World Mission of the Church - Lesson 5

Dr. Timothy Tennent

World Mission of the Church

wm601-05

Great Commission Passages in the New Testament (Part 2)

Lesson Transcript

[00:00:01] Okay, let's gather back. We'll continue on. As you're gathering, just want to mention. And please make a note of this in your notebooks, because I think I'll be a big help to you in the map preparation. The maps that I finally found that were so helpful is from an organization called the Arizona Geographic Alliance. If you go to Google or whatever and you can find the website, I don't have it written down here, but the Arizona Geographic Alliance has wonderful maps of the world. And so you could actually print out the individual continents and you could practice writing in the names or whatever. And of course, you'll see there the major world map that we'll be using as well, though I've blown ours up a bit larger, but it's a very helpful you know, you can practice that way. The Arizona Geographic Alliance, courtesy of a guy named Terry Dorf Scheidt. Bless his heart. I've been looking for a good map like this, a better one. So there we have it. Okay. Coming to Mark's Gospel, Mark 16. The whole chapter is a problem once you get past verse eight. So one of the things that we have to do in Mark's gospel is deal with some of the textual issues that are present in the the latter part of the chapter from nine through verse 20. Let me just before we discuss that, remind you of the passage as a whole. Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation, who are believes and is baptized will be saved. Whoever does not believe will be condemned. 

[00:02:07] And these signs will accompany those who believe in my name. They will drive out demons. They will speak in new tongues. They will pick up snakes with their hands. And when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hand on sick people and they will get well. Now, this text, as you can imagine, has been a bit controversial, especially the reference to picking up snakes. And so people naturally gravitate to the Matthew text more readily than the full mark and text. But that's only the beginning of the problems. The real problem comes with establishing the text at all. The whole thing, including the part that we like to call, go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Because those early manuscripts do not contain the passage past verse eight. Needless to say, there's a lot of difference of opinion about how the church should respond to this problem and b, what exactly the nature of the problem is that we therefore have to respond to. That is a huge problematic area. If you take the gospel of Mark with Dr. Nicole, for example, you spend a good bit of time on this and you can thoroughly explore all of it. Obviously, that would not be appropriate for this class. I do agree with Mark and scholar Alan Cole, who has said, quote, that the abrupt end in verse eight is abrupt linguistically and theologically. So because of that, I agree, as does our mark and scholar here, Nicole, that we have simply lost the original ending to Mark's gospel. It's just gone. Now, there's also tons of theories about how it got torn off because it was the last on the scroll and is being passed around. 

[00:03:59] And you know, this is Mark's gospel, of course, in the comics always persecution. And it's amazing that we haven't lost more of it, you know, you might say. But the last part of the scroll was torn off or wore off or whatever. There's all kinds of views about that. But I think my own view and I very appreciative of anybody who has difference of views because this is not something that I'm giving you, is the maids and Persians. It's just a matter of some interpretation, but I'm personally convinced that it was lost. Therefore, we have to ask ourselves what to do with the part that's been restored. My view is to take it more positively and say the early church recognized it was lost and they rewrote the ending continent with or similar to or whatever with what was there. It does, you know, in some ways happily brings out. They couldn't imagine the gospel ending without a clear commission. So you know that we have to get this thing right. We have to make sure that's not left off because we've lost it or whatever. There's like a lot of positive ways of looking at this. Obviously, one option is simply just to never preach on it and ignore it and just preach on Matthew, Mark and Luke, and just simply never preach on people do that. They just they never preach on this passage, especially the snakes and all that. So I was in the Princeton Library. I did my teaching and Islam at Princeton, and I was going down the stacks one day and now you're around the corner. And I tended to be this way. I tend to walk like slightly faster than I should. And I was just bounding through the library, oblivious to everything around me. 

