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The Gospel to the Mongols – Part II

In Part 1 of this post I gave the background of the Ghengis Khan and the amazing takeover of the Mongols in the 1200’s.  They were Steppe people and were unmatched in their military might especially after they learned to use gunpowder from the Chinese.

The purpose of this 2-part blog post is to highlight the importance of the completeness of our gospel message.  Most people when they hear gospel or when the preach Jesus Christ they essentially summarize the romans road to salvation. Specifically “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  The wages of sin is eternal death, God sent his son while we were sinners. The free gift of God is eternal salvation through belief in his name. And if you confess Jesus Christ with your mouth and believe in your heart that God rose him from the dead you will be saved.”

I don’t mean to minimize the importance or truth of the romans road scriptures, people who are ready to give their lives to Christ need to understand them.  BUT, there is much more to the story, the romans road scriptures are a summary of the final step of God’s plan of salvation. If we compare this gospel to what we read in the first 3 chapters of Pauls letter we call Ephesians then the romans road gospel seems incomplete… or even shallow.  True, accurate, powerful but only the end of the story.  There are people who only need to hear the romans road scriptures then quickly respond to Christ, they are ready for him, they are ripe, I was one of those at the age of 18.

But I think there may be many more people who will respond to the Ephesians gospel since it explains things much deeper and much further back, it goes back to before creation in the heart of God.  The Romans Road gospel seems to be all about what we get from Jesus and the many benefits of salvation, the Ephesians gospel emphasizes God’s purpose from the beginning.

Paul understood this and many scholars believe recorded his gospel message in the first 3 chapters of the circuit letter that we now call Ephesians.

What if the gospel that Pope Innocent IV wrote to the Khans was instead similar to the book of Ephesians? What if it contained the same message but customized for the Mongols? If I were a friar working for the Pope in the 1240’s, and knowing what I’ve read in Ephesians and he asked me to approach the Khan’s Mongolia it may look something like this:

Kuyuk Kahn,

Thank you for inviting me here to appeal to you face to face. Your power and conquering strength is unmatched anywhere on earth, there is a God in heaven who has given you this power for his purpose in the earth.  Perhaps the reason for your great power and unmatched rise to power on earth is to hear this letter from me, his servant.

There is something I hope to make you understand of great importance that I feel I must share with you about why we exist, about the meaning of life.  I feel compelled to reveal this to you and to all of your people.  Human beings, you and I, are the chief creation of a all powerful all loving creator, we are his chief work of art created in his own image.

The reason that he made us is to expand the love, the fellowship and the mutual indwelling that existed between the Father and the Son before the creation of the universe, he decided to expand into a people like himself and into a created universe, it pleased him to create a family and to dwell with it.  He made us but then we rebelled against him, all of us together rejected and abandoned him so our connection to him and our purpose for living was lost. He later penetrated into humanity to provide a way back to him, a way to reconcile, a way to make peace with Himself available freely through Jesus Christ and his blood sacrifice.

He didn’t have to do this but he did this for several reasons:

  • He did this in order to put his people on display to all the earth as his redeemed children, to display his great grace and mercy to all of mankind.
  • He also did this to put on display his wisdom to all authorities, to all spirits, and to all the people of the earth.
  • He also did this to make his people into his very own dwelling place on earth.

When we believe in Jesus Christ, who is God’s savior, God’s messiah, and is God’s plan to reunite us with himself, we become set apart, we become God’s dwelling place, we his people who gather together for only him become his new temple, his new home and his growing family on earth.

When we believe in Jesus Christ we find new peace with God where there was no peace, we are made members of God’s household, and we can come near to our creator God because of Jesus’ blood. Now we even can fully know God and his thoughts and live his life. We can approach him directly without go-betweens, and we can know his great love, and be filled with the fullness of God; his great power is no on display in us, the same power exerted when Jesus Christ was resurrected.

When we believe in Jesus Christ we become a new kind of human being, not a Jew, not a gentile, but a human with God living through us.  When we believe in Jesus Christ our inheritance is great, beyond what we can imagine, and we are literally seated with Christ in heaven. All men have sinned against God, the result of which is death and hell, but the free gift from God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, there is no other name under heaven whereby men must be saved.

