The Back to Jerusalem Vision given to the China church in the 1940's is a movement to take the gospel from where you are across the nations that are still unreached all the way back to Jerusalem. The great commission in the bible or the Back to Jerusalem Movement did not start in the New Testament as many people think but rather here in the Old Testament Genesis 12:1-3. Verses 1 and 2 represent the top line blessing (being blessed by God) and verse 3 represents the bottom line blessing (being a blessing to others).
Through the same faith as Abraham, we are to bless all the families of the earth (Galatians 3:7-9). The first mention of the great commission and world missions appears here in the Abrahamic covenant of the Old Testament. Today, we are seeing little distinction between mission sending countries and mission receiving countries which could mean that we are close to seeing the fulfillment of the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mySe0pjNwfo
I. The World Mission Scene
(Around 65% of the total world pop of over 6 billion don´t know who Jesus is -
10% Know Jesus, 25% more go to church, 40% more have access to Christian witness, 25% more do not have access to Christian witness)
a. 155,000 new believers everyday (over 90% of growth is in the non-west)
b. 54,000 in Africa, 46,000 in Latin America, 43,000 in Asia and 12,000 in North America
c. 1000 new churches started every week
d. CCCOWE in 40 years has helped in the starting of 10,000 Chinese churches, sponsored 3000 long term Chinese missionaries, and has sent over 100,000 short term missionaries each year
II. Foundation of the Great Commission
a. Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12:1-3)
i. God’s election plan to redeem a lost world (top – I will bless you/v. 2b)
ii. Missionary call of “being blessed to be a blessing” (Bottom – in you all people or families on earth will be blessed)
b. Responsibility of Israel and the Church
i. God’s chosen missionary to the world (Disobedience to bottom half – ie. Israel failed to witness to Egypt and neighboring nations/ prophet Jonah)
ii. God always uses the minority to reach the majority (Will Churches be disobedient to the bottom line?)
III. BJM vision and the focus on the 10/40 window of unreached or least reached people group
a. Mark Ma and Ho en Cheng's vision in the 1940´s and the promise of the Muslim nations given to the China church
b. International cooperative efforts of BJM to do evangelism and church planting all the way back to Jerusalem in anticipation of Christ´s return
IV. If the entire world is to be evangelized and Great Commission completed
a. Every church obedient to the great commission and second half of the blessing in mission involvement
b. Total mobilization of every believer in the church
c. Other plans and strategies as directed by Holy Spirit
V. Shifts in World Missions today
a. Countries where missionaries are now being sent from
b. My experience in Kazakhstan and Central Asia (silk road region)
As an overseas Chinese raised in America, I first learned about the "Back to Jerusalem Vision", at a Korean Mission Conference in 2003. Many missions agencies gathered together near Chicago were interested in this vision given to the church in China. It was a vision that multiple Chinese Christian evangelists had during the same time in China in different locations where God spoke to them individually about taking the gospel outside of China mainly westward to the Islamic world in order to complete the Great Commission. They were also to consider to go to the China province of Xinjiang where many muslims lived before heading out. The vision saw perhaps more than 100,000 Chinese missionaries (foot soldiers) being raised up to evangelize muslims and other ethnic groups such as buddhist and hindus in the unreached areas of the 10/40 window all the way back to Jerusalem.
In 2007, I was invited by Dr. Thomas Lee to teach English to a group of "Back to Jerusalem" missionaries in China and was amazed at their passion for sharing the gospel outside of China in completion of the Great Commission. They were attending an intercultural training school where Christian volunteers from around the world would come in for a week or two to teach a course in bible, theology, and languages such as Arabic, English, etc. After 1-2 years of training, the students would do an internship in a Muslim populated area in China. I was surprised to find that many of them were quite young and did not have a high school or college education.
According to Dr. Thomas Lee, president of a Bible Institute in Hong Kong, there are probably more than 500 Chinese missionaries from China in 2007 that have already left China to give themselves to the Back to Jerusalem vision and movement. They are in the Middle East, Northern Africa, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Many more are getting ready to leave. There is a great need for proper preparation and training for these often eager but inexperienced missionaries. Mission agencies that are already working in these precarious areas would do well to offer guidance and assistance to these Chinese missionaries.
My family of five served as short term Chinese missionaries in Kazakhstan for one to two years in Central Asia. Our friend Linda from Hong Kong, a former OMF missionary, who served in Kazakhstan for more than 17 years was there to greet us when we first arrived in Almaty in 2014. I first met Linda when I was teaching at the NIS school in Shymkent, Kazakhstan in 2013. Richard and Yat Ling from Singapore were also missionaries serving in a children’s home in Kyrgyzstan teaching the Kairos course during that time. And we have met others who were sent from Chinese churches in China in the region starting NGO's, businesses, or providing service as a platform.
