A Witness in Every Culture

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 

Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19:1-4

"There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard." What exactly does this mean? I believe it means that God has left a witness for Himself in every culture. God has "made every nation of men...so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:26-27) Think about that for a moment...every nation of men...not just the Jews or the Americans or the Europeans or the Chinese, but every nation. 

Paul tells us that God has made them in such a way that men from every nation would seek Him. He has left a witness for Himself in every culture, every nation. There is some bit of truth in their worldview, their belief system, that has prepared them to hear and receive the Gospel. This is what Jesus meant when He told His disciples, "Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." (John 4:35). 

How are the fields (referring to people who do not know Christ as Savior) "ripe for harvest?" The disciples did not prepare those fields...those people's hearts, to receive Christ. No...God did! God left a witness for Himself so that when the disciples made it to that group of people and shared the love and truth of Jesus with them, they would be ready to receive it. 

I believe that this idea challenges some of our core beliefs. We tend to look at a culture like the Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists, or any number of other "pagan" cultures and believe they are unreachable without some miraculous intervention from God. Yes...God does intervene miraculously as I pointed out in my earlier blog Dreams of the Muslims , but more often, He asks us to harvest the fields that He has already ripened. 

So how does a Christian harvest the fields? How can the Gospel be explained to a group of people so that it seems culturally right to them? 

The answer is through something called "redemptive analogy," a phrase coined by missionary and author Don Richardson (author of Peace Child and Eternity in Their Hearts...two books I have previously blogged about at The Incredible Power of God and Eternity in their Hearts). 

The Jewish people practiced lamb sacrifice. John the Baptist proclaimed Jesus as the perfect, personal fulfillment of that sacrifice by saying, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" This is redemptive analogy. 

When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, a Jewish teacher, both knew that Moses had lifted up a serpent of brass upon a pole so that Jews, dying of snakebite, could look at it and be healed. Jesus told Nicodemus that "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This too is redemptive analogy. 

The Karen of Burma (seen in above picture) had been searching for centuries for a "white brother who was supposed to bring them a book...(whose) author is Y'wa-the Supreme God...that the white brother, having given them the lost book, will thereby set them free from all who oppress them." Their folk religion's hymns bear striking resemblances to God's character and "the Karen story of man's falling away from God contains stunning parallels to Genesis chapter 1: Y'wa formed the world originally. He appointed food and drink. He appointed the 'fruit of trial.' He gave detailed orders. Mu-kaw-lee deceived two persons. He caused them to eat the fruit of the tree of the trial. They obeyed not...they believed not Y'wa...when they ate the fruit of trial they became subject to sickness, aging and death." Wow! This was a remote group of people who had never come in contact with Jews or Christians before, yet their own religion, thousands of years old, had an incredible witness of the Lord! The Karen nation was thus poised like an 800,000 member welcoming party, ready for the first unsuspecting missionary who approached them with a Bible and a message of deliverance from God." When missionaries finally brought the Gospel to the Karen in the early 1800s, thousands accepted Christ almost immediately and "almost as quickly as Karen were converted and baptized, they became missionaries to spread the good news still further among their own people" and neighboring tribes! This is redemptive analogy. 

There are many more stories like this, of missionaries bringing the Gospel to groups of people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. When the missionary looks for and finds that redemptive analogy, that culture key, the people become very open to hearing about and believing in the Gospel. They "are made aware of spiritual meaning dormant within their own culture. In this way, conversion does not deny their cultural background. Instead, they experience heightened insight into both the Scriptures and their own cultural heritage, and thus they are better prepared to share Christ meaningfully with other members of their society."