A Gospel for All the Nations
January 19, 2017
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) hosted its Spring 2015 Convocation on Jan 20.
President Daniel Akin welcomed new and current students to the first chapel of the semester. He brought greetings from SEBTS students he recently met with in Thailand who are sharing the gospel in difficult places.
“I am very thankful for a school that is so passionately committed to honoring the final marching orders of the Lord Jesus Christ … the Great Commission,” Akin said.
Akin gave an address drawing from Acts 10:1-48 entitled “A Gospel for All the Nations.”
Akin describes the passage as “a record of the Gospel of Jesus Christ going to the Gentiles and the nations. It is a radical and decisive moment in the history of the church.”
He believes that those who seek the Lord will be found by Him, and that Christians must take the gospel to the nations. “Every single one of the 7.2 billion people on earth is to be the object of our evangelizing passion,” Akin said.
“God will raise up missionaries to get the Gospel to those who seek Him,” Akin explained. “[The heart] is the only place where our God is colorblind. He sees all hearts exactly the same way: in need of a Savior.”
Akin emphasized that God does not show favoritism as God addressed Jew and Gentile relationships and prejudices. “God seeks the salvation of all without partiality,” Akin said.
In his message, Akin highlighted the exclusivity of the gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit to those who respond to it.
“It is clear the Lord has baptized them [Gentiles] by His Spirit into His family,” Akin said. “Barriers of race … ethnicity … nationality, they have all come crashing down through the power of the cross.”
“The church would never be the same after this,” Akin added. “Sameness was never God’s goal to begin with.”
“We have an indiscriminate, all inclusive gospel to proclaim to the nations near and far,” he said. “Our God has placed no limitations on those he longs to bring to himself.”
To watch this message online, please click here.
To view photos from Convocation, please click here.