[00:05:41] And I ran slap flat, face to face, ran into full crash. Bruce Metzger, who, like me, was walking along with his Greek text. And I got my mother and we literally collided face to face in the library. That was my first. I've actually met him a couple of times since then, but that was my first meeting with Bruce Metzger. I said it only to say, though, that we got to talking. He asked me who is very kind gentleman, you know, who are you and why are you here? And it wasn't like, Who are you? Are you here? But, you know, we laughed about running each other. And he was asking, you know, if you're a student, we know what's what's going on. And I told my back a little bit. So anyway, the conversation drifted to Mark 16 because he's, of course, the reigning tech. Social critic. He's known as, you know, has written these marvelous books on textual analysis. And this is the biggest textual problem and the New Testament right here. This is it. And the next one, of course, is the woman court and adultery. Those two are the biggies. Everything else is relatively minor compared to this. So naturally, we had some discussion about actually both those text, but briefly about this as well. And I asked him, I said, you know, I just spent the last ten years as a pastor, and I preach through the New Testament and I never preach from Mark 16. I didn't have the courage. I know what to do with it. I didn't know how to deal with this thing practically from the pulpit. You see, I understood, you know, all the theories, but you can't get the pulpit and spend your whole story to explaining all of this. 

[00:07:17] You would definitely shake your people up. Of course, the modern versions have these little lines that, you know, we'll say, you know, the most reliable text do not contain this. Or then that means that your people will come and ask you about it. It used to be in the old King James that wasn't there. So no one ever knew and you never told them. But now you know, the cat's out of the bag, so you've got to stumble out some explanation. And of course, I'm hoping that your classes here will give you a more thorough study of it. But the bottom line is, I asked him, Dr. Metzger, would you are do you preach from March 16? I just want I mean, here's the main man. If he can preach and Mark 16, then I can. And he said to me, Yeah, I preach on March 16. I have confidence in the text. Not that it was the original. I mean, he he believes also the same thing we just said, But he believes that either it is the authentic words of Jesus, because obviously there are all of the gospels are based on source material. They just simply took from another source and they placed it there. You know, we already have the so-called quell, the Q source that we know of it, clearly a source it's shared by Matthew and Luke, different from Mark. So Matthew probably has Mark and the so-called Q or well, what can we have other sources? You know, John says the whole world can contain the book. There's all kinds of material out there. So simply this represents the words of Jesus, just like the one adult, by the way, He believes something there that is authentic Jesus material. 

[00:08:54] It just simply wasn't in the first rendition of the gospel, and it was added later, but it was genuine Jesus material. All this goes way beyond this class because this is obviously very important textual matters. But they encouraged me to go ahead and look at Mark theologically with full confidence, acknowledging this issues there. You have to wrestle with that core in your own ways of dealing with these things. But we're going to look at the text without any worry about it. We're going to just say this. These are the words of Christ. How that has come to us, either through a placing of Jesus material that was placed on the end of Mark from another document that was authentically his material or the church writing. What they remembered is the words of Jesus, guided by the Spirit. It's in our received text and therefore I accept it as the received text, just the way I've preached many times. And the woman caught adultery and didn't you know, I got over that. That's how we're going to approach this in this passage. Now, though, I will say maybe just in passing, that the theological implications of what we're going to be drawing from all of this as the course develops could all be drawn from Matthew, Luke and John. There's not as if there's something that comes out in Mark, like the snake handling that we're going to like make a huge point of that. You need to start that everywhere you go or something. You know, an even a snake tale. You know, I, I come from Georgia where there are churches that pass snakes around. Okay. So, you know, I have this massive fear of that part of the passage. You know, like, look, with all the what's happens, you know, in us and India, they didn't view this way at all because India has what they call nog festivals. 

[00:10:44] And nog means snake. The snake is worshiped in India, especially one called Satia, and they have all kinds of snake stuff. I've been to the I forgot took some are going off students recently to the play the village in north India where they train all the snake charmers where they blow the little flute in the cobra comes out from the Basque and all that. Yeah, I've been there. And let me tell you, this village is full of cobras and even small children, You know, with these cobras, it's really amazing. Anyway, in that con have asked my Indian friend about this passage. Oh, they love this passage. I said, Oh, what do you mean? We can't have this passage? We really count on this passage. This is the only pass. Gives us confidence. In preaching the gospel in these snake villages. Because if we get bit by a snake, a deadly snake man, we're going to turn to Mark 16. And I'm going to say, praise God, pick up snakes and with your hands. They will not. You're not going to die. No live. And that's for Paul, you know, puts his hand in the brush and the snake comes out and grabs his hand and he shakes it off. They like those texts, and they're important to them because they are surrounded by a lot of headaches. And in fact, Matthew Best, you know, Matthew Baer, some of you Matthew Best was in that village as very sensitive village. You have to really be careful. He want to preach the gospel there. Well, you'll be very careful in that village, what you say. So he preached this beautiful message. What he didn't know was the guy that was translating for him in the Hindi was like massively editing it as a French song because it was a it's a very dangerous area to say certain things. 

