Coming to Christ with all our Wives!

By Jonathan Mubanga Mumbi

There are billions of people in the Third and Fourth Worlds of our planet who must structure their families in such a way that they will survive together. These expansive family structures recognize family membership that extends to people who fall outside the Western nuclear family culture. Most of them live in societies that allow family leaders to marry more than one wife under certain circumstances. The good news of Jesus Christ is beginning to reach them. One big cultural problem stands in their way. The Church is not ready to accept them as equal heirs of salvation unless they become monogamous.

Torn between their love for the Messiah (Jesus) and this Christian requirement for Church membership, they are forced to search the scriptures. They see nobody condemned to hell for marrying an additional wife, they hear no commandment to never marry more than one wife, and they are confused. They are confused because some scriptures seem to approve the marriage arrangement while others seem to emphasize monogamy. They do not know why the Western Church looks fiery in its persecution of polygynists and warm and cozy towards easy divorces and unconventional marriages. They wonder why some of the godly men of the Old Testament lived with polygamous marriages without persecuting those who were involved. They also wonder why the recommendations of the Great Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:28-29) do not include such a seemingly "gigantic" prohibition.

Dr. Mumbi tries to outline some of the reason why the Church is in this state of not really being open to embracing people whose cultures differ on this point. Western civilization seems content with a preference for monogamy with easier options of divorce while non-Western Churches try to keep believers in cultural permanent unions whether monogamous or polygamous. A fifty percent divorce rate in Christendom bears testimony to the fact that the Western Church is not winning the battle for permanence of marriage. The answer might well be in opening the door to people of cultures that do not divorce easily.

New believers coming from Muslim and African Indigenous Religious backgrounds come from expansive family structures that often tolerate polygyny. Some are coming to faith as whole households and some are coming in as individual converts. Missionaries are happy to see people coming under the Lordship of Jesus, but pastors find the "new wine" too explosive to fit their usual "wine skins."

Dr. Mumbi would be happier to see the Church come to health by removing every impediment to the unity of the body of Christ. Many missionaries are willing to give their lives in death in order to reach Muslims and indigenous peoples with the love of God; but alas, the believers they do reach cannot come to Yahweh's house of prayer because the gate keepers reject their kind of families. To the question, "are polygamous believers welcome into the Church?" Dr. Mumbi has to answer, "yes!" And to the follow-on question, "with all their wives?" this writer has to agree, "yes! With all their wives!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Mubanga Mumbi
• Release date: May 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370817214

Jonathan Mubanga Mumbi

I am Jonathan M. Mumbi an ordained Bishop of the Church of God (World Missions Zambia). This is a denomination under the World Missions Department of the Church of God, Cleveland Tennessee, USA.I have been in ministry since 1988 and mostly a volunteer in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) +30 years. My wife, Jean Mumbi, and I have served at various levels in YWAM and in the Church of God. My passion is to empower young people through nonformal Christian tertiary education. My educational journey has been mostly through YWAM's University of the Nations but I am grateful to have earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theological Studies through Nations University. I am a Pastoral Counselor and a lecturer. We are a family of which the youngest is going twenty-three and her siblings are adult brothers.Special personal note: None of the organizations served or mentioned will endorse every opinion I hold, neither do I want to leave anyone under the impression that I writes for, or, under any other authority other my own passion to write what I feel inspired to write.

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Coming To Yasu Al-Masih—With All Our Wives?

By Dr. Jonathan M. Mumbi

Published by Jonathan M. Mumbi at Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Jonathan M. Mumbi

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Table Of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1. The Agony of Living A Polygamous Life in Christendom

Is Polygyny (Having More Than One Wife) a Sin?

Polygyny is not a sin

Chapter 2. Anything Polygamists Can Learn From the Bible?

Start from where you are

You have acceptance from God

Accept your starting point in your spiritual walk

Start with what you already have

Chapter 3. Who Should Consider Being In A Polygamous Marriage?

The polygamous man

A husband of many wives should have what it takes to nurture his wives

The women in a polygamous marriage

Chapter 4. Order in a Polygamous Family

Good governance in polygamous families

Spiritual headship of the man is delegated authority

Chapter 5. Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Plural Spouse Families

Sexually transmitted diseases

Sorting out sense from nonsense about STIs

Chapter 6. Frequently Unanswered Questions

Can a Christian marry more than one wife?

Is polygyny outside the will of God?

Do the problems that polygamous marriages addressed in the past still exist?

Is it true that a man cannot truly love more than one woman?

Is it true that some women would rather have co-wives with them?

Is separating wives from one another the only way to keep wives from quarreling?

Is it true that polygamous marriages need more counseling than monogamous marriages?

