“Again, Jesus said, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14 NASB). With the help of Ralph Winter and others, our eyes were opened to the Biblical truth that “nations” in the Bible are not political-geographic states like America, Argentina, China, Germany, Uganda, etc. “Nations” means ethnic groupings with cultural and language distinctions that make it hard for the gospel to spread naturally from one group to the other. …………………. The task of missions was not only to win individuals but to reach all these different groups in the world. That’s why Revelation 5:9 became as important for us as Matthew 28:19—20, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (NASB). That is the task of missions: not just reaching more and more people but more and more peoples—tribes, tongues, peoples, nations.
…………. The task was not primarily to try to keep up with or gain on the population growth rate in the world—as wonderful as that would be. The task is to make steady headway in reaching more and more “nations,” people groups. Which means that the task is finishable, because while the number of individual people keeps growing and changing, the number of people groups (by and large) does not. That was the third”
(“Brothers, We are not Professionals” John Piper, pg 191, 2002, Broadman & Holman pub)
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