[00:12:24] But he preached right there amidst the snakes. So I was, what if a snake went rhumba and grabbed Matthew Bish? I was going to turn to Mark 16 and praise God for the passage. Okay, that's all about snakes. Let's go on to the first thing about Mark. Even though the language sounds very similar to Matthew, go and make disciples of all nations. Go and preach the gospel to every creature, all creation. The phraseology sounds similar, and I think in practice people kind of quote them all interchangeably is very, very different emphasis. Very different emphasis. In some ways, we have a similar structure in that just as in Matthew, the imperative is not on the word go, but on make disciples. But that's not to say same with the mark and text. The key imperative is Caruso to proclaim second person plural, active, imperative. So in the text, you also do not have the word go in the controlling position of the passage, but in the participle role. So as you are going, it assumes it's a descriptive of what the church is already doing, so they can therefore get to the real a command, which is Matthew to disciple, and here to proclaim or preach the good news. The object of Mark's proclamation is to preach into all the world, he says. Does them in the text go into all the world? The word there is cosmos, and we'll get a word cosmos from go into all the created order, as it were, and proclaim the message to all creation. Very, very different creation zone. They created order. This is clearly spatial, geographic kinds of language being used here, going into the world, preaching to all creation. This doesn't have as much the clear ethnic kind of emphasis you found in Matthew. 

[00:14:40] Mark clearly gives us if you look at the this is a parallel, but to Matthew the imperative, make disciples and Mark proclaim good news. The focus in Matthew is to do it to all nations, mark to all creation, so that you see some real differences there and how it's developed. So Mark is giving us spatial categories, go into all the world and the urgency to preach to every individual, preach the good news, to all creation, all the created order is, again, this nice mass. It almost to me parallels really the persecution of the all authority in Matthew. Here you have this very expansive view that there's no place on earth that isn't under the purview, the remit, the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, by implication, the proclamation of the witness in church. The imperative is to preach or proclaim just the way Matthew is does to make disciples. So that's a very different kind of emphasis. And Mark Scott And let me just bring out, I mean, some feel for why the numerical emphasis is important. And again, this is why I think that the work of the Global Christianity Center dot org website now is so helpful because it is important to sit and look at the sheer percentages and numbers of people that without the gospel. One of the problems with reading, especially Matthew, that Mark I think helps us with a little bit is to recognize the broadening scope or the never ending. Broadening scope of those to whom we must go with the gospel. So if you had, for example, let's say there's 70 people in this room and we'll just say that Jesus said, go into that room and preach the gospel to every every person. And so you came in and you preach to ten, eventually, 15, 20. 

[00:16:49] And a lot of us have that mentality with the gospel, that we have the global situation, and we're slowly making our way until everyone hears that's the language we use. The problem is we have to think beyond that imagery because when you walk into the room, we're using this room metaphorically to refer to all the peoples of the world. When you walk into the room, you have to recognize that the room is not static, that there are hundreds of new people coming into the room constantly because of the sheer growth rate of world population growth. So if you actually ask yourselves, how many people must you reach in order to reach the world, the numbers is is staggering because if you don't reach if you don't bring 200,000 people to Christ in a year's time, then you're actually going backwards because the ratio of births over deaths in the world. So you could actually be having a ministry that globally that reached a quarter of a million people every every year, it would not overall help the global situation. So look at some examples of how this would compare in terms of when Christ gave the Great Commission until today to give you a little feel for it. When Christ first gave the Great Commission, there is estimate around 250 million people in the world. That means the population, the United States, not even that was the population of the entire world. Now, that's a very, very different situation theologically, because we ask yourself, okay, if there's a quarter million people in the world, it's half Christ. How long did it take for the world to double in size, to go from two and 50 million to a half to 500 million people to half a billion people? And the answer took all the way to the term Martin Luther. 

