative truth (Torah) received from a transcendent Deity, and b) the idea that this truth can not only be known, but is to be shared or witnessed to.

Let us now take a brief look at each of those points.

The Church As a Missionary Body

The Nicene Creed mentions apostolicity as one of the chief marks of the Church. We confess that the Church of Jesus Christ is apostolic. What does that mean? We read in Ephesians 2:20 that the Church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone." At this point we could engage in a long argument about "apostolic succession" (the belief that every pastor/priest needs to be ordained by a bishop who stands in an unbroken chain of succession since the apostles in order to have a fully valid ministry). Or, we could argue about which of the numerous Christian denominations bears greatest resemblance to the "New Testament Church". These are, however, not the issues I want to dwell on here.

The Greek word apostolos literally means "someone who is sent." More specifically, an apostolos is someone who has been authorized to speak on behalf of another person or agency. The idea of an ambassador comes to mind, and that is precisely the imagery the apostle Paul uses in II Corinthians 5:20: "So, we are ambassadors for Christ. . ." We represent Christ the Lord and his reign. The synoptic gospels emphasize that Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, sometimes called the kingdom of heaven out of a reluctance to pronounce the name of Yaweh (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:14, Luke 4:14ff.). The Church, in its witness, should always keep this broad kingdom perspective in mind. This means that we do not just witness to what we feel inside, no matter how wonderful our heartfelt walk with the Lord may be. As we shall see in a moment, the God of biblical revelation does not deal just with the human heart, but with history and the destiny of the nations. Jeremiah (ch. 31) speaks about a new covenant when the law will be written on the human heart. But in this prophet’s vision the end of the ways of God with his people is not inwardness, but a holy nation Israel, living among the nations and embodying the divine commandments in its communal life and culture.

Our churches will be apostolic as long as we hold on to, live out and share the faith and the vision of the prophets and apostles. The latter preached "the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 8:12). Then, in the power of the Spirit, radical changes took place in people’s personal and communal life. These the New Testament calls "signs of the kingdom", manifestations in the here and now of the promised new age to come.

The Church’s mission is not an extracurricular activity, to be engaged in if time and funds permit. The Church is the people of God, called out (ekklesia) in order to be sent. Hence, the Church’s mission involves more than sending out missionaries. The Reformers talked about "the priesthood of all believers," and in recent decades the Roman Catholic Church has re-emphasized the "lay apostolate." During the Second Vatican Council one bishop put it this way: "The lay apostolate consists above all and principally not in tasks assigned to the laity by the hierarchy, but in the example of a truly Christian life and the acceptance of responsibility to renew the temporal order in accordance with the principles of justice and love." In short, Christian mission is every church member’s business.

All mission, in the biblical sense, is part of the Missio Dei, God’s plan of redemption for the world. The Church is not an end in itself; it is an instrument in God’s dealings with the creation to which the Lord remained faithful in the face of all the destructive forces of human sin.

The Church and Israel’s Mission

It all started with God’s call (election) of Israel. The Lord reveals himself (his grace, his love) in actions. The Jewish people were chosen to be an instrument of Yaweh–chosen to serve. Biblically speaking, election is never for the purpose of creating an elite. Rather, it is for the purpose of serving God’s redemptive plan for the world, a world that has lost its way.

Why this people? The poet Lewis Browne has put concisely into words what has been on the minds of millions of people:

"How odd

of God

to choose

the Jews. . ."

The book of Deuteronomy (ch. 7:7-8) makes it quite clear that the Jewish people were not chosen because they were special as measured by the usual human standards ( large numbers, sound morals, high culture, etc.). Rather, the answer to the mystery is to be found solely in divine sovereign love.

The covenant story between God and Israel starts with Abraham, but the end purpose is the blessing of "all the families of the earth" (Genesis 12:3). God calls Abraham for the sake of "a multitude of nations" (Genesis 17:4): "In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 22:18). Israel has a mission: "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6). Election, covenant, the commandments (the gift of Torah), all these central realities in God’s dealings with Israel point to the divine purpose for the world: the redemption of all things. For us Christians Jesus, son of Israel, Son of God, plays the central role in this Missio Dei: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (II Corinthians 5:19).

