THE TWELVE MISSIONARIES.
By James M. Whiton
It is only by a trick of words that this title does not at a glance reveal who are the persons referred to. Just such a trick was played on the readers of the Bible when the word church was substituted by King James’ intimation to the English translators that so it should be, for the word congregation, as Tyndale had given it. We all believe that the men whom Jesus chose for His first disciples became missionaries. But they are not so termed in our English Bibles, which always call them apostles, and it is commonly thought that there have been no apostles since the death of John, the last survivor of the twelve. Then ended, according to church historians, the “apostolic age.” And if in reading Luke 6:13, “He chose twelve, whom also He named apostles,” one should substitute the word missionaries for apostles, many would suspect him with meddling with the text. But such a reading is literally correct, and it has the advantage of carrying a clear definition of the idea, as the word apostles does not. These two words are, in fact, of identical meaning, their only difference being that apostle is a Greek word, and missionary a Latin word. Each of them is derived from a verb that means to send, and each of them means a person who is sent. In John 13:16 the marginal reading of the Revised Version so explains it. Jesus Himself so defines apostle in His prayer at the Last Supper: “As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the world.” And so He gave them from the first the name apostles. The word apostle, or apostles, occurs in the New Testament nearly fifty times, and seven times as often in the Pauline portion (including the third Gospel and the Book of the Acts) as in all the rest. This is significant. We naturally ask why it should be so. Evidently, because Paul was the chief missionary in that time. More than half the book of the Acts is concerned with his missionary journeys and activities. He himself tells the Corinthians: “I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” Yet he says: “I am the least of the apostles [missionaries], that am not meet to be called an apostle [missionary], because I persecuted the church of God.” In the person and work of Paul, Jesus’ designation of His first disciples as missionaries was abundantly justified. The word is matched by the deed. How appropriately he begins his letters: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” How much more significantly to our minds, long blinded by the trick of a word ill understood, when we give that ancient term its modern and luminous equivalent, “Paul, a missionary of Jesus Christ.” It would be worth while to do this—at least in our private reading, and perhaps on other fit occasions—when we come across the ancient Greek term in our English New Testament. See, for instance, Matt. 10:2: “The names of the twelve missionaries are these;” Luke 17:5: “The missionaries said unto the Lord, Increase our faith;” ch. 22:14: “He sat down [at the Last Supper], and the missionaries with Him;” Acts 2:43: “Many wonders and signs were done by the missionaries.” Carrying this substitution through the New Testament has an effect like that of clearing away the mold from an illegible inscription in a graveyard till the letters stand out distinctly. Other results follow both naturally and inevitably. Missionaries come to their rights. Even in the church, except among a well-informed and earnest minority, the missionary—that is, the man and his work—is not rightly valued, and so is not rightly supported. When he has done a great work, and returns, the father of churches that he has planted on the frontier or in non-Christian lands, there is, of course, the general rising up to do him honor, which is the world’s way of recognizing brilliant achievement. But when he goes forth to Africa, Alaska, or anywhere as a recruit, a beginner, conscientious and chivalrous, as all sound-minded people must believe him, many yield him this tribute with an undertone of regret for what they deem rather visionary, misjudged, impractical; thinking, if not saying, “Why go to the ends of the earth for duty when there is so much of it to do at home?” This is a most un-Christian mistake. The missionary is the original Christian institution, antedating the church itself, and older than her sacraments. So, at any rate, we are informed by Paul himself. Read the list of “holy orders” that he sent to the church in Ephesus: “He gave some to be missionaries [translated “apostles”]; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” Thus is emphasized by the man who of all the twelve showed most of the mind of Jesus, the thought of Jesus in designating the twelve as His “apostles.” The real truth in regard to “apostolic succession,” so belabored and beclouded in futile disputes, now comes out in clear and convincing light. If the New Testament is permitted to speak on this question with final authority, the genuine apostolic succession is a missionary succession. Of the first admission to it, after Jesus’ time, we read that to supply the vacancy created by the apostasy of Judas, Matthias was chosen, “and he was numbered among the eleven apostles [missionaries].” Many a humble missionary, on whose head no bishop’s hands have ever been laid, is numbered in this succession. Outside of it have been many mitred and throned prelates, “princes of the church.” A more important question is also settled: What is the true church? Paul is the conclusive witness. He tells the church at Ephesus that it is “built upon the foundation of the apostles [missionaries] and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone.” And agreeably to this, the seer of the Apocalypse beheld in his vision that future City of God, of which the church on earth is but the dim prototype, as having for its wall “twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles [missionaries] of the Lamb.” The house of God must stand square on its foundations. The mark of the true church is its fidelity to its original design. A church is a church of Christ only so far as animated by the spirit of the great Missionary whose name it bears. Bishops or no bishops, creeds or no creeds, matter little, but this matters everything for the right of the church to be. The corollary to this requires final mention. What is true of the church is true of each member of it. None is what Paul calls “a man in Christ”—though he may be a “babe in Christ” in whom Christ’s missionary spirit is lacking or undeveloped. He must find or make a way to expand it, to exercise it without partiality for a special interest, and a consequent narrowing of Christian sympathy for those whom Christ would heal. For this the Holy Spirit was originally given when Jesus, on the Passover eve, said: “As my Father hath sent Me, so send I you,” and then “breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” When Christian consciousness gets firmer hold of these foundation facts of Christian faith, Christian character will be enriched, Christian enterprise will expand, the day of small things will be succeeded by a day of power, and scoffing tongues will be dumb.—Home Missionary.