[00:18:56] So you have 1500 years it took for the world to double in population one time. So when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Chapel, that was essentially the time when the world was a half a billion people. 500 million people. It doubled again. And I'm using kind of key moments in history to give you some feel for it. How William Carey. When William Carey went to India, the world population was around 1 billion to took. In that case, only 300 years to double again. So it took 1500 years to double once, took it only 300 to double a second time. So from the time of Luther to Carey is roughly 300 years less than that. Really, when you look at the actual numbers, slightly less then it took only 100 years to double again to 2 billion. This is, I'm saying, the Edinburgh Missionary conference. We haven't discussed this, but we will. This is the first big global missionary conference in 1910 at the University Edinburgh. It took only 100 years to go from 1 billion to 2 billion, and then it took only 65 years for to double again. Now this would happen. Now we're getting to the point where the world is doubling within one person's lifetime, as opposed to 1500 years after Christ before it doubled. Now, if you're born in 1910 and died in 1972, you would have seen the world go from 1 billion to 2 billion in your lifetime. Well, then today the world population is now over 6 billion people. So we're moving up to that doubling again and even less years once again. So this actually is part of the value of empirical research in terms of stone peoples of the world and the growth of population. 

[00:21:01] Because if we believe that the scope of the great Commission is to preach the gospel to every person or make the gospel available to every person, then we have to reckon with the fact that the world population is exploding in a way that is unprecedented. And there's various scenarios about whether this is going to level out and how it may level out. And there's about three to. Major scenarios which go beyond what we would look at this class. But we are situation today where, I mean, just India alone. India has four times as many people in it today. There were in the entire world when Jesus get great commission just in India, there's over a billion people in India. That means that when William Kerry went to India, the entire world's population was 1 billion. Today, there are more people in India than the entire world was when we went there and they passed the 1 billion mark over over two years ago. And then by the year 2000, I mean different estimates, but between 2025 and 35, which is very much in our lifetime, India will surpass China and be the most populated country in the world, which they're really excited about. The Chinese, of course, at 1.2 billion, have various political policies to keep population growth down. But right now, if the world is roughly 6 billion people, over 2 billion of them are either Chinese or Indian, that means one third of the entire world is either a Chinese or Indian. And that has huge implications because the fact of the gospels context in China and India. So especially if you're from Western Europe, where population growth is stagnant or declining, and in North America, where we are growing because of immigration, thankfully we are in a very different situation. 

[00:23:06] We don't really recognize that the real explosive growth population are in areas that are Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, atheistic. And that's a huge challenge for us. And therefore the global context of the church that's growing in the high population areas is very dynamic because they're growing, the church is growing in areas that are fundamentally non-Christian. And that's that's an exciting kind of confrontation, if you can call it that. It's happening. That would not be something we would think of by default in North America. So these are all important realities. And I think Mark's gospel is giving us the foundation to really think about the fact that the whole of creation is our mandate. And we cannot just ignore the global realities of the sheer numbers of people that need to hear the gospel. It isn't like we have a static number and crisis. Go and tell the gospel those people. We actually have situation which is go in there and tell the gospel those people. But this room where it tells us to go is being flooded with new people constantly. And so even if you were to really, really make a lot of progress, you have to really have a very powerful multiplying thing in order to keep up with world population growth. Okay. Thoughts or comments on this point in marketing and marketing seems to. The problem like to describe. It seems to be remedied by me. That's right. That's a good point. I should make that clear. When we look at the different we're trying to point out eventually how all of the great commissions have very different theological emphases, and we have to completely rethink how we understand the Great Commission. And most of us think, Oh, it's just about people going. 

[00:25:01] What we're finding already is that it's not about going. Going is a part of it. I mean, going is an assumed part of it. So the church is not going. That's a huge problem. But there are major theological emphases and implications globally of the the mandates or the imperatives that are present. So we're not going to be saying, well, gosh, which is it discipleship or preaching? We're actually going to be seeing that all of these are integral to an effective church globally, and you cannot have an effective church without good, solid proclamation of the gospel. And Mark puts all his weight there. Matthew puts his weight on discipleship. And this is, I think, reflected in the teachings of Christ himself. After the resurrection, Jesus is emphasizing the importance of preaching, of discipline, as we'll see later in Luke with witnessing and John was sending, we're going to see the power of this theologically put the whole Great Commission together with discipling, preaching, witnessing, sending. This is a very, very powerful mandate for the church as a whole. It has to appreciate as a whole to really see where God guided what God's called you, because I think everyone has a role to play in the Great Commission. And that doesn't mean for me, everyone going to North India, though I'd love to see you come, but I think it means it'll mean different things or different people as God calls and leads. And I think we have to be able to recognize that as God directs us. But I think I don't think we can ignore the text or worse yet, isolate it to a band of a few select people who are working cross-culturally, you know, in a distant place. We have to really rethink that altogether. 

