Christian Witness Through the Ages (Urbana 48)
A history of missionsby V. Raymond Edman
AND YE shall be witnesses unto me ... unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
These were His very last words! From where He stood on the Mount of Olives He could point out with a wave of His hand the proud, contentious city of Jerusalem and the surrounding province of Judea, whose inhabitants had fears and fanatical antagonism to His message; and He could point beyond the horizon to cynical, self-satisfied Samaria; and beyond that lay the "uttermost part of the earth." By the dynamic of His Spirit His few and fearful disciples were told to be witnesses to Him in all that world, until He Himself should come again! Did task ever seem more stupendous or success more impossible?
We need the long perspective of history to see what has happened since then. The tale of the centuries reveals a welter of victories and vanquishment, of astonishing successes and disheartening defeat, of outward advance and inward retreat, and only the detached and objective view of history can show what has been accomplished and how near we are to completing our task. So let us look at history.
First we stand in the long shadows of a midnight scene. A man stirs in his sleep; awakening his companion, he whispers: "In my vision I saw a man of Macedonia beyond the sea who was calling to me, come over and help us." Because of that Macedonian call Paul and Silas went westward from Asia Minor to Europe, thus within a generation of Calvary and Olivet, the gospel went beyond Palestine.
Again it is night. We are with a young man; far to the northwest of Europe and centuries later than the great Apostle to the Gentiles. He is a third-generation Christian in the north of Britain; and has come to know Christ in the solitude of his days of captivity abroad. To him came the call at night, "Holy youth, come and walk among us again." Because of that Celtic call, Patrick left the comforts and consolation of home and loved ones and labored in Ireland for two generations. And the reckless and superstitious became believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel was marching forward!
From the annals of the Venerable Bede we draw our information of the next incident. The pagan Saxon King of Northumbria and his Council listened attentively to the presentation of the Christian message by Paulinus, but seemed unmoved until an unnamed councilor addressed the Monarch and his men in words that still burn:
"The present life of man, Oh King, seems to be, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper at winter, with Your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, while the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had immersed. So this life of a man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or of what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed."
Angles and Saxons in the woodlands of old England heard and believed the story of the Saviour of men!
We sit in the carpenter shop of a village in the highlands of Asia Minor and listen intently to the testimony of an old woodworker. He had been reared in ignorance and superstition, and knew not the Saviour until he had read for himself the New Testament, at the suggestion of an elderly Paulician woman, who said, "The Holy Scriptures are intended for all men, and they are open to all; for God wills that all should come to the knowledge of the truth." Hear his words, "For thirty-four years I have run from East to West, and from North to South, till my knees are weary, preaching the gospel of Christ" Sergius Tychicus and, his fellow Paulicians, despite the cruel hammer of Byzantium and the pitiless anvil of Islam, led hundreds of thousands to a saving knowledge of Christ in the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries. When all Christendom, Eastern and Western, seemed turning to superstition and idolatry, the Paulicians like candle lights shone in the gathering darkness.
We sit with a small company of religious refugees near the tiny obscure village of Herrnhut in the south of Germany on August 13, 1727. Moravians and Lutherans from their neighborhood had gathered for an open-air communion service when suddenly, as on the day of Pentecost, there came with rush of wind the mighty dynamic of God's Spirit; and through prayer and compassion the Moravians became quickly the outriders of early modern missionaries. Within a half dozen years they were witnessing to the stolid aborigines of Greenland and to the suffering slaves of the West Indies; and very soon others went to the Laplanders in Russia, to the Indians of the new American frontier in Georgia, to Bethlehem and beyond in Pennsylvania, and to the Hottentots of South Africa. In blizzard and famine during long Arctic night; under blazing sun of the tropics, in encounters with deadly serpents, fierce beasts of prey, and men even more pitiless, in storms at sea and in long journeys over deserts, the Moravians were witnesses and martyrs as they sought to win for the Lamb that was slain a reward for His sufferings. The gospel was beginning to go to the uttermost part of the earth!
We sit with a small group of nonconformists in a Lord's Day service on May 30, 1792, and hear the earnest words of a young layman. He has based his message on Isaiah 54:2: "Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes." The outline of his message is elementary, but soul-searching and stirring: "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!"
When the service is concluded we with the others, with ecclesiastical propriety, arise to go; only to hear his unpassioned query. "Will they go? Call them back! Call them back!" We file back into the meeting hall and listen as these men found a little missionary society of English Baptists; they choose the morning speaker, William Carey, to be their representative in the vast subcontinent of India. The church at home and the missionary abroad were beginning to see the need of lengthening cords and strengthening stakes so that those who still sit in darkness and the shadow of death might see the Light of the World!
At a distance we follow a solitary man on the sands of Brighton Beach in England on Sunday, June 25, 1865. With fellow Christians he had gone to the house of God, but the sight of multitudes rejoicing in the blessing of salvation was more than he could bear; for beyond the singing of praises his inner ear could hear the piercing heart-cry of a million a month who are dying without God in the dark land of China. We hear the simple unaffected testimony that later he recorded:
"In great spiritual agony, I wandered out on the sands. There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to God for this service. I told Him that all the responsibilities as to the issues and consequences must rest with Him; that as His servant, it was mine to obey and follow Him, His to direct, care for, and guide me and those who might labor with me ... Then and there I asked Him for twenty-four fellow workers, two for each of the eleven provinces which were without a missionary, and two for Mongolia; and writing the petition on the margin of the Bible I had with me, I turned homeward with a heart enjoying rest such as it had been a stranger to for months, and with an assurance that the Lord would bless His own work and that I should share the blessing."
Hudson Taylor had heard the call of God to the heart of China; and the glorious gospel of Christ was going beyond the accessible coastal areas to the vast interior of lands where none had ever gone with the glad tidings of good things. God by His Spirit was urging His children to hurry with the word of the gospel to the interior of China, of Africa, of South America, because the coming of the Lord was beginning to draw nigh!
The nineteenth century was an epic in missionary endeavor and adventure, reaching the port cities and interior provinces of many a land, and many islands of the seven seas. The triumphs of the Cross have been told and retold, but never exhausted. But, in our generation there are still untold millions that have never heard the name of the Lord Jesus, nor seen any portion of His Word in their language.
A young and aggressive missionary in Guatemala, who had been most effective among the colorful natives of that land of loveliness and volcanoes, came one day to the realization that. there were still more than a thousand tongues in which there was not one verse of Holy Scripture. He knew that "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God"; but how were these many tribes to have the Word of God? With burden and burning of heart he brought into being, with two teachers and a few students on an abandoned farm in the Ozarks, the Wycliffe Bible Translator Movement. In our days we have seen the guidance of God in the lives of Cameron Townsend and L.L. Legters; and the word of the gospel goes farther abroad so that every tribe and tongue, nation and people might hear!
You and I are called to labor in the eleventh hour. The long day of the Gospel Era is almost gone; and in the gloaming we are called to reap in the fields of earth, with labors and tears, but also with uplifted eyes awaiting the coming again of the Lord Jesus. After He had given His last words on Olivet: "Unto the uttermost part of the earth," came that word to the disciples, "This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."
God grant that He may find us in field of earth when He comes, so with rejoicing we can bring our sheaves unto Him!
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