I believe Jesus’ words in Acts 1:8 were intended not just for his immediate audience, the disciples who would become apostles, but for all believers, all generations. Indeed, the Church in every generation has applied its own interpretations to these locations. Ours is a translated faith, a religion that Lamin Sanneh argues was intended to be translated from the very beginning and would continue to be translated.¹

While the disciples might have been limited in their perception of the ends of the earth, I believe Jesus, the One who spoke creation into being (Col 1:15-16), was thinking of the distant shores of Papua New Guinea and the desert tribes of the Gobi, Great Victorian and Sahara. I also believe he anticipated the state of the global Church today: a decentralized Church existing in every part of the world.

It’s important to understand where we in North America fit in. If Jesus’ disciples could have comprehended Canada and the U.S. at the time, they would certainly have slotted us into the “ends of the earth” category.

Think about the implications of that for a minute. The North American Church is so used to being the center of Christianity, but we started off-center, and the center of Christianity has moved to the southern and eastern hemispheres.

Our contextualization of these verses simply exists alongside the view of other believers around the world. Where do they think of when they hear Jesus’ words? I asked that recently in a Zoom call with two dozen people from every part of the world. Here are some of the results:

What you think of as Jerusalem/Judea	What you think of as the ends of the earth
U.K.	Outer Mongolia
Netherlands	China
Korea	Africa
Nigeria	North and South Poles
U.S.	North Pole
U.S.	Siberia
Ethiopia	America
Netherlands	New Zealand
India	End of India
U.S.	Abu Dhabi
U.S.	East and West coast of U.S.
Cameroon	America
U.K.	Vancouver

How many of you live in someone else’s ends of the earth? Have you ever visited a place you once viewed as the ends of the earth? The mobility we experience today is truly remarkable! The Church is a global Church, present and engaging in mission everywhere.

We’ll build from these two posts as I get to my main point in the next blog post.

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Acts 1:8 Series

• The disciples’ view of the ends of the earth
• We live in the ends of the earth
• Overlapping circles
• An overlapping circle model for mission

1 Sanneh, Lamin. Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West. Eerdmans. 2003, p97.