[00:26:49] And part of the purpose of the class is to really show you textually that the Great Commission is something that is the mandate of the gathered church. They are the obedient church. So you're right. Thank you for bringing that out. Let's just take another look at this. And again, the global Christian org would give you so many more points on this. But just to look at the comparison of population and the various continents gives you a really, I think, a helpful insight. Oceania, which is the smallest, by the way, oceans, the new not that new now, but the last ten years has been used to collectively talk about not only Australia but also all of the island and the parts of the world that are not part of the other five continents. Oceania collectively represents roughly 30 million people total, despite the fact the 19th century this received the greatest emphasis in the 19th century missionary movement. This was numerically in terms of the emphasis of the church and bring the gospel to the islands of the world. But, you know, we saw in Isaiah, I will make myself known to the islands of the world. So this is it was being fulfilled, but comparatively speaking, a very small group of people. This is like the population of less than Calcutta and Bombay combined is the whole of Oceania. This is two cities. North America comes in next with 310 million people. Again, by comparison, relatively small Latin America is getting much more 519 million people. Europe with 729 million people, Africa 784 million people. These are relatively close to Europe and Africa and then Asia with a whopping 3.68 billion people. Now that has to visually say a lot to us about the sheer importance of bearing the witness of the gospel into the Asian context, through prayer, through whatever. 

[00:29:03] I'm not you know, we're not pre-judging how we are to respond to this fact, but just saying that this is a fact on the ground. There are 3.68 billion people in Asia, and this is a mega sphere with tremendous implications and needs in terms of the gospel. And so when Mark says go into all the world and preach the gospel, of course, the great thing about it, he's saying this as an Asian in Asia, he's saying this. So here we are, This is being burned in Asia, and yet Asia is the least reached dramatically, least least reach percentage wise of. All the contents of the world. So that's one, I think, part of Mark's expansive vision. That's that's helpful to see. The other point, the third point, and just to summarize what we are. The first point was that Mark gives us the spatial categories. He doesn't give us people words, but more geographic words. And then the second point was the urgency to preach the gospel to all people, all individuals, I should say, in the world. But thirdly, Mark and Matthew also does this. But Mark clearly refused to separate individual faith and one's incorporation into the body. Now, we saw this with that. We didn't talk about it much, but in Matthew's gospel, the idea of untethered evangelism, where, you know, you show the Jesus film or you pass out tracts and then you go to the next town, that kind of thing is not contemplated by Matthew or Mark. What is the role of the Jesus film or maybe discuss as we have time? But the idea of kind of willy nilly evangelism clearly does not square with Matthew's emphasis on discipleship. The whole idea is evangelism. And I'm surely I think this must be taught here in evangelism classes and discipleship is must be linked to any kind of evangelistic outreach. 

[00:31:00] So Matthew clearly says not only the discipleship, but being baptized and teaching, teaching and baptizing. So we see the person comes into the kingdom of God, come into the faith. They are baptized, they're teaching. This is all part of the discipleship process. That's all part of the world we see. But Mark also, it's in his mind. He doesn't envision preaching a kind of an untethered way. But those who believe are baptized, those who believe whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. Now, I think it's a mistake to, as some have done, take this into a kind of a scholastic argumentation that says if someone is not baptized, they cannot be say, that's not Mark's theological point here. He's not trying to doubt the fifth on the cross is salvation or whoever. He is simply making the normative statement that it is normative for a Christian who comes to faith to be baptized. And it is not actually, I think even just talking as much about or solely about a particular sacrament at a particular moment as a you know, that's the end of the story. Oh, I was I believe I was baptized back in 1970, whatever, but baptized into a body. You believe and you're baptized. That means the whole point of birth has been brought into the fellowship and the community of the church. So the gospel is long lived out, not just as individual faith. Jesus, my Lord. And I don't care about how that I'm related to others, but actually it's not being brought into the wider context. That's why I think Matthew says Disciple the Nations. It's always in the kind of community, community, community. You can't do discipleship alone, you can't preach. Mark is saying an untethered way. 