But, some wonder, has not Israel failed in its mission? Aren’t they finished, and isn’t it now all up to the Church? Both Israel and the Church have failed in many ways in the mission to which God has called them, but the Lord remains faithful; the divine plan will not be frustrated because of human frailties and follies. Paul states in Romans 11:29 that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." God is not done yet with his people Israel. Both Israel and the Church will be used, in God’s good time and in God’s way, as instruments in the great Missio Dei. Yaweh will redeem nature and the nations (Isaiah 11:6-8; 20:23 ff.; Amos 9:7 ff.), and establish the reign of Shalom upon the earth.

Divine Revelation is Foreign to Pagan Hearts

God encounters Abraham at the "crossroads," which is the meaning of the name Haran, a center of the cult devoted to the moon-God Sin. It is most likely that Abraham was devoted to some kind of religion when Yaweh came to him in revelation. He now enters a whole new world. He is addressed, confronted with the call, the commandments and the promises of God. Abraham could have ignored revelation and stayed with his religion. But he believed and obeyed. Now he is sent on a journey of faith, venturing forth into the unknown, trusting the word of the Lord. Biblical revelation involves more than transmitting information; it entails the redemptive presence of God in our midst.

In a few short sentences (Genesis 12:1-5) we are told the high drama of a life transformed through an encounter with the living God. So much religion comes naturally. It is said to well up from the depth of human existence. In "religion without revelation" people are not addressed; there is no authoritative word from beyond, no sense of accountability before a holy and righteous God, no call to repentance. The revelation of the God of Israel is fundamentally foreign to our pagan hearts. In many ways it runs counter to our natural impulses. The history of both Israel and the Church shows how strong the pull of nature religion, fertility cults (the search for transcendence through sensual ecstasy) and self-deification can be. In Exodus 32 we read the story of what happened when Moses was delayed on Mt. Sinai. "Come, make gods for us . . ." say the people to Aaron. And so they created the image of a young bull, the symbol of virility and the vitalistic forces of life, and these they worshipped in an orgy of eating, drinking and reveling.

The prophets of Israel were constantly engaged in what the Jewish scholar Martin Buber has called "the struggle for revelation." The Israelites saw so much religion among the surrounding populations that appealed to their natural instincts. So, they were drawn toward a kind of pluralism that did not necessarily involve getting rid of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the One who had delivered them from slavery, but rather entailed the idea of enriching the life of the nation by including beliefs and practices of religiously committed neighbors. The Baals represented the old time religion of nature worship with its fertility cults and temple prostitution. The prophets saw a mortal danger in this religious mix and opposed it with all their might, often at the risk of their lives.

From the start the Christian Church faced religious movements that challenged the basic view of biblical revelation. In his sermon at the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17), Paul describes it as a groping after God by people we were very religious in the hope that they might find him. From the biblical point of view such religion-without-revelation is at best a prelude to faith in the living God and at worst the idolatry of self-worship or the deification of what is thought to be the "life force." So-called Gnostic sects, with their denial of the creation and their belief that evil resides, not in the human will, but in the material/physical world, posed a real threat to the apostolic message and mission of the Church. Some members abandoned the faith, following "deceitful spirits" who "forbid marriage and demand abstention from foods, which God had created to be received with thanksgiving . . ." ( I Timothy 4:1-5). This was all done in the name of achieving a higher spirituality, but in fact it represented a forsaking of divine revelation.

The apostolic message, as found in the Christian scriptures, is deeply rooted in God’s revelation through Moses and the prophets. Once that background of the Church’s witness is ignored or neglected (as it so often is in our churches) both our message and our mission to the world are bound to miss the mark.

Dualistic Thinking and False Contrasts

There has been a growing recognition in recent decades of how, quite early in its history, Greek influences were allowed to infiltrate the faith and life of the Church. In a way that is understandable. The church fathers, forced to defend the faith against all sorts of heresies, used the language and thought-forms that were current at that time to make their points. The intent was often laudable, but the end-result has been a loss of the biblical-Hebrew perspective.

