Completing Christ's Commission (1946)

Speech from Urbana 46
by Robert McQuilkin

in 1946, Dr. McQuilkin was the President of Columbia Bible College.
more from Urbana 46

"The proclamation of the Gospel is more than telling the historical facts. In Acts we learn that when they received power they were to be His witnesses. Then, they not only told that Christ died and rose again - they themselves were living witnesses of the resurrection.

Completing Christ's Commission - what a challenge to the youth of 1947! You young people have struck the greatest hour since Christ gave His commission after His resurrection more than 1900 years ago. Many signs point to the expectation that your generation is the generation when the Gospel will go to the uttermost part of the earth and the commission will be completed.

Our Lord gave just one commission to His Church. It is called the "Great Commission": great in its marvelous message of amazing grace; great in its world-embracing extent; great in its climax and its result; and great in its Author. Our Lord's Great Commission, repeated in different words, is recorded five times in the New Testament: in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and in Acts.

In Matthew 28:18-20: "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

In Mark 16:15: "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation."

In Luke 24:46-49: "And he said unto them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be clothed with power from on high."

John 20:21, 22: "Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost."

In Acts 1 :8: "But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."

On each occasion when this Great Commission is recorded there are associated with it, directly or indirectly, two tremendous facts or truths. One is power. The Lord says that all power, or authority, hath been given unto me. Go ye therefore. Without that power, it would be vain to go. And what is the power? All power in heaven and on earth, with which must go all the authority, has been committed to Christ. The right hand of God means that the Father has turned all authority over to the Son. There will come a day when Christ shall have put down all authority and power and then He will deliver up the kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24-26).

But while redemption is being worked out, the Son of God, Jesus our Saviour, has all power. The Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of rapid action, begins: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." What a thrilling close there is to this Gospel: "So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following" (Mark 16:19, 20).

So today the Lord, at the right hand of power, is working with every missionary that goes forth. In Luke, Christ commanded them to go and then He told them, "Do not go yet." They were to wait in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high. Why did they not go and tell that Jesus died and rose again? They knew these glorious facts. Evidently the proclamation of the Gospel is more than telling the historical facts. In Acts we learn that when they received power they were to be His witnesses. Then, they not only told that Christ died and rose again - they themselves were living witnesses of the resurrection. Christ was living in them. How did it all come about? "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come" (Acts 1:8); more correctly in the Revised Version, "when the Holy Spirit is come'"; more literally, "Ye shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you." God, the Holy Spirit, Himself, is the power. There is no power apart from God. And God boldly gives Himself to His Church, and wonder of wonders, He gives Himself to each individual believer.

Today we know a little more of what power means. We used to emphasize the fact that from this Greek word for power, our "dynamite" comes. But dynamite is mild today. Yet atomic power in the physical realm is nothing to this power of the Great Commission, the power of the Gospel, the power of God to every one that believeth.

You remember the disciples' question, "Who then can be saved?" (Mark 10:26). And our Lord answered: "With men it is impossible." What is impossible? To save a rich man? No, to save any man. "With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible" (Mark 10:27), even this most impossible of all things - to save men from sin.

The pale, weak, emaciated gospel which the wise of the religious world and of the psychological world and of the sociological world are proclaiming today does not need that kind of power. B. B. Warfield quoted Tertullian's answer to the modern mind of his day. These intellectual unbelievers were saying, "These teachings of Christianity, the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, the Resurrection, Regeneration, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the return of Christ are impossible and they cannot be accepted by scientific men." "Yes," Tertullian admitted, "we believe these things, although they are impossible." Then the stalwart warrior added, "Nay, we believe these things because they are impossible."

Thank God that InterVarsity and the Student Foreign Missions Fellowship believe a miracle Book with miracle doctrines that produce a miracle life. Our commission is a great commission, God's commission, not a pale proclamation that men ought to be good and act as brothers. One of the great apostles of the 20th century paganism which is falsely called modernism, has declared that the modern mind could more readily accept Christianity, if the New Testament did not have these miracles. The fact is that the human mind, ancient or modern, would not accept any revelation from God without miracles. How can men believe in the presence and working of God unless they see God working that which only God can work. Talleyrand is reported to have given advice to a Frenchman who was discouraged because his new religion had not made much headway. The problem is a simple one, Talleyrand told him: "Get yourself crucified and rise again the third day and you will have no difficulty in getting followers."

