I'm a White evangelical who was raised to believe Christianity was basically a White, Western religion. Christian history was European history. Mission meant making people like us.
John's vision breaks that completely open. Around God's throne is a multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language. Not the ones who assimilated. Them, in their own languages, in their own identities, worshipping together.
I'm having to grieve the narrow gospel I was taught and learn a bigger one. Christianity is African, Asian, Pentecostal, ancient, indigenous, global. The Jesus I inherited was pale and British, and that was a limitation, not the fullness.
I'm sitting in churches pastored by Black and Latino and Asian leaders and feeling the breadth of what I'd cut myself off from. That vision in Revelation - it's not just future promise. It's already happening. I was just trained not to see it.
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