Global Gates to Heaven or Hell?

The nature of gateways is that they swing both ways. Immigration has brought countless voices and influences to America since the first pilgrims stepped off the boat four hundred years ago. Each wave that washed across our shores prompted the previous generation of Americans to sound the alarm. This includes the justified fears of the Native Americans who watched pilgrims step ashore wearing what must have appeared to them like 17th century burkhas. Nativist fears were not entirely unfounded.

Just as the first English settlers forever changed a continent that had been undisturbed for millennia, so too did subsequent immigrant cultures. Protestants protested the Irish and Italian Catholics who came to our inner cities in the 19th century. The Irish gangs of New York and Italian Mafioso lent evidence to their concerns.

Today these Irish and Italian immigrants are threads woven into the texture of American culture. Additional threads have come with Jewish refugees who fled Hitler’s Germany and Vietnamese boat people who escaped Communist Southeast Asia.
The truth is, every immigrant population poses a threat to the status quo, and the changes they bring to our national fabric are not without consequence. Whether they bring with them the violence and intolerant worldviews they are fleeing remains to be seen. But certainly they will bring change.

In his prophetic charge to the Church, Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). As Christians this is our birthright, a pledge from the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Whether we live up to that standard of perfection, however, is up to us.

Through the eyes of faith, Global Gates is choosing to see these immigrant populations as a gateway, an entry point for the gospel of Jesus Christ. This gateway holds the potential to light a new generation of immigrants – and through them – penetrate the homelands from which they come with the saving light of Jesus Christ. Rather than fearing the darkness that they represent, these missionaries are flooding that darkness with the light of Christ and dispelling the darkness with hope and redemption.

The Church today is faced with a challenge, and a choice. We can curse the darkness or pierce that darkness with flood lamps of gospel light and truth.

David Garrison
Director, Global Gates