Bible Gem 2243 – Do the Nations Matter? (Revelation 5:9-10)

⁹And they sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. ¹⁰And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.”

Revelation 5:9-10

Christ’s blood has ransomed people for God from every nation.

The obvious thing we need to do is to check which word has been used for ‘nation’. Do you see or have you noticed already, the word used for ‘nation’ across all seven verses in Revelation is the Greek word [ἔθνος – εος – το] a neuter noun referring to an ethnic group of people based on some common criteria of ethnicity. Remember the lexical glosses I gave you from Gem 2239 – ‘race’, ‘tribe’, ‘gentile’ or non-Jew, ‘nation’, ‘foreigner’, i.e. each term included in the list is based on some form of ethnic grouping.  Every single reference to ‘nation’ across all seven verses in Revelation use a derivative of the root word ἔθνος (ethnos).

Take a look at this verse:

And the Good News about the Kingdom [βασιλείας] will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations [ἔθνεσι] will hear it; and then the end will come.

Matthew 24:15

What strikes me when you put all of the above together is the match between all of these terms to the way we look at missions and what we call them these days, Unreached People Groups (UPGs). This is all very up-to-date, trendy and in fashion even. But is that the case? Or did the match in these terms with current thinking in missiology stem from the Greek terms themselves? I think it is the latter. We have finally woken up to the terminology of Scripture and fallen into line with the way God thinks and the words He uses.

It seems to me that [ethnē] is the most appropriate word to use for what ought to be in focus. I hasten to add that I agree with Omawusi. I think we ought to think in terms of People Groups, the ethnic categories of the world and take into account the language issues involved. The essential component must surely be the level of communication that is possible if the heart language of the hearer is used, leaving aside the issue of whether the ‘mother tongue’ is used. This is why I love the work of Wycliffe so much. However, we do have a difficulty with the thinking in terms of people groups. Or more specifically the definition of the term people group. If you search online asking the question how many people groups there are in the world you will find a wide variety of answers ranging from 5,000 to 7,394 to 11,500 to 13,000 to 17,446 to 24,000. Take a stab in the dark as to how many groups are still to be reached and how many of these are truly as yet unreached. According to the Joshua Project, there are approximately 17,446 unique people groups in the world with 7,391 of them considered unreached (representing over 42% of the world’s population)! The number of people groups classified as such or furthermore classed as unreached people groups depends essentially on the definition of the term.

In Christianity, an unreached people group refers to an ethnic group without an indigenous, self-propagating Christian church movement. Any ethnic or ethnolinguistic nation without a significant number of Christians to evangelize the rest of the nation is an “unreached people group”.  

Wikipedia

I don’t know for sure the underlying definition of a people group from the Joshua Project, but I suspect it’s a looser definition than strictly based on ethnicity given the number of groups they class as unique people groups. Secondly I suspect the classification of unreached for the Joshua Project is closely connected with the ability of the people groups to understand one of the languages of wider communication. I say that simply because the number of UPGs according to the Joshua Project is 7,391. You may recognise that statistic as being very similar to the current number of languages in the world according to Ethnologue (7,394).

The organisations and groups which claim the world’s people groups and the number of unreached groups are above 10,000 hold to a wider view of people groups than is set on the basis of cultures and / or languages. Many hold a wider view of what constitutes a people group with some validity. It is not just culture and language which sets us apart from one another. I know of many language groups where there are dialect differences across a finite area of a given spoken language but communication is still possible even on deep topics of conversation. The determining factor is not the dialect, the language or cultural differences. There are other factors involved. For instance, religion. For many language groups, the fact that there are dialect differences between two groups is not the issue. The issue is more a religious one if one group is Christian and the other group is another dominant religion. The latter group will not accept anything written in the Christian dialect, simply because it is written in the lesser esteemed dialect of the language, along with the connotation that it is “Christian”.

There are occasions when the minority Scriptures are acceptable if they are set in other cultural media.For example, songs and dance, a cultural representation of the story being communicated in such a way that both groups can perceive the message and interpret it each in their own distinct way. Yet effective communication takes place anyway, despite the differences. I find it interesting that twice recently I have been reminded of examples from Britain from the Middle Ages where the dialect differences on the island were sufficient to keep the people groups apart. In some instances because a common language was the barrier. In other cases the language differences were the barrier despite the fact that what was said was understood. It was the attitude which came with the dialect difference which caused the barrier to communication. The mere fact that the communicator was speaking in a despised language prevented any communication taking place.

I will use one more example to explain what I mean. The theorists tell us the people groups must include natural human groupings which are not determined by culture or language alone. They use an examples such as the taxi drivers of Chennai being a people group. The dominant language of Chennai is Tamil, but the language and the culture is not what is so important in this case. The issue is finding someone who is an insider in the minds of the taxi drivers of Chennai. Until such a person is acceptable to the taxi drivers to speak to them about a topic which spans culture and language, there will be natural barriers which still exist hindering communication. It would be similar to someone talking with members of gangs in South Auckland about the Gospel. Someone who is acceptable to Black Power members would not be acceptable to the Head Hunters. The gulf between the groups has nothing to do with language or culture. The difference lies in the acceptability of one ‘people group’ to another. Hence the number of people groups needs to expand in order that the message can be accepted.

From this point I am going to move on to cover another perspective on the same issue in the next Gem. Do you detect what term is missing in all this discussion? There is something we would expect to come up but in fact it has been omitted altogether. Are you aware of what I am talking about? That will be the focus of the next Gem. What category is missing from the four Greek terms we have covered thus far?

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fibre of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

A borderless world is a good idea. But unless all countries of the world agree on that, it is mere idealism. A fanciful idea which looks good only on paper. 

Abhaidev

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

Ronald Reagan

The boundaries drawn by the colonisers and the conquerors have divided families and the boundaries of the ethnic peoples of the earth.

Ian