Biblical thought tends to be holistic and unitary in nature. The words in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 are at the center of Israel’s confession: "Hear (Shema), O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord . . ." This confession has little to do with counting: "Is there one God or are there many?" The biblical writers know full well that there is a plethora of gods in the world (Psalm 82:1;138:1; I Corinthians 8:5-6). The confession, however, has everything to do with the divine nature as revealed to Israel in the mighty acts of the Lord (the magnalia Dei)—the deeds of the Holy One who works wonders (Psalm 77:4). Yaweh has revealed himself as the God who will unite all things into the harmony (Shalom) of the age to come.

Greek thought tends to think in dualistic terms: for instance, the soul against the body. Paul’s use of the word "flesh" has often and mistakenly been interpreted that way. But the apostle was not talking about the divine soul versus the evil body. Rather, by "flesh" he meant the whole person–body, mind and soul–in estrangement from God and in rebellion against the laws of the Lord. In Christian thinking the soul-body bifurcation has often been used to defend the primacy of saving "souls" over against social needs (justice, poverty, oppression, etc.). Jesus addressed both the spiritual and the physical needs of people. He called for repentance and rebirth, fed the hungry and healed the sick. That should be the model for our mission. Unfortunately, by stressing either one or the other aspect of ministry, we have developed a party-line or a this-versus-that mentality within the body of Christ. It seems to be so difficult for us to maintain a unitary approach to our mission, to include all aspects of the glorious gospel of the kingdom of God. Churches which are constantly reacting against each other are wasting precious spiritual energy and hence are a poor witness to the world. God’s revelation to the people Israel will be a tremendous help in teaching us how to be a blessing to the nations. Only if we read the New Testament in light on the Old Testament will we be equipped to avoid those fatal bifurcations.

Nazism–A Re-emergence of Pagan Ideas

Adolph Hitler hated Jews with a deep and pathological hatred and, in one of the most horrible crimes in history, he sought to wipe them from the face of the earth. However, Hitler also recognized that killing Jews was not enough; he had to rid the world of faith in the God of the Hebrews and the revelation transmitted through them. In order to achieve that goal, he turned to ancient Teutonic pagan ideas, like the sacredness of the soil (Fatherland) and the purity of Aryan blood. This ideology of Blut und Boden was to become the new religion of the Third Reich.

The rise of Nazism in the heart of Europe was a dramatic demonstration of how pagan drives, just below the surface of our civilization, can re-emerge in neo-pagan forms once the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, is removed from people’s consciousness. Such a development causes radical changes, not just in individual lives, but also in the way a society is structured and a culture shaped.

Today we see many more subtle manifestations of neo-paganism in countries where "the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" (Acts 8:12) has been proclaimed. We find it in the world of movies and T.V. (e.g. the glorification of any form of self-expression, no matter how bizarre or destructive), in cults and the return to pagan rites, in art designed to shock rather than inspire, in the seductive sexuality of Madonna and company, in the nihilistic rantings of a Howard Stern, in the often outrageous ramblings of rappers, etc.

During the decade of the 1970s, the ecclesiastical airwaves were abuzz with talk about evangelism. The nationwide Key ’73 campaign, with its motto "Calling our Continent to Christ," was much in the news. "Mainline" leaders, faced with steady membership and money declines, felt compelled to show their constituencies that they too favored evangelism. Denominational staff rushed to the drawing boards, designing new programs of outreach. The United Church of Christ advocated "Action Evangelism," seeking "new ways and models of marrying word and deed." The American Baptists called their program "Evangelistic Life Style." The Methodists were seeking to recruit "New Life Missioners" for every region in the country. The 1974 World Conference on Evangelization, held in Lausanne, showed an eagerness to demonstrate that evangelicals too have a social conscience, and the Third Synod of Catholic Bishops, meeting in Rome that same year, chose as its theme "Evangelization in the Modern World."

In recent years there has been much talk about secularism in the "post-Christian" era, but few seem to be focusing seriously on the spirit of neo-paganism which is infecting the social and cultural fabric of nations. There are exceptions. In 1977 Dr. W.A. Visser ‘t Hooft, who had served as the first General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, delivered an address to a German audience entitled "Evangelism among Europe’s Neo-Pagans" (published in the October 1977 issue of the International Review of Mission), explaining how paganism was "far more deeply rooted in European history than is generally recognized." The reason for that is not hard to find: paganism is deeply rooted in the human heart that has remained unaffected by the revelation of the God of Israel revealed in Jesus Christ. Would all those efforts of the 1970s have borne more fruit if the Christian world had been more seriously focused on the Hebrew roots of our faith? I suspect the answer is "yes."