For this Gospel that God has committed to us we need miracle power. And we have it! All power and authority has been given to Christ. And Christ has sent the Holy Spirit to us. We have power as His witnesses.

It is important to answer the specious arguments of modernism. Indeed they have been answered. The specialty of the books on the new paganism is to avoid dealing with the answers of intellectual giants who have defended the Christian message. But the battle will never be won on the intellectual level. We must let men see miracle power. Against that there is no answer. We are rightly emphasizing thorough preparation for our missionary candidates. Perhaps we are overdoing the craving for degrees. But the great basic need is missionaries who are real witnesses of the resurrection power of Christ. This should be one result of our convention - entering individually into an experience of the fullness of God's Holy Spirit.

We all long to know Christ more fully and to have the results of being more like our Lord. The Holy Spirit was given to minister Christ. He takes of the things of Christ and makes them real in us and through us. The Holy Spirit's work on one hand is to make us like Christ. We are to be what He is. We are to walk even as He walked. But the work of the Holy Spirit is also to do through us the work of Christ. When we take Christ as our Saviour, we are born of the Spirit. We have the witness of the Spirit that we are the children of God. We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and we are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ.

Now as Christians we are to walk in the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit. We long to have the joy and peace and longsuffering and kindness, the goodness, the faithfulness. the meekness, the self-control. This is likeness to Christ. When we are filled with the Spirit, we are filled with His love. The Love of. God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. But we have also the gift of the Spirit. Every Christian is to have the one fruit of the Spirit, but to each one is given a different gift. These gifts of the Spirit are associated with what the Holy Spirit does through us. The works that Christ did, we are to do also. Rather, it is Christ, the head of the Body, who does these works through the members of His Body, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now all of these works center in the one great purpose for which the disciples were baptized by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They were to receive power to be His witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth. We do need today to pray for a revival of the power and spirit of Pentecost. We do not need another Pentecost. 'I'he Holy Sprit has come. Every believer in this hall has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him or in her. We are to reckon on that great fact. We are to go forward, yielded to the control of the Spirit and trusting Him to work in and through us His own mighty works.

This, then, is the first great fact associated with the Great Commission, namely the supernatural power which belongs to Christ and which has been given to us along with Christ. All things come from God, the Father as the source. All things come through God, the Son, as the channel. All things come by God, the Holy Spirit, as the agent. God, the Father, has given all things to Christ. He has given Christ to us, and with Christ He has freely given us all things. Then, He has given us the Holy Spirit, who takes the things of Christ, and makes them real in and through us.

The other great fact associated directly or indirectly with the giving of the Great Commission, is the fact that Jesus Christ is coming back to this earth again personally. This coming of Christ marks the consummation of the age. Our unfortunate English translation obscures the meaning of this great promise "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20). The word is "end of the age" and the word "end" is not simply a date on the calendar. It means that this present age will come to a consummation. For most of us the school year will come to an end the first of June. Some of you doubtless are looking forward, not simply to the calendar end of the school year, but to a consummation. There are a number of things to be accomplished, including the passing of some examinations, in order that that might be a real consummation for you. When Jesus Christ came the first time, He came in the fullness of time. No less true is it that Christ will return to this earth again in the fullness of time. God knows that moment, even as He knew the moment for the birth of Christ in Bethlehem's manger.

We know now, what none of the early believers knew, that many, many things have taken place in these 1900 years which were in the plan of God. We know not the day nor the hour of the coming Christ. God knows that day, and He knows also all that He plans is to take place before that hour arrives. The secret things belong unto God, and the things that are revealed belong to us. We know that the Holy Spirit was sent at Pentecost for one great objective - that the Gospel should go to the whole creation, to the uttermost part of the earth. We know, therefore, and all can agree with this, that whatever the uttermost parts of the earth means, we are sure that the Gospel will go to the uttermost parts of earth before our Lord returns. The Great Commission has a great goal. In Acts 1:8 we have the person of that Commission, the Lord Jesus; the power of that Commission, the Holy Spirit; propagators of the Commission, the believers, the witnesses of the Christ; the place of that Commission; the plan; the program; the progress of that Commission; and the purpose of it.

