A Great Obstacle | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 12, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 46.

A Great Obstacle.

—Dr. Ellinwood, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, discusses in the November Homiletic Review the “Place of the Bible in Twentieth-century Missions.” “Shall essential doctrines be eliminated? Shall there be any change of emphasis?” Shall the Biblical type of Christian missions be modified to meet modern thought? Dr. Ellinwood finds no insuperable objections in the great Oriental religions against the idea of Incarnation, or of predestination, or of future rewards and punishments, or of the resurrection of the dead, or of the Trinity. One of the greatest obstacles he finds in dealing with Confucianism is ancestral worship. He says:—

Christianity teaches the Chinaman that the souls of his father and all his ancestors are still living; and as they knew nothing of the salvation by Jesus Christ, the implication is that they are lost. This is indeed a formidable stone of stumbling, but not greater than has confronted the preaching of the Gospel in all lands and in all ages of the world.

But this would prove no obstacle, if the truth of the Bible were taught. For nowhere does the Bible teach that all who have died are living. “The dead know not anything,” is the repeated teaching of the Old Testament, and the New Testament declares that man's whole hope of future life rests upon the resurrection of Christ Jesus, and through Him of all the dead in the last day. Tell the Chinese that the ancestors of all the past are asleep, waiting for the coming of the Master, who will wake them in His own good time, and give to each the reward or punishment due. And, too, what right has Dr. Ellinwood or any one else to intimate that all those who have died are lost? Christ by His Spirit has enlightened, and does, and will, enlighten every one who comes into the world. John 1:9. How do we know how many hearts in the darkness of heathendom the great Jehovah has found “perfect toward Him”? 2 Chron. 16:9. That soul who sees but one ray of light and holds it, follows it, cherishes it, will not be left of God. Better is his case than that of the one who has a flood of light, and rejects all by rejecting perhaps but one ray. The former found God in the one ray of light accepted. The latter lost Him in the one ray of light rejected. O there would be far fewer obstacles, if men would preach the Gospel as it is. In Gospel predestination they would see the glory, and wisdom, and love of God. The eternally burning hell would be abolished. Jesus Christ would stand forth in the Bible, meeting all the sinner’s need, let that sinner be Buddhist, Brahmin, Confucianist, Catholic, or Protestant.