In summary, then, Isaiah 9:7, Luke 4:18-19 and Rom. 14:17 are all saying the same thing: the kingdom of God here on earth should focus on the special needs of the poor and oppressed by preaching and practicing justice/righteousness which will lead to personal and community shalom. The above can only be done through the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.
With this background, Acts 1:1-8; 8:12; 28:23 & 31 make more sense. Two themes are highlighted in Acts 1:1-8: the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit. After Jesus' resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus spoke of "the kingdom of God" and "the promise of the Father---you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Howard Snyder (A Kingdom Manifesto, 1985) paraphrases Acts 1:6-8 as follows:
His disciples ask, "are you finally going to set up your kingdom?" Jesus replies, "The time for the full flowering of the new order still remains a mystery to you; it is in God's hands. But . . . the Holy Spirit will give you the power to live the kingdom now. So you are to be witnesses of the kingdom and its power from here to the very ends of the earth.
Wait until you are filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit; then you will have the power to incarnate the kingdom of God. The day of Pentecost soon came when the Spirit was poured out on the church.
What did the church do? Acts 8:12: "Philip preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ." Later in Acts 28, Paul spoke to the Jews in Rome "testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus Christ from the law of Moses and from the prophets." Many Jews rejected this message from Paul so he turned to the Gentiles "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . "
So the book of Acts is about the empowered church preaching a two-pronged message: personal salvation based on the cross and resurrection, and a second and equally important theme---the kingdom of God as justice and shalom for the poor and oppressed. The complete gospel includes both personal righteousness and social justice. Both are absolutely necessary if we are to minister to all of the needs of a person and a community.
Previously I have identified ethnocentrism and oppression as two social evils the church must expose and challenge. If the church does not address these and other social evils, the church itself may become an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression. Ethnocentrism is a false sense of ethnic superiority. Oppression in the OT meant to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and/or kill persons created in the image of God.
Now I would like to examine some examples from church history when the church became an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression. In these examples, the church usually was faithful in proclaiming the cross and resurrection, sometimes the anointing and filling of the Holy Spirit, but failed to preach and practice the kingdom of God as justice and shalom.
The Puritans attempted to be a godly and biblical people, and in many ways they were. But they did not understand that justice and shalom applied to all people. They saw themselves as God's chosen people, chosen to set up a Christian on American shores. But there was more than a touch of biblical ignorance and arrogance in their sense of chosenness. After a short period of relative harmony with Native Americans, as Puritan numbers grew and they needed more land, ethnic conflict developed. Increasingly, Puritans saw the surrounding tribes as heathen standing in the way of God's will. When large numbers of Indians died of disease, Puritans often saw this as the hand of God eliminating heathen from their midst. A religiously legitimated ethnocentrism soon led to acts of oppression---the slaughtering of whole villages and the offering of bounties for the scalps of Native Americans. Incomplete biblical truth---the lack of understanding that the kingdom of God is justice for all---had tragic consequences. The Puritans who saw themselves as instruments of God became instrument of evil. They also set in motion the ethnocentric and oppressive pattern that contaminated much of the rest of American history.
Much the same happened in South Africa. The Afrikaners saw themselves as a people chosen to establish a Christian nation. During the time that the Afrikaners governed, most Afrikaners attended church. They zealously kept the Sabbath day holy. Public TV opened with Bible reading and prayer. Abortion and pornography were low when compared to the United States. At the same time that they manifested this religious spirit, they treated their fellow Africans as inferior human beings. Their ethnocentrism led to vicious and inhuman acts of oppression. They did not preach nor practice the kingdom of God as justice for all peoples.
In the American South---the Bible Belt---ethnocentrism and oppression ran wild during the eras of slavery and segregation. Much too often, Christians and churches were a part of the problem. Only a few stood for justice and shalom for all.
In Rwanda, supposedly the most Christian nation in Africa (8 out of 10 profess to be Christian), ethnic conflict exploded between the Tutsi and Hutu. The cross and resurrection were preached. The Holy Spirit was present in a Protestant continuous revival and in a charismatic Catholic revival. But apparently there was little biblical teaching on the kingdom of God as standing against ethnocentrism and oppression and for justice and shalom. Some ruthless politicians fanned the existing embers of ethnocentrism which exploded into a forest fire that ravaged the land. The Christian church had not erected any justice barriers to stop the raging fires of bitterness and hatred. Christians were killing other Christians. Serious flaws in the understanding and practice of the gospel can lead to fatal consequences.
One more sad event in American church history needs to be recounted. John Dawson describes the origins of Pentecostalism in his book Healing America's Wounds:
The [1906] Azusa St. Revival was a modern Pentecost in which the outpoured Spirit broke the barriers to true Christian unity. Racial division, America's greatest problem, was swept away. The huge dirt-floor barn that housed William Seymor's [Afro American] church attracted scores of ethnic groups from their separate enclaves across Los Angeles. . . . This sincere and loving man [Parham]---Seymor's friend---was afflicted with the blindness of his generation. He admired the Ku Klux Klan and believed that the besetting sin of humanity was racial mixing. . . . After denouncing Seymor, he continues in his ministry, preaching against racial mixing and proclaiming the baptism of the Holy Spirit. . . . Pentecostalism divided into
two groups, one black and one white, between 1908 and 1914. Glossolalia became the new emphasis. . . . and God's true purpose went down the memory hole.
A flawed church that preaches and practices a partial vacuum. Evil floods in to fill that vacuum. Only a fully biblical church preaching and practicing a comprehensive gospel can do God's will on earth. In 1989, Billy Graham (Transformation) wrote: "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."
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