There are differences of opinion among devoted students of the Word as to what is meant by the Gospel going to the uttermost part of the earth; there are differences of view as to whether or not this has already taken place. But I believe all can unite in the one great fact that before Christ comes and before the Church is raptured, this Great Commission given to the Church must be complete. Acts 1:8 is a command. But Acts 1:8 is also a prophecy. The Church and the individual members of the Church are to be witnesses to the uttermost part of the earth and the Gospel will go to the uttermost part of the earth. Some say that the Gospel did go in Paul's generation to the whole creation and that this part of the prophecy has been fulfilled. Others say that so far as we know the Gospel may, by tomorrow, go to the uttermost parts. Others would suggest that every unreached tribe today, may in a previous generation have been reached by the Gospel. Others would say that the prophecy has not yet been fulfilled and that the Gospel must go before Christ returns. All of these views are witnesses to the fact that the consummation of this age, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the goal of the Great Commission. The work of the Church must be finished. The Holy Spirit came in this age for a great objective. As Christ said to the Father: "I have finished the work thou gavest me to do" (John 17:4), so the Holy Spirit will say to the Father and to the Son: "I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do."

If Christ should come today, it would prove that the Gospel has gone to the uttermost part of the earth, in the meaning of that prophecy. But since Christ has not come today, it is ours to call the Christian student world and the Church to look on the fields white to the harvest, and to consider what is Christ's call to us concerning this Great Commission. We are to occupy until Christ comes, not to occupy until we think He is going to come.

Within the past ten years, there has come a thrilling note from missionary leaders in different parts of the world speaking independently of one another, and speaking from the standpoint of their own fields. Again and again we have heard the declaration that within ten years all of the unreached tribes of earth might be reached. We have heard it declared that if there is the same progress within the next ten years, in a great section of Africa every last tribe will be reached. For a few moments let us stand on the watchtower and see what God has been doing in this matter of reaching those who have never heard the Gospel.

Many times the question has been asked, "Why did God permit this terrible world war?" We know at least two things that God has revealed concerning this tragic holocaust of anguish and tears. We know that God must punish the nations for their sins. We know that God uses nations that are less righteous than their neighbors to punish those neighbors for their national sins, and then to suffer God's judgment upon themselves for their sins. So it has been with Germany and Japan. It behooves us to pray that our own nations and England, and the Scandinavian nations where the Gospel light has been shining most brightly, might turn in repentance toward God. The mercy and goodness of God to our own nation is not an indication of our righteousness, but is intended by God to lead us to repentance. The other evident fact about this World War is that God has overruled the evil and the suffering for the carrying forward of His Great Commission.

From many angles the number one sufferer in all those years of war has been China, with her five hundred millions. About ten or fifteen years ago, Dr. Howard Taylor, who recently had an abundant entrance into the presence of the Lord, told a group of us at Canadian Keswick that he had been over every province in China except one and that his considered conclusion was that there were three hundred million people in China who had never heard the Gospel. But what a change today! Careful students of missions in China would probably agree that since that day one hundred million more have heard the Gospel. This did not come about by the ordinary progress of regular missionary methods. Nothing in all history has ever taken place like the migrations in China. The estimates of the number who were driven from their homes by the Japanese have been as high as two hundred million. Most of these returned to their homes. But at the lowest computation, between thirty and fifty million Chinese went from the eastern provinces to the far northwest and southwest. Many of these were students and teachers, carrying their universities with them. Among these millions were thousands of consecrated Christians, some of them coming out of the revival of the Bethel Band and other groups. They came to places where missionaries had never been. We recall reading also of the hundreds of thousands gathered in concentration camps, who for the first time had opportunity to listen to the missionaries, who had crowded into Shanghai from the central provinces. Many were the thrilling stories of those who turned to Christ. We read of how China for several years exceeded Great Britain and America in the number of Scriptures that were distributed. Truly God did a new thing in China, and we should pray against the onslaught of Satan, using communism, seeking to destroy the Gospel and its advance in China.