I implore you, I beg you and beseech you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to confess with your mouth that he is Lord and cease from warring and destroying mankind and instead join his kingdom and his family within Jesus Christ who has promised to return one day.

Friar Adam

Imagine now what if the Khan’s and the Mongols would have responded to this letter, read it everywhere they went, and became Christians.  Who knows how history would have changed.  Would they still have destroyed Baghdad and everyone in it?, not if they were following Christ.  If they hadn’t destroyed the Muslim world of that time how would have history played out?  Would the Mongols have skillfully spread this gospel throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East? Who knows?  Had they accepted Christ would they have become politically dominant beyond the hundred years of their military dominance?  Would they still have self-destructed in just a few decades? If not would the Catholic countries in Europe still have become much more powerful than the Muslim countries in the Middle East with a Christian Mongol super-power present to their east? It is fun to dream about what could have been.

Now apply this to today as we preach at church or at crusades, or on our missionary trips, to our friends how would people respond differently? How would our colleagues at work respond? How about our children who stray in their teens and 20’s?  Imagine if we told them the entire story, if we memorized the entire gospel with its ties to the creation and our reason for existing.

KAhn letter to pope

To be clear I am proposing that the preaching of Jesus Christ should include God’s reason for creating in the first place, how salvation ties into God’s eternal purpose, and the how-to’s of getting saved (Romans Road)… just as it does in Paul letters.

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The Gospel to the Mongols – Part I

The Wrath of the Khans

As I grow older I grow increasingly interested with history. One fantastic story is the rise of the Mongols led by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The military might of this people was astonishing. They were unmatched on the battlefield for their time. They took over most of Asia, the Middle East and large portions of Europe before they self-destructed.

One fascinating portion of their story is the interaction between the Khan’s and the Christian leader (Pope). And a similar interaction between the Khan’s and the Muslim leader (Caliph) in Baghdad.

In this two-part blog post I will share the interactions between these groups and the result of the interactions.  I will also dream about what could have been had the Pope wrote the same gospel to the Khans that the apostle Paul wrote in the first 3 chapters of Ephesians.

In part II of this series I will attempt to write my own version of this gospel letter to the Khan’s aligned with Ephesians 1-3. A great place to hear this entire story from a secular perspective is on the podcast called Hardcore History with Dan Carlin, Dan did an amazing podcast series on the Mongols called the Wrath of the Khan’s. Check it out in iTunes.

Carlins Khans

The background about this interaction is that the Khan’s are conquering wherever they go. They have already routed both Christian and Muslim armies with surprising ease. Amazingly no countries seem to be able or willing to join forces to defend themselves against these armies. The Mongols were ruthless in their conquering and there seemed to be destiny with them that no one could overcome.

The Khans and The Pope

In Rome Pope Innocent IV was in charge and you can find his entire 1400+ word letter here. If you don’t want to read all of this here is my quick summary:

The letter is very long and it seems to be written in a way that only another devout Catholic theologian could understand. Makes me wonder if Pope Innocent understood that he was speaking to mostly uneducated people from another language. There is lofty, wordy doctrine which was probably over the head of the Khan’s, assuming it was translated properly. Pope Innocent spells out the story of the fall of man, Jesus’ virgin birth and death for the sins of man. However it is difficult to pull that out of the letter. The letter’s tone seems to me conciliatory, it was an appeal, it was not aggressive and threatening. This fact is possibly what may have saved Rome so I give him a lot of credit for this letter.

The Khan’s response is what I would expect, he barely understood it. Find the text of the Khan’s ~400 word letter here.  It had many questions, he reasons if it weren’t God’s will for them to take over, why was it happening? There is a common quote from the Kahn letters to the Christian and Muslims. This quote is my favorite part of both letters they say “we shall see what the will of God is.” They were men of action not logic.

The Kahns and The Caliph

The interaction between the Mongols and the Muslim Caliph in Baghdad was quite different. The Caliph came off as derogatory, threatening and superior to the Mongol King. The Mongol seemed indifferent about Christ and Muslim religions, they were out to conquer the world. They cared not for the different Gods and religious disputes. They felt like it was their destiny from heaven to conquer.

When the Caliph threatened and insulted the younger Khan, the result was devastating. The Mongol armies came down to Baghdad and absolutely annihilated every man, woman and child in the city, including the Caliph himself. It was possibly the most brutal and horrible scenes of murder, rape and destruction in history. The damage done to the Muslims was great, the effects of this no doubt are still with us today, over 700 years later.