If polygyny is not a sin, why did god create just one Eve and one Adam?

In conclusion

The end

About the author

Books by the same author

Connecting with the author

Scriptures marked (ESV) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked as (GNB) are taken from the Good News Bible – Second edition © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

FOREWORD

For God, King (government), and Country, sounds like the ultimate cause for motivating men and women in Christendom to defend themselves against any enemy. This is true of the Western Christian worldview. However, for most of the unreached peoples of the world that the Church is trying to invite to the Savior, the order is more like;for God, family, Country, and King (government). When the West talks about family, they wonder why people of different cultures and religions cannot just get their perspectives on family values. Many have presumed that the Western model is the best, the holiest, and the one and only family model that God himself has given His stamp of approval. Western Christianity has; therefore, a knee-jerk reaction to any scent of any leanings in the direction of recognizing any other model as Biblical, or acceptable to God. This is the big crimson elephant standing in the middle of the room (rabid defense of Western non-Christian family values and attitudes found in Christendom).

Every Church imagining itself to be a missionary sending Church has to address the meaning of Christian marriage for the unreached, unengaged, and untargeted peoples of the world who still need to hear about Jesus. They are coming to Christ with their children and their wives but the Church has said no! in the past and she is still saying no! today. Who's no! is this?

The Westernized Church cannot say no! based on Biblical facts, historical precedence, or scientific findings; it is a no! based in cultural preferences. It is a no! that comes to the House of God from the unique pressures of the developmental journey of Western civilization. The time has come for African Christianity to join the Western Church in taking the Cross of Christ to the nations. Is Africa to use the Cross to extract God's people from their amoral cultural heritage—only to enslave them to an African or Western culture that looks immoral to those coming to them? Will the African Church use the Cross to take the Jewish, Aramaic-speaking, Jesus into the hearts of the peoples of the world so that God can transform their hearts enough to trust them to transform their own families and cultures by His Word and His Spirit?

The Western Church is quick to understand why Jesus is calling homosexuals to himself. They have to come as they are but Jesus will not leave them as they are. He will transform them from one degree of glory to another and that will include empowering them to pursue holiness without which no human shall see God. Understanding that the same grace that applies to LGBTQ people applies to conventional families of polygamous societies is hard for some. It is hard because polygamy is a sin in the West and a traditional social norm in the Middle-East and Africa. The message is clear that Christendom cares more about three million LGBTQ people's human rights than about three billion people's concerns about family structures.

Where does this leave any Theologian, missionary, or Church minister attempting to gut this big crimson elephant standing in the middle of the room into bite-sized spiritual hamburgers? In the trash can. There is no quicker way to lose reputation, draw spiritual swords from one's friends, and lose credibility than to address the elephant in the middle of the room. How long are we willing to play it safe? For as long as our dependence on the financial muscle of the Western Church compels us to keep quite and be safe. Worse still, we are compelled to keep quiet for as long as the lost, the least, and the last of this world are out of sight and out of our minds. This little book is intended to help the newly converted man of many wives live like a disciple of Jesus. This book is also intended to help the young missionary to understand the family as one of the biggest issues in missions. The last battles with the gospel-resistant people-groups of the world is not on theological concepts (even if these are important), it is on the social-spiritual hurdles involved in docking the non-Western family (it is polygamous and expansive [inclusive]) into the Westernized Church of Jesus Christ (it is nuclear, atomized, and expensive [exclusive]). The spiritual families they are leaving have demonstrated their love to them in a different way. Will these new families of believers be welcome to be Christian without being Westernized?

Chapter 1. The Agony of Living A Polygamous Life in Christendom

As much as two people on this planet live in lands where polygamy is normal and acceptable. Polygamous societies form the cradles of almost all the major world religions. Communalism is at the heart of most surviving civilizations. Ancients could relate to the larger family unit called the extended family and the even larger one called, a clan. The tribe was just a family of growing clans until colonialism came to exploit the family and tribal structures by taking advantage of human greed. Colonialism redefined family and justified its own existence by emphasizing the differences (minor concerns) until they became major concerns worthy of wars and needing alliances with the colonial masters. Family structures were the first thing to go before commercial slavery could take a thousand year grip on Africa.

Africa is in transition today. The continent shares a family view that sees no evil in having large families and in the existence of polygamous families on the continent. Half the continent subscribes to Islam as a religion and the other half follows Christianity. The Christian half is trying to reach the Muslim half by fishing individual converts from the Islamic faith into the Christian Church. They fit the popular definition of crazy, which is; doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results each time. The African Church sits wearing a hand-me-down pith helmet using the same missionary strategy to evangelize Muslims that the Western missionaries used two hundred years ago. It is not working. What is the problem? The family! When the