Having visited the children in Kyrgyzstan where most spoke Russian, I had the opportunity to pray for the KB Christian school where Richard was also the principal there. Many of these children were either orphans or from broken homes where one or both of their parents were in prison. It was such a blessing to see that many were saved at the Children's home. My family had the wonderful opportunity to talk with many MBBs (Muslim Background Believers) there. Our impression was that they all had very simple unpretentious hearts. Often I would take a day out of the week to prayer walk around the city and find mosques and pray over the people in them.
In Kazakhstan, Linda helped us to find a small group to join and translated for us from Kazakh to Chinese or English so we could participate in the discussions. Most of the time, Linda would lead in the small group fellowship meetings every Friday night. We would eat, pray, read scripture, sing and share with glad hearts what has been going on in our lives that week. During our fellowship meetings, it was not uncommon to talk for many hours into the late night because the Kazakh people had so much to share.
This was our connection to the local people and culture. Our kids loved playing with the other local kids even though they did not speak the local language. We sensed God’s love and presence that transcended any cultural barrier we may have felt because of our common love in Jesus Christ.
Although we were able to make some financial contribution to the mission, we received much more than we were able to give in many ways. Our passion for mission grew especially during the time when I attended the Back to Jerusalem Consultation in Hong Kong and Jerusalem in 2006 and 2010 respectively.
In this vision, God has given the task of evangelizing all the nations, mostly Muslim, between China and Jerusalem to the China church. As Chinese Christians work and pray together with the global Christian church, we believe the task of the Great Commission can be completed in this generation. We also believe that persecution and suffering among Christian workers will increase as we get near to the end before Christ returns. According to the book, “The Insanity of Obedience” by Nik Ripken, suffering hardship and persecution are to be expected among followers of Jesus (Philippians 1:29). It is only the Christians in the West that find this peculiar. May the Lord Jesus Christ receive all the glory as we approach the end of His story!
In Conclusion, here are some of the quotes from the book, “Back to Jerusalem” by Paul Hattaway.
This book will interest the new generation in western countries who are fed up with the twin gods of materialism and pluralism.
The first team of thirty-nine Chinese missionaries departed China in March 2000 for a neighboring Buddhist country.
Today there are hundreds of Chinese missionaries working outside China in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia.
They had all faced extreme hardship, separation from their families, forced starvation, sleepless nights, and perils on every side.
In this prison seminary, we have learned many valuable lessons about the Lord that we could never have learned from a book. We´ve come to know God in a deeper way. We understand his goodness and his loving faithfulness to us.
The Chinese church doesn´t draw up presumptuous plans but has learned to wait on the Lord and listen to his instructions before moving forward. These men and women know God, his all-sufficiency, and his matchless grace and power.
God is looking for weak vessels with confidence in their own abilities. He does this so that his will be done his way and so that all glory will go to Jesus Christ.
In fact, many Christians believe the fifty years of persecution they have endured has not been the plan of Satan to destroy the church in China as much as it has been God´s plan to refine, train, and equip them to complete the Back to Jerusalem vision.
They paid a great price for their witness. Every single Christian leader in the meeting had spent time in prison, and many had been subjected to severe torture, humiliation, and deprivation.
I have learned not to impose my limited Western Thinking on the Chinese church. They believe that part of their mandate from God is to completely evangelize their whole nation and to make China “the first truly born-again Christian country in Asia. Don’t be surprised if they succeed.
Outside China we can be involved with training, strategizing, and planning much more freely than we could be when we were inside China. But we have to avoid distractions!
Pray that the Lord will give many more Christians the vision to take the gospel back to Jerusalem.
Pray that we will be fully prepared for a battle to the death. I believe that we are facing the greatest spiritual war the church has seen. The states are high! Success means nothing less than the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the return of our Lord Jesus Christ! The devil, who has kept Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu nations captive for thousands of years, will not surrender without a strong and bloody fight. “A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed” (Jeremiah 48:10)
Pray that God will find his church faithful to obey the calling has given us to take the gospel to all the unreached nations of the world.
We desire to be like the “men of Issachar, who understood the times and know what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32)
Just as Jesus trained his disciples, so each Back to Jerusalem missionary receives training in a number of areas. These include 1. How to reach across cultural and other barriers. 2. How to reach specific groups. 3. How to suffer and die for the Lord. 4. How to witness for the Lord. 5. How to escape.
God wants us to work in teams, not alone. Jesus had a team, Moses had a team, David had a team, and Paul had many people work with him on teams. Brown, white and black people who loved and served each other despite their physical, cultural, and linguistic differences. Unified teams of men and women from different occupational backgrounds ranging from doctors and lawyers to slaves. What a powerful witness to a divided and lost world!
God loves the exchange of ideas because we glean from each other´s strengths and the Body of Christ grows stronger as a result.
The very same day she commenced work, the mushrooms stopped appearing outside the cave!
When we serve God it´s important to concentrate on his character and our obedience to his leading. When we do this we won´t be concerned and burdened in any way.
We have noticed that many Christians in the West have an abundance of material possessions, yet they live in a backslidden state. They have silver and gold, but they don´t rise up and walk in Jesus´ name. In China, few of us have any possessions to hold us down, so there´s nothing preventing us from moving out for the Lord.
