“Of course there is to be contact between the nations, but not supranational miscegenation or slow genocide. National seclusion is wrong, but even a supranational ecumencial movement can be guilty of seclusion! For as Dooyweerd remarks: ‘The history of the building of the tower of Babel, viewed in the light of the cultural commandment is contrary to the divine ordinance. Cultural expansion, the spread of humanity over the surface of the earth in the differentiation of the cultural groups, and the cultural contact between these groups, have been set as a task to mankind.’ And again: ‘In the removal of the rigid walls of isolation, historical development moves in the line of cultural integration. The latter has its counterpart in the process of an increasing differentiation. This process of cultural integration and differentiation should be sharply distinguished from the levelling tendencies which in our days threaten to penetrate the so-called under-developed cultures with secularized factors of Western Civilizations.’
In spite of a slight amount of marginal intermixing and still less of intermarriage with other stocks, God preserved the the Israelitic nation and its culture (and land and language) up to the advent of Christ. Neither did Christ destroy nationality, but sought to preserve it and to cleanse it from sin to perfect it. And this involved at least two things: His mandate to improve international relations, but also to sanctify national life to His glory.
Christ insisted on His followers improving international relations. And this they were to do by loving their neighbors as themselves, yes, by loving even their hostile Samaritan neighbors. Also, they were to pray for their enemies, even for their Roman conquerors, and, after Christ’s death and ascension, to go into all the world and teach all the nations, as commanded in Christ’s Great commission.
Yet they were also to sanctify national life and to promote specifically the National welfare. Jesus Himself clearly taught the necessity of the Israelitic believers’ ministering first to the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’ and that it was not meet to take the Israelitic “children’s bread cast it ‘ to other nations. Nor should Samaritans be encouraged to inundate the temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, but rather worship God in their own temple in their own land for ‘God is spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit,’ that is, in one and the same spirit, and not necessarily in one and the same international or supranational geographical location. And, have assured his followers that nations would still be in existence on the future day of Judgment, and that many would then come from the east and the west into the Kingdom of heaven, He told His followers to go into all the world, and disciple the nations (as nations!), beginning amongst their own nation in Jerusalem, but going forth thence even into the hostile territory of ‘Samaria’ and into the uttermost parts of the earth.’
Shortly, after that, the risen Christ poured out His Spirit on the day of Pentecost, causing the disciples to speak of his wonderful works of God in every then known language for the benefit of those Parthians, Medes, Elamites, etc., who were then in Jerusalem for the feast. Far from suggesting the future creation of a one-world nation with a one-world language, this important event certainly suggests the sanctification of the then existing nationalities to the service of God, inasmuch as ‘devout men, out of every nation under heaven’ there heard the Gospel ‘ever man in our own tongue, wherein we were born.’
Nor did the Christians later lose their nationality. Even amongst the early Israelitic Christians, the Greek speaking Israelites maintained their group consciousness vis-a-vis the Hebrew-speaking Israelites. Paul became a Roman to the Romans solely so that he might save some, but in spite of all this he still remained an Israelite, spoke always to the )ews first and then to the Greeks, and loved his people so much that he was prepared to sacrifice himself in their stead, as it were. At the same time, he emphasized that in Christ there is neither Greek no )ew nor barbarian, nor Scythian, and that as the nations of the world were progressively more and more won for Christ, and as Christians of each nation prayed for their kings and those in authority so that Christian men may lead a quiet and peaceable life and so that all men may be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth, national and international relations would improve, in spite of all temporary setbacks, as the Gospel runs its course through the world of nation. The Cretans may be liars, evil beast, slow bellies, the Corinthians may be factious and passionate; the Galatians may be foolish; the Thessalonians lazy; the Israelites blinded; but the day is coming when Christ shall be all in all.
It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
2 and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,[a]
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3 He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall decide for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore;By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,… they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”
Francis Nigel Lee
Communist Eschatology — pg. 770 – 772
