Evangelism in the Old Testament: The Unfolding Drama of World Missions

The Bedrock of the Great Commission
When one thinks of evangelism in the Old Testaments, likely figures such a Rahab and Ruth come to mind, along with others, trickling into the Promised Land to become part of God’s covenant people. Surely these are a foretaste of Gentiles as well as Jews called to faith in Christ following the Great Commission.

However, De Jong wonders: “Maybe we have been missing something very significant. Maybe we need to look for other manifestations of the connections between evangelism, sovereignty, and the Old Testament. I was cognizant of many places in the Old Testament where God had so designed events that the end result of those events became an empire-wide call for repentance and a call to worship the true God of the Israelites. Those amazing empire-wide proclamations will comprise some of the chapters as we proceed.”
In other words, as God was on the way to Bethlehem and Golgotha, he was already laying the foundation for World Missions.