Let us turn to Latin America. Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Henry Strachan, who probably knew more at first hand about missions in Latin America than any living man, told us of his years of survey of Central America and nearly all of South America, and declared that there were more than fifty million who had never heard the true Gospel of Christ, including fifteen million Indians who were nearly altogether unevangelized. About five years ago, as he was speaking of the remarkable progress of the Gospel in Latin America, I reminded him of this statement he had made. "But," he exclaimed in his earnest way, "that was twenty years ago! Now you can scarcely go into any part of South America where the Gospel, in one way or another, has not penetrated."

We turn to Ethiopia. We remember how Dr. Tom Lambie, one of the leaders in the SFMF, after spearheading the modern missionary movement in Ethiopia, got a vision of seven million for whom no provision was being made. Two other young men were praying for these unreached tribes and together they organized the Abyssinian Frontiers Mission. Later they united with the Sudan Interior Mission. In the midst of depressions while all mission boards were drawing back their missionaries, God sent more than eighty missionaries into this pioneer field.

Then came Mussolini, backed by the Roman Catholic Church, capturing Ethiopia and driving every Protestant missionary from that land. We have heard something of the story that followed. In southern Ethiopia there were three weak little groups of believers, less than one hundred in all. What would happen to them when their missionary leaders were gone? Most of you have heard the thrilling story of the visit of Dr. Playfair, director of the Sudan Interior Mission, and missionaries who had worked in that territory. This little group had during the war years given out the Gospel, and under the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit they had a native church numbering twenty thousand members, each of whom had been on probation for months before being received into the church. There was a gathering of the elders of all those congregations, numbering seven hundred. What New Testament, apostolic joy there was as they greeted the missionary leaders. They set before the missionaries the record of decisions they had made concerning matters that were not specifically set forth in the New Testament. Dr. Playfair testified that every decision was the one with which the missionaries would have agreed. This is the Lord's doing and marvelous in our eyes!

So we might go from nation to nation and from continent to continent today and we would find that God the Holy Spirit is working in a new way.

Our convention is a convention for missionary advance. What kind of advance is it to be? Should it not be an advance toward the last great battle before the final victory, the completing of the Great Commission? There are today at least five hundred millions who have not heard the Gospel of salvation through a crucified and risen Saviour.

Everyone of us is called to put the central passion of Christ at the center of our lives. Not all of you will be called to go to the foreign mission field, but every young person who believes that God is calling him to full-time service should face first the call to reach out to those who have never heard.

Let us make Paul's great ambition our ambition. The word "ambition" is used only three times in the New Testament and twice Paul uses it in personal testimony: "I make it my ambition." When he is thinking of the coming of Christ and appearing before Christ, desiring that he should not be ashamed before the Lord at His coming, he declares, "I make it my ambition to be well-pleasing to him." Again, he declares that he makes it his ambition to preach Christ where His name has never been named. Note how these ambitions are linked together. If we are to please Christ, we must carry out the thing that is central in the heart of Christ, the preaching of the Gospel to every creature on this earth.

The challenge of the Great Commission and the call to complete the Great Commission is, therefore, an individual call to each one of us to make the fundamental things fundamental in our lives, not supplemental. Let us make prayer not supplemental but fundamental. Let us make the Bible fundamental and not supplemental in our lives. Let us make personal witnessing for soul-winning fundamental in our lives. And let us make foreign missions not a supplementary part of the program of the Church but a fundamental part. Christ did not tell the Church to do two things. He told us to do one thing. There is, indeed, the Church's call to worship and to build Christians up in their most holy faith, to defend the Gospel, to be a blessing to all men. But all of these things will find their true expression when the Great Commission is accepted as the one task and goal of the Church of Christ.

The personal return of our Lord Jesus to this earth is a great incentive to holiness. We want to be like Him. We want to be ready when He comes. The blessed hope of Christ's return is also the greatest incentive to obey. Him and to take the Gospel to all who have never heard.

What will our answer be?

Completing Christ's Commission (1946)

God's Word

Urbana Stories

35 days until

December 27-31, 2009