MISSION IS A FAMILY AFFAIRS ( Ptr. Filexian Felicitas ) SSD-WIDE CONGRESS 2024

[@zerksepraga]

WRONG. Doing "missions" is NOT a family affair. As far as Christ's method is concerned it's two by two like sending out the seventy (Luke 10.1-23), and of this context the apostles were all men, not married couples. Jesus never encouraged marriage at all (Matt. 19.11-12; Lk.20.34-36; Matt.24.19; Mk. 13.17; Lk 21.23), and neither did Paul (1Cor. 7.8) and none of His apostles married after they met Jesus. Peter was already married, but the other apostles including Paul were not married and are never married till they all died. Remember Paul, considered as the father of Christian missiology was never married. Mr. Felicitas took the book of Ruth out of context by an assumption that the family of Naomi was doing "missions" in the land they sojourned. However, looking at the whole narrative one can hardly see any "mission" activity at all. There was no preaching about the gospel, no warning of the people about repentance like what Jonah the unmarried did, and no preaching about the belief in the ultimate Sacrifice as prefigured in the lamb sacrifices, no concept of sacrificial atonement at the cross not even one sacrifice at all, no lecturing or even conversation about the Law and the prophets or the necessity of a transformed life. What we hear about Naomi was a bitter complaint about God (Ruth 1.12, 20-21). almost second only to Job's senseless wife (Job 2.9). The following domestic life after Boaz married Ruth was nothing extraordinary but simply a common human experience with pain and luck. The opinion of Felicitas that mission is a family affair intending to mean that it's exclusively a family affair using only Ruth is blatantly unbiblical. Maybe we can have examples for missions as family affair like Abraham whose acts showed an active witness for God. But the highlight was not Abraham's whole family but only Abraham (remember his ignoble alliance with Hagar which produced only a race of slaves [Galatians 4], a shameful metaphor for sin-slavery). We can also have Joseph in Egypt who married a daughter of a pagan priest. But again the focus was on Joseph, not the Joseph family. You can also take Moses. And yet the emphasis was Moses, the man who was above all others faithful to Jehovah (Numbers 12.6-8), not Moses as the family-man. There are lots of Bible heroes mentioned in Hebrews 11 as men of moral, godlike excellence, but the main characters are the men themselves as individuals having steady, perfect trustworthiness exactly like God's perfect character, not as having family. Some family men were also notable for doing "missions" such as Samuel (but his sons were scoundrels like Eli's sons👎, and his wife was not mentioned at all), Samson (look at his marital life🤦👎👎), David (a troubled family, incest, many wives👎), Solomon (700 wives, 300 concubines👎), Hosea (what a miserable family he had, having a wife from the "daughters of whoredom"🤦), Ezekiel (lost a wife🤦), Isaiah (family never highlighted as doing missions, wife not mentioned🤦). Now compared these family-men with the single men doing missions in the fullest sense of missiology like Daniel in Babylon (no wife, no family), Elijah (no wife, no family), Elisha (no wife, no family), Jeremiah (not allowed to have a wife or family -Jer. 16.2), John the Baptist (the greatest of all prophets according to Jesus Christ; no wife, no family), the Lord Jesus Christ (no wife, no family, even if He can if He chose to), all 12 apostles except peter and Judas (who was not an apostle), Paul (no wife, no family). Doing missions IS NOT a family affair, but an individual affair depending on one's gift. Contrary to Felicitas' idea that Missions is "not a solo flight but a family affair," the Bible shows that Missions is a solo flight like the Bible characters mentioned before, such as Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, Jesus, Paul, John the Baptist, and John at Patmos writing the book of Revelation. There was no indication anywhere in the Bible that says that when you do missions you've got to do it with your whole family, and not solo flight. Rather, you must leave your family or not have a family at all.. OBSERVE: We can look into the lives of the Bible heroes and see that those most effective preachers were singles, and not the family men. There were also family men effective for missions like Moses and Joshua whose families were not a reproach unlike the family of David, Solomon, Eli, Samuel. Perhaps Felicitas intends to use the book of Ruth as a slur against the LGBT+ community which he understands quite less or not at all. The book of Ruth has nothing for LGBT+ and has nothing for "missiological" purposes, either, because the context of the story was exclusively Jewish, not Jews to gentile targets or gentiles becoming Jewish, but Jews going back to Jewish lands. The book of Ruth can be used for missions if it conveys an incident of proselytizing a gentile into the Jewish faith, and that alone. But nothing of this sort exists in the book itself. Felicitas' use of Ruth for missiology is therefore misplaced and not valid. The speaker needs to expand his views on missions from the narrow orbit of family-oriented outlook to something unstructured and unconventional like the way Jesus, Paul, and the prophets of old did who do missions in their own maverick but powerful methods which are oftentimes incomprehensible to the conventional mainstream ways of life. God does missions always beyond the natural norms of human existence, something that overwhelms reason and human expectations. Consequently, those great men never did missions because they have the comfort of their families, but far from it they do missions with the eye single to the will of Jehovah leaving behind "brothers, sisters, mother, father, wife, children, or land" (Mark 10.29). In short, denying and crucifying themselves. But not all are so emptied as to go to such extremes except the ones who were endowed with the spirit of the Most High, the lowly attitude of Christ which led Him to empty Himself of everything, and, apparently forsaken by all, died alone without wife or family at the cross (Philippians 2.5-8). UNDERSTAND: The 144,000 saints are literally unmarried men like Christ. They followed the Lamb whithersoever He goes (Revelation 14.1-5), that is, UNMARRIED😎.