The Coming of the Millennium

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Throughout the last two millennia Christianity understood its divinely mandated mission to be "to conquer the world for Christ." Too often this proclamation led Christians to imagine that their goal must be the elimination of all non-Christians from the world through conversion or, when that fails, through coercion and violence (e.g., the Inquisition, the Crusades, anti-Semitic persecution, Western colonialism, etc.). At the beginning of the third millennium and an age of global diversity, Darrell J. Fasching argues that it is time for Christians to reject this view of their mission, along with the trail of prejudice and violence it has created, and replace militaristic metaphors of conquest with the biblical message of hospitality to the stranger. When we welcome the stranger, according to biblical teachings, we welcome God (Genesis 18:1-5), the Messiah (Matthew 25:35), or an angel of God (Hebrews 13:2). Fasching takes us on a journey through the stories of the Bible to show that diversity is God's covenant intention for humanity. Consequently, the mission of Christians must not be to convert or eliminate non-Christians but rather to welcome them as strangers, for a world without strangers is a world without God.