p. 12 | TO EVERY CREATURE by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1901

TO EVERY CREATURE.

By T.

It was no less a personage than the Master Himself who said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Following this divine command He also gives the promise, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” And after this inspiring promise comes the necessary sentence, “He that believeth not shall be damned.”

If you are a Christian, the Master is saying to you, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” It may be that He wants you to go in person to tell the blessed, hope-inspiring, and joy-begetting story of the cross. Or it may be that He wants you to give that boy or girl that is the brightest light of your home. Your heart may shudder at the thought of sending him to the jungles of Africa, or to the sun-scorched plains of India, or into the heathen darkness and dangers of China, but still the Master says, “Go.” But if it is perfectly clear that you are not to go yourself, nor to send your son or daughter, still does the Lord’s command reach you. He has something for you to do. He needs your money and your sympathetic prayers for those who are called upon to enter those benighted fields.

So, from whatever standpoint you view the matter, the Lord’s call for missionary volunteers is a personal matter to you direct.

Emphasis should be placed upon the fact that the Gospel is to be preached “to every creature.” Every one is to have the opportunity of receiving salvation.

So far as this country is concerned, as well as such other countries as Great Britain, Germany, etc., the Gospel message has been given in its fulness. Every one has the opportunity before him of knowing of Christ and His power. It is true that much that passes for Christianity in these countries is nothing more than a hollow form. But still there are many in these fields who know Christ, and are able to make Him known to every inquiring soul.

But such is not the case in the heathen lands of China, Japan, India, etc. These lands should demand our especial attention. Many more individuals should hear the call from the Master, “Go ye into all the world.” A part of the world has been worked and worked again. But how about those regions in which the gentle tones of the Lord’s gracious words have never been heard? Have you, as a professed follower of Christ, given the thought to this matter that you should? Have you really felt the necessity of heeding the Saviour’s words, and of making a practical application of them to yourself personally?

When we think of the sad hearts in those lands, it should set our souls on fire to go to them with the joys of the Gospel message. A returned missionary said a day or so ago that it is a common saying in India that “the only happy-appearing creature in that country is a goat.” The faces of the people wear a sad look, and when they see any one whose countenance is beaming with joy, they ask at once, “What makes you so happy?” They do not seem to understand how any one can be full of joy and contentment. The sweetness of life has all been drained away from them, and all they have left is a melancholy sense of foreboding evil. Superstition holds the mind, and every little deviation from the ordinary course of nature is looked upon by them as a visitation of the vengeance of the gods.

A Famine-stricken Relief Camp in India.
Saved—by two cents a day. — A Famine-stricken Relief Camp in India. Saved—by two cents a day.

As we look upon the misery and suffering depicted in the illustrations on this page, we say that famine is a terrible thing. Yet these pictures show nothing more than the results of a want of physical food. But how greatly is this suffering heightened by the lack of the bread of life! If these souls only knew of the Gospel of Christ, how much easier would be their suffering! Indeed, if the Gospel had been allowed to do its work in that field, it is quite strongly probable that such a famine would not be in existence. For as man is brought into harmony with the spiritual law of Christ, it also gives him such a grasp of the physical laws of the same Being that the causes of famine are largely removed, or else some way is provided to bridge over them. If there is famine in one part of the country there is a land of Goshen in another to furnish all that is needed.

Indian girls, orphans from the famine of 1897, pupils of an American school in Bombay, showing the happiness and contentment that may be written by the Gospel upon these one-time heathen faces.

Famine is not in God’s order. It is not a thing of the Lord’s devising. It is the hand of an enemy that has brought in this state of things. The famine for spiritual food is the worst famine of all; for it is in departing from what the Lord would have us know of Him and His ways that makes it possible for the course of nature to be set aside and the famine for bread come as a calamity upon the world. The mental torture of the superstitious mind that does not know God, is a keener suffering than anything that can be brought upon him by famine, or sickness, or anything of the kind; for who has not seen the soul suffering untold pains from disease, and yet there was a calm joy in the countenance, that shone thru the pain; a joy that made one feel that he was in the presence of the bliss of heaven rather than in the chamber of distress?

The value of the joys and blessedness of the Gospel can never be told. They are beyond the powers of description. They must be experienced in order to be known, and when they are really known, they supply the one thing that humanity is always and everywhere in need of; and where it is lacking, joy is withering away from the sons of men. He who has this bliss of heaven stands ready to go anywhere that the Master suggests and give the message to the sorrowing sons of earth. If you do not have a burning desire in the soul to carry the Gospel to some one else, it is a sure sign that you do not really possess it yourself, no matter what you may profess.

Then let us hear the Saviour’s message, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,” so that all who desire to believe and be baptized may be saved. T.