This Day of Vast Missionary Opportunity Is the Day of Tremendous Christian Responsibility
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Signs of the Times
Jun 20, 1916
Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 20, 1916
This Day of Vast Missionary Opportunity Is the Day of Tremendous Christian Responsibility
"At the present time, there exists in the non-Christian world an unexampled desire to know the truth of Christ, and readiness to respond to the Christian appeal."—"The Present World Situation," by John R. Mott.
In This Generation—What?
By Arthur G. Daniells
By ARTHUR G. DANIELLS
THERE is a very definite idea, in the Christian church, that the gospel of Christ can, should, and will be given to all the world in this generation.
This idea is not a mere suggestion — a superficial, half fanatical sentiment. It is an intelligent, well defined belief, a positive, deep seated conviction. It is being expressed and emphasized by thousands of earnest Christians in a definite, practical way.
This conviction is based upon the Scriptures and what are believed to be God's overruling providences. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," was Christ's parting command to His church.
In giving this command, the Master was careful to add, "All power [authority] is given unto Me in heaven and in earth," and, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." In these words, Christ left the most positive assurance that His command to the church to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature would be obeyed.
The Daring Watchword
THIS scripture, and others of like import, lead thousands of ardent Christians to believe that the gospel can, that it should, and that it will be carried by the church to all the world in this generation. "The Evangelization of the World in This Generation" is the ringing, thrilling, daring watchword of the student volunteer movement. May the fullest success crown the Scriptural, consistent, and timely effort of this great movement.
The student volunteer movement was set on foot thirty years ago. Its purpose is fourfold; namely: (1) to awaken among all Christian students in all Christian lands intelligent and active interest in foreign missions; (2) to enroll a sufficient number of properly qualified student volunteers to meet the continuous demands of missionary boards; (3) to help all such intending missionaries to prepare for their life work; (4) to lay an equal burden of responsibility on all students who are to remain as ministers and lay workers at home.
Its special field of operation is the students attending the colleges, seminaries, and universities in all Christian lands. It is a recruiting society for missionary enterprises throughout the world. Since its inauguration in 1886, this movement has supplied the various mission boards with thousands of missionaries who have been sent to foreign lands. It is in touch with nearly a thousand educational institutions. In the classes formed in those schools, there are fifteen thousand students carrying on a progressive study of missions. These students and their professors contribute more than $100,000 annually to the support of foreign missions. This movement has extended from the United States, where it had its inception, to all lands where Christian institutions of higher learning have been established.
Let it not be forgotten that that which created this great movement, and still continues to stimulate the strenuous, never ceasing activities of its members, is the profound conviction that Christ's gospel of salvation must be given to all the world in this generation.
Why in this generation more than any other? The principal reason given by the leaders of this movement is this: "We who live now and have this message must carry it to those who live now and are without it. It is the duty of each generation of Christians to make Jesus Christ known to their fellow creatures." This reason is both Scriptural and logical. It is based upon the general teaching of the Bible.
Points to This Generation
BUT there is a stronger and more definite reason to be given. The Scriptures specifically point to this generation as the one in which the gospel must without fail be given to all the world. The following is one of the scriptures upon which this assertion is based: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Matt. 24: 14. These words were spoken by Christ in answer to the question asked by His disciples, "What shall be the386sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" The Teacher's answer was as simple, direct, and sincere as the question. He gave a number of signs, and one of them was that the gospel of His coming kingdom was to be preached in all the world. This was to be a witness to all nations that His coming was at hand; and when this world-wide witness has been borne, then the end will come.
All the other signs mentioned by Jesus have occurred. This one must now appear before the eyes of all the world. It is to fulfill this word of Christ that His Spirit has led the church to carry forward the splendid missionary endeavors of the last century. This is why there is at this time laying hold of the church such a deep conviction that the gospel must be given to all the world in this generation.
This world-wide missionary movement, given by Christ to His disciples as a positive sign of His coming, was revealed in greater detail by the Holy Spirit to the beloved John on the isle of Patmos. This is John's description: "I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His Judgment is come." Rev. 14: 6, 7.
Every Bible student knows that the Judgment is a last-day event. It had not come in Paul's day, for he reasoned of a "Judgment to come." Acts 24: 25. When this gospel message declaring that "the hour of His Judgment is come," has been given to all the world, then will be seen what John described—"a white cloud, and upon the cloud One sat like unto the Son of man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle." Rev. 14: 14.
It is because the Judgment hour has come that there is now such activity on the part of the church to give the gospel quickly to all the world.
Explorers the Missionary Pathfinders
AND now what are the possibilities and prospects for making the gospel known to "every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people" on the globe in this generation? — The possibilities are all that could be desired, and the prospects are as certain as the certainty of the fulfillment of God's word. Much that pertains to exploration, discovery, invention, education, and the world's progress generally, has surely been stimulated and controlled by an overruling Providence.
Exploration and discovery have given civilized nations a clear, well defined knowledge of the whole world. This is the first time in the history of the world that all the inhabitable parts, and all the people inhabiting them, have been known the world over. As late as the opening of the nineteenth century, not more than half of the world was known to civilized people; but during the century, explorers, navigators, and discoverers have found every land, ascended every navigable river, and have found their way to the very heart of nearly every nation and tribe on the face of the earth. This has opened India, China, Japan, Africa, the island groups of the Pacific, South America, and all other lands, to Western civilization and Christian missionary endeavor.