You can see the Mongol-Caliph interaction here.

Rome was not routed and destroyed but unfortunately Baghdad was.

In Part II of this post I will write (with the benefit of hindsight), what I think would have been a better gospel letter to the Mongols. This letter is based mostly on Paul’s gospel recorded in Ephesians 1-3.  I will also dream about all that would have changed in history had the Mongols responded to Jesus Christ in the late 1240’s.

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What is the Best Source for Understanding Paul’s Gospel?

Most bible scholars refer to either the book of Romans or the book of Ephesians to understand Pauls gospel message. Romans is the traditional go to to summarize Pauls gospel and how to become a Christian. Often referred to as the Romans Road to Salvation. However I believe that the book of Ephesians contains a better record than Romans of Paul’s full gospel because of the reason that he wrote these two letters. Romans was a letter written to the Roman church that was written to help them with specific problems. The book of Ephesians was a general circuit letter intended to be read by all of the churches that Paul had planted. It was not a specific letter written to the Ephesian to help them solve specific problems. Which is the best source for us today? To understand Paul’s gospel that he used to plant churches and disciple new Christians? Well of course we need them both but I believe Ephesians summarizes it better and I think more than a few biblical scholars agree.

This is part II of a 2 part article about the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and the Romans Road to salvation. Read part I of this post here:

If we can accept it, here is my paragraph-long summary of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ as preached by Paul, greatly condensed and paraphrased, taken mostly from Ephesians 1-3.

There is something of great importance that I feel I must share about why we exist, about the very meaning of life. I feel compelled to reveal this to whoever will listen.  The Glory of God is now seen in the person, and presence of Jesus Christ. Humanity which had once fallen short of that irresistible glory of God no longer falls short of God thanks to Jesus Christ. He is the image of the invisible God and is the glory of God condensed onto and within a person. Human beings…you and I, are God’s chief creation, his chief work of art. He made us in his own image in order to expand the love and fellowship that he had, into a people and into this universe, it pleased him to create a family to dwell with. God chose people based on his own pleasure to be his very own adopted children. It was then we who turned our back on him, the entire human race repudiating the glory of God to his face. We chose sin and in doing we chose death, we chose and inherited hostility and  rebellion against God and a snubbing of his greatness, his character, his love and his infinite wisdom. Then He decided to make peace with us which is now available freely through Jesus Christ.

He did this for several reasons: 1) in order to create a people who would be a display to all the earth as his redeemed children, believers become a display of his grace and mercy to the rest of mankind. 2) He also created a people in order to put on display his wisdom to all the authorities, men and spirits, both good and evil, and to all the people of the earth. 3) He also did this to make for himself a dwelling place on earth within the people he would create through belief in Jesus Christ. So that his kingdom would be on earth as it is in heaven, all things visible and invisible mesmerized, cooperating with and submitted to his glory.

When we believe in Jesus Christ we become set apart to God, we literally become God’s dwelling place, his new temple, his new home and his growing family on earth. When we believe in Jesus Christ we find new peace with God where there was no peace before, we are made members of God’s family, and we can now become near to God because of Jesus’ shed blood. Him taking our punishment and sentence, him killing off the old race of Adam & Eve, then creating a new race in himself.

Now we can fully know God and his thoughts and live by HIS life, and not our own life. We can approach him directly without a go-between. And we can know his great love, and be filled with the fullness of God; his great power is on display in us, the same power exerted when Jesus Christ was resurrected. When we believe in Jesus Christ we become a new kind of human being, not a Jew, not a gentile but a third race of human with God indwelling. When we believe in Jesus Christ our inheritance is great, beyond what we can even imagine, and we literally become seated with Jesus Christ in heaven.

We can see that the process to become saved as explained in the Romans Road is but a subset of this much-greater narrative. God planned all of this from the beginning. His plan was and continues to be a family, a dwelling place, a bride for Christ and a display of his glory… fortunately for us it also does include him bailing whoever will come to him out of the hell that was going to be our future.

Here is a link to the scholar NT Wright’s lecture about Paul’s explosive gospel.

Please reach out to me by commenting below or email me at collierak@me.com.

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