The opposition forces to the good news of the kingdom of God operate in a variety of ways. Hitler tried persecution. He should have known from history that that doesn’t work. Instead, the blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the Church. Seduction, however, tends to be much more successful. There are aspects of the New Age message that can be extremely attractive to searching souls. We like to be told that deep down inside we can discover our own divinity. "You are the universe; you are god!" At the end of the movie based on Shirley MacLaine’s book Out on a Limb, we see the actress stand at the shores of the Pacific ocean with outstretched arms and crying out "I am god!" If divinity resides within us and the universe, there is no need for revelation, no need to be addressed and to be called to obedience and repentance. If we are divine in our inner essence, sin is an illusion from which the New Age gospel will liberate us.

All this and more is part of the world we are called to witness to. As we look around our neighborhoods, we are likely to find a few village atheists, very vocal, almost obsessive in their need to talk about the God they believe does not exist. Then we have the rebels, often adults who are still mad at parents and/or Sunday School teachers who–they feel–tried to force-feed them with things that seemed to have little relationship to real faith or real life commitment. Our survey would no doubt reveal many lapsed church members, "statistical Christians," the indifferent who in fact may be spiritually more deprived than the atheists or rebels, because, in the words of the book of Revelation, they are "lukewarm," lacking true passion. As is the case with lukewarm coke, the fizzle is gone, the life of the Spirit drained from their souls.

But increasingly we will also find another category of person among our neighbors, namely people like Shirley MacLaine, who were raised and taught in the Church and then have exchanged a "Christianity" that did not satisfy the hunger of their hearts for another form of religion. It is those spiritually starved folk who are the great challenge for the Church’s witness. We will have to do more than condemn. They need to be confronted with a vibrant gospel message that lovingly presents to them the claims and promises of biblical revelation. Healing comes through repentance and divine forgiveness. That is not a painless process. It’s the love of Christ and Christ’s people that will carry the struggling seekers through.

Witness Rooted In Hebrew Understanding

Re-discovering the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith should not just be seen as a wholesome hobby for certain aficionados; it is a necessity for the health of both the Church and society. The Hebrew scriptures contain wonderful guidelines for the care of the poor, the destitute, and the debt-ridden; instructions about our obligation toward the "stranger" in our midst; about justice in the courts, stewardship of the soil which provides us with crops, and so on and so forth. All those truths were presupposed in Jesus’ preaching about the kingdom of God, and he practiced them in his daily ministry. No this-versus-that mentality there!

Like the Athenians of old, large numbers of today’s Americans could be described as quite religious, at least in the sense that a great majority of them believe in some sort of Supreme Being with a growing percentage among them apparently interested in "spirituality" and self-discovery.

Unfortunately, this tends to be a more ego-centered than God-centered and neighbor-oriented type of religion. The late Ayn Rand concluded her book Anthem with these words: "I’m done with the monster of ‘we,’ the word of serfdom–And now I see the face of God, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’ " Here, indeed, we are far removed from the words of Jesus, who spoke about the gift of love, when serving is the opposite of serfdom, a message that is deeply rooted in Hebrew tradition: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord" (Leviticus 19:18).

The great Jewish thinker Franz Rosenzweig once made the interesting observation that "the Jew must convert the heathen in the Christian." Torah-believing Jews can indeed enrich the faith and life of many people who pride themselves in being Bible-believing Christians, but whose Bible is often far too small. The late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote the following in his book Israel: An Echo of Eternity: "An ominous development is taking place in the twentieth century: man’s increasing failure or inability to take the Bible seriously, his growing alienation from the Bible. . . . We witness a radical elimination of the Bible from the life of the people in many parts of the world. . . . The fatal disease that is infecting many minds today is politics as an isolated, autonomous science following its own rules, unhampered by moral consideration of respect for truth. . . . Politics, the use of power turns self-destructive when defying truth" (pp. 147, 83).