Marvelous Transportation Facilities
WHILE explorers have been bringing to the knowledge of the world the location, distribution, and conditions of all the races, inventors and capitalists have been hard at work providing transportation facilities for safely and yet quickly reaching any and every part of the world. When the nineteenth century opened, there was not an ocean steamer afloat, nor was there a mile of railroad on the planet.
Now there are steamship lines traversing the seas to every important port on the globe, while the railway lines reach the enormous total of nearly 1,000,000 miles — enough to belt the globe forty times. These railroad lines span continents, cross sandy deserts, bridge rivers, and scale and tunnel mountain ranges. By means of these transportation facilities, a journey can be made around the world in a little more than a month, and almost the remotest mission station in a heathen land can be reached from an administrative center in a Christian land within two months.
The captains of industry who have provided these transportation facilities at the expense of untold millions of dollars have had only the world's commerce in their plans; but God has had in view the evangelization of the world in this generation, and has thus kindled their desires and directed their energies.
By means of the public school systems, the printing press, the public libraries, the telegraph and cable lines, the telephone systems, and the scientific, historical, and geographical societies, information can now be easily and speedily conveyed to the great masses throughout the world. There are sixty thousand newspapers published in the world, and they are distributed throughout all lands. The Bible is now printed in more than four hundred and ninety languages and dialects. One hundred years ago, it was printed in only ten languages. During the century, 300,000,000 Bibles, New Testaments, and parts of both, have been circulated. The sacred Scriptures are now placed within the reach of nearly the whole population of the world. These, with the aid of the immense output of Christian literature in all lands, and the personal service of the living missionaries stationed in the midst of nearly every tribe on the globe, certainly make it possible for an awakened church to tell the story of the cross to the entire world in an incredibly short time.
Never has the church faced such opportunities and possibilities before. Nor has she ever faced such vast responsibilities. The day of the Lord's preparation is here. The hour of His Judgment has come. This gospel of the kingdom must be preached in all the world, that the glory of the Lord may lighten the earth. This must be done in this generation.
It is with profoundest gratitude that we see in active, vigorous progress the precise work for which all these marvelous openings and facilities have been, by God's providences, created. Only a few places remain yet unentered. The gaps must now be filled, so that the rays of light will touch; and then the Lord, by the outpouring of His Spirit, will, through His channels, flood the world with His light and glory. Every one who loves Christ, and yearns for the salvation of a lost world and the final consummation of the gospel, should pray now as never before that the Lord will baptize His church, and especially His ministers and missionaries, with a full measure of His Holy Spirit.
MODERN UNBELIEF
By L. H. Christian
BY L. H. CHRISTIAN
A MINISTER of Philadelphia has this to say in a recent issue of the "Standard": "There is another battle on — the battle for orthodoxy shall I call it? But that is a questionable term — the battle for the evangelical. The lines are drawing close. Men are taking their stand for or against. Ranks and trenches are forming. What is evangelicalism? — In a word, the doctrine of the blood, God's sovereignty and grace set over against human work — righteousness. We do not grow into grace. We grow in the grace. Some one said the other day, in our ministerial gathering, that no one has a right opinion of the atonement till he experiences the atonement. Good! There is a wholesome truth there. We all applauded the apt statement. And yet the opposite statement is just as true — no one can have an experience of Christ's saving grace until he has a right opinion of it.
"You hear the mutterings of the conflict everywhere. The New York Presbytery is divided on the virgin birth. What would you think of those queries raised in a men's Bible class hard by the seaboard? 'Would it interfere with our faith in Paul, if that event on the way to Damascus was but a sunstroke? Would the attitude of Christianity be different today if Christ's teachings had prevailed rather than Paul's?' There is the subtle teaching that is in the air disparaging the Bible, minimizing the miraculous, uncrowning the Christ, and exalting human intellectualism."
Some may ask, What is this modern unbelief? Let us quote a few sample sentences from a popular book, "The Theology of an Evolutionist": "The old orthodoxy is right in regarding the new criticism as revolutionary. It is revolutionary in its treatment of the Bible, as the Protestant Reformation was revolutionary in its treatment of the church. It denies the infallibility of the Bible, as the Protestant Reformation denied the infallibility of the church. There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is undesirable. God has not given it to His children. The Bible is not what it is sometimes called, — the word of God." — Pages 61, 69.
Truly the battle is on, the battle between faith and unbelief in the word of God. The cause of our Master needs strong, sturdy, brave men, who will contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.
A WORD TO THE BACKSLIDER
By David Paulson
THE master has need of you. He has need of your talents and your training. The devil also wants you. If he cannot get you in one way, he will try another. You are in need of a deeper experience in the things of God. Why not get the real thing instead of the partial thing? Study your Bible on your bended knees. It contains the light of truth, which you need. Dig out the truth from God's word. You will be following the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and you will be led to the promised land. If you fail to do this, you will lie down in sorrow.
You need to fall on the Rock and be broken. You need to confess the years of backsliding and doubt that have come into your life, and like a little child, begin again, as you never knew how before, to get yourself and others ready for the kingdom of God.
In the day of God, there is going to be a group of people lost who had supposed they would be among the elect. Their real influence has been such as actually to hinder the work of God in the earth, when they supposed that they were wonderfully improving it. You are going to be among that group, or you are not. It remains for you now to decide.
"Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion." And again, "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings." Jer. 3: 14, 22. And again the Lord says, "I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him." Hosea 14: 4. DAVID PAULSON.
Bulwark Against Infidelity
By Lucas Albert Reed
By LUCAS ALBERT REED
Bulwark Against Infidelity
WHEN Mr. Huxley found the record of creation as