[00:33:00] We're bringing people into the redeemed community. The second baptism is the greatest symbol of that, as well as the Lord's Supper. Bring people into a community of fellowship and of growth in discipleship. So that's clearly there. And Mark. And then finally, fourthly. Mark graphically portrays the great chasm between those who believe and those who do not believe. Now, today, we do not have a certainly not a very vigorous, forthright truth telling in the pulpit about judgment and about eternal lawlessness. It is not something that is prevalent in our pulpits. So we actually, by being afraid to preach on these themes, which we know are clearly biblical, we actually unknowingly perpetuate and make the problem worse because we have a whole generation of people growing up in the church who've never heard a single sermon on judgment. And therefore, that's another reason why Mark's text is avoided. That's why I think the Great Commission people say, Matthew, because they're afraid to preach on a passage which says whoever does not believe will be condemned. That is politically incorrect today. So we'll spend a bit of a good bit of time after this section discussing our the lost really lost, because this office is a very difficult issue and it takes a lot more time. So we want to explore theological. Some of the answers to these questions about know what about those I've never heard and all that we need to deal with that because we need that biblical and theological fortification in our preaching to be able to confidently talk to people honestly about what the biblical text teaches and not be fearful of not being able to substantiate it biblically or being pushed into some something which is not really the full gospel. So Mark presents this great chasm. 

[00:35:06] The whole point is what the church does is not just elective icing on the cake. Okay, I'm saying I'm so happy. I'm saying don't go show somebody else is not that way. This is cosmic in its significance. Mark is saying the church's obedience is making a impact on whether those are lost or saved. And we recognize, obviously in God's great elective sovereignty that God sovereignly empowers us for this task and sovereignly calls those whom he has chosen. But nobody believes not the most. 5.7 The Dark Dart Calvinist does not believe that God's sovereignty implies the church is passivity. No one believes that. That's not biblical. So we go out preaching the gospel, recognizing that we have no idea who will respond, and we can't compel someone to respond. That's a work of the Spirit. But God has chosen in his sovereignty to use the church to deliver his elective and sovereign purposes in the world. Therefore, the implications of this, if you are honest, reader of Scripture, are profound condemnation and salvation. Actually, in the text it is a perfect parallel. Those who believe so a place that I will be say a future event. It's a future indicative passive of future event. When something happens to us, we will be saved. Paralleled by Carter Quintus Sati from Carter Chrono will be condemned again. Future passive A future When something happens to us. This is again a passive event. God will save us. God will condemn us based on whether we have been brought into this community of faith, the Ecclesia, or whether we have not. This means there's a huge, huge distinction in Mark's mind between those who have received the Gospel and those who have not received the gospel and the implications of this point. 

[00:37:16] Earlier, we looked at this chart. The implications of this are vast billions who haven't received the gospel from Mark is cosmic. It is huge. It must require our attention and our focus to ask, how are we going to bring the glorious good news to those in that situation? Okay. I've dealt with all everything major except for drinking poison. I'm not going to deal with that unless you have anything you want to add to it. I guess if I were to drink some deadly poison by mistake, I would also run to this text. But I don't. Even in Georgia, they don't drink deadly poison. I don't think so. You probably won't encounter it. So you're pretty safe. Comments or questions or thoughts about this passage or any of the things we've said? Yes. Seems it juxtaposes a rebuke about their unbelief right before it. Does that influence the interpretation of the text in. And in the way that you've interpreted it and through this scenario and the use of that word believing and unbelieving and then the emphasis on it in the actual commission. Yeah, that's a great question. Of course, the big problem is whether this capacity, this passage should be connected to that or not. The problem is the word they're for their their belief, the refusal to believe. There's actually difference of language. There is actually unclear whether there is any connection there. And therefore, I just don't know. I don't know whether there is any intentional contrast in their unbelief, because he's speaking to those who have believe and affirm their faith. And I think he obviously is very optimistic about the witness of the church to the unbelieving world. And Jesus has invested everything in this small group. But the fact is, as you pointed out, both Matthew and Mark, both in ways they would look as well. 

