The church’s primary task is to evangelize the world, to preach Christ at home and abroad. But while the need continues, the present-day counsel of defeatism and gloom is taking its toll.
The population explosion, which has led to a rapid increase in the number of unbelievers, and the lethargy caused by a growing universalism that salves consciences and blunts the sense of urgency in mission are among the factors now having a great effect upon Christians and the Church. Many of us are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task and the indifference and sophistication of an age in which a growing number feel that God and his Gospel are at best of secondary importance.
We need to take stock, first, of our obligation to preach the Gospel to all nations, and then of the assets at our disposal. Once this is done, pessimism will be replaced by confidence in God’s promises, and lagging attempts will be turned to Spirit-inspired activity.
Christians need to be realistic. They should heed our Lord’s command and be sensitive to the needs of a generation far removed from a knowledge of Christ.
The world might be likened to a person with a dislocated joint. The joint is painful, and its function is lost. Spiritually dislocated from God, the world is confused and frustrated because it knows neither the cause nor the cure of its suffering. Many persons I knew as a missionary in China tried to treat a dislocation with a poultice of pitch; and the world’s attempts to solve its problems without considering God are just as mistaken and futile.
This is where the Church comes into the picture, and she should give herself to the task of healing with unabated zeal. Instead of trying to relieve symptoms, however, she should see the cause and proclaim the God-given cure.
But let us be realistic. Is not the task too great? Are not the obstacles too numerous? Are we not too weak to bring about a change that can be effective against the overwhelming odds?
After Pentecost a handful of men, most of them uneducated and probably unprepossessing, went out to preach, and in a few generations the world was turned upside down for Christ.
What did they have that we do not have? Why was their witness so effective? They were a tiny minority confronted by the hostility of the Jews and the ridicule of the pagan Gentiles. But men were converted, the Church was established, and Christians helped bring about tremendous social changes. Did these uneducated and ordinary men have something we have lost, or perhaps have failed to use?
We have the same assets today. And we will be just as effective as the early disciples if we use them.
These men had an aura about them. They had been with Jesus, and they carried in their hearts and on their faces the sign of redeemed men, men who had had a personal experience with the risen Saviour. They had had the privilege of seeing, talking with, and even touching the One who they knew had been crucified and buried. Through simple faith we can have the same experience. Christ can be as real to us as he was to them, and transform our lives.
We have the same God these men had. He may be dead for those who have never known him, but we know that he lives and that by his grace we too live. We know him personally, and we are aware of his promise to be with us, even to the end of the age.
He is the God of whom the psalmist said, “from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Ps. 90:2c, RSV). He is the One of whom Isaiah wrote, “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28). He is the “Father of lights in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17).
We have the same risen Lord. The resurrection was an ever-recurring theme in the preaching of the disciples. Christ had risen from the dead, and his resurrection was the crowning proof of the validity of the Cross. How much do we stress this fact? Have we permitted the scientific approach of our day to blunt the belief that we have a supernatural religion that naturally has supernatural manifestations? Is our God so small that we look at him through a test tube, or seek answers about him from a computer?
We have the same Gospel, which the Apostle Paul said is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” (Rom. 1:16). It is the same Gospel that Paul summed up in the wonderfully simple and clear statement, “… that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4). It is the same Gospel that today brings conviction, conversion, and redemption whenever and wherever it is preached—not to all men (nor did it in our Lord’s time) but to all who heed the Spirit’s call.
We have the same Holy Spirit, the One who was the power behind the apostles’ preaching and who is able and willing to make our preaching and teaching effective if only we will place programs, organizations, personalities, and activities in their rightful secondary place. The disciples were commanded to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came upon them and they were baptized with his power: this was the equipment necessary for fulfilling the Lord’s command to make disciples of all nations. Our failures today stern largely from our forgetting that it is “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).
We have the same Holy Scriptures, which continue to be the Sword of the Spirit wherever used and believed. The difference today is that we have a fuller revelation of divine truth than did the early disciples. They had only the Old Testament, and to this they referred for authority and for what they knew to be divine truth. We have the Old and the New Testaments, in which is revealed the Christ, faith in whom has brought salvation to all who believe.
We have the same privilege and power of prayer—direct communication with the throne of grace, where there is help, guidance, and blessing for all who seek it.
Since we, like those men who went out to shake the world for Jesus Christ, have all these assets, why has the cause of world evangelization lagged? The inevitable conclusion is that we are not making use of what God has provided. Weak in faith, distracted by world conditions, sophisticated to the point of disdaining the simplicity of the first-century approach (sometimes even feeling, perhaps, that we need not heed our Lord’s command to preach the Gospel to all nations because “people are already saved”), we are guilty of disobedience, or of unwillingness to give our all to Christ and go out as he commanded to tell men that Christ has the answer to personal needs as well as those of the entire world.
It can be done. With the assets we have from God, it can be done.