[00:39:15] But so far, Matthew and Mark both include in their text the unbelief of those who heard it the first time, those who saw it, some believed, others doubted. And Matthew then here, he rebukes them for their lack of faith and their refusal to believe. I take it personally as a bit of encouragement in the sense that God has chosen to use weak vessels to do the greatest and grandest thing in the history of the universe. And therefore, even though the disciples of course, Peter, this is obviously really important to John with Peter's lack of faith and his denial of Christ three times and all that, Peter becomes so critical in the whole enterprise that gives me encouragement because I still think the church often is passive because they think that we're waiting for some kind of moment of discipleship realization to occur, that we're going to get to a point of maturity where we can really do this job well. When part of the job, I think in discipleship is to help people understand that they do not have the ability to do this. And therefore, when you talk to somebody in a mall or in the tea or even in north India on the field, you don't go into it with all kinds of bravado, confidence that I'm going to, you know, proclaim the gospel this person. You do it with meekness and humility, knowing that ultimately it's the work of the spirit. And so it's a great testament to the power of God through clay vessels. That's kind of how I interpret this more than any larger point that might be made. But I don't know for sure. Other comments or questions. Okay. Well, we are getting down to the wire and we're not at I think might be a little premature to start on Luke at this point. 

[00:41:16] Do we have any other questions before we that way we can maybe use the time or productive that way? Yes. The statistics I see in missionary work that we recognize the number of converts that have come forth from different people groups in order to determine our success looking a different way than in the past. Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, the first point is, yeah, there is a quite right a biblical distinction between the English word convert and disciple, because the word convert would be the word we use proselytize, which Jesus does use, but always in a negative context. So, you know, he this most dramatic example, he tells the Pharisees, you know, you travel across the earth and land to make one convert and turn in the twice much of hell as yourself. So pretty negative reference there. But the other point you have made is good. The response to that has been in terms of empirical data, the only way to actually work empirically with any kind of reasonable sense of standards and measurement is to measure, baptize Christians, period. Because it's so nebulous. How do you judge when someone is disciple? So there's a certain level where we have to have the kind of more basic empirical data. How many in the world are baptized into the Christian faith? How many are not in this people group or whatever? That's helpful information, but that now there there is additional information on charts. How many people in a particular people's group are likely to share their faith with someone else? And that has made a difference in strategy because there are situations where you have, especially in today in Western Europe, where you have large numbers of nominal Christians, where it could statistically represent a massively reached place. 

[00:43:13] I mean, like look at Poland, for example. But when you actually look at people sharing their faith or being able to cobble together some kind of presentation of the gospel to someone else is extremely low. So that has been done. That's partly done through the websites here as well. We'll show you how that's being done later in the course and look at some of what that's an analog, but that becomes less precise, as you might imagine. Any other last minute? One last question, then we'll we'll start. Yes. I just want to get your take. Know the place of parents, church organizations that don't baptize and that. Well, you actually asked two questions. I am actually really in favor strongly of the concept of parish church as a servant of the church. And I think that's biblically foundational. And I'll show that if we have time in this class. I'll make a distinction In Paul's missionary band and the church in Ephesus, for example, the traveling missionary band of Paul is a separate kind of structure. That modality Sodality distinction that, by the way, in our readings under Ralph Winter, you should read that article because that is an important theological point he makes. So but the second part of your question I totally disagree with, and that is that any parish church organization that is not connecting people to the local church or baptizing people kind of in some kind of untethered way into some mystical body of Christ, I do not think is biblical. I'm totally not in favor of that. I see the role of church planting as absolutely essential and all of the great Commission tax. As we'll see. The role of the church is central. And I don't believe in any such imagination that the Great Commission means go out and evangelize people all over the world. 

[00:45:03] I don't think it means that. It means go out and plant churches ultimately. And the apostle Paul, by the way, his so-called missionary journeys that we talk about, we often interpret that in our language as a big evangelistic campaign. But it's not that, as we all have. You know, we look at the text, it's a church planting mission. He goes place to place planting churches. And we often think of it as, you know, roving from town to town, having big tent meetings and going on is a very different kind of ministry. So we'll be looking at the important role of the church many times as the course develops. So that's my basic response to that. Okay, we'll stop there. Have a great day. Keep on reading, memorizing scripture, learning the comes the world. And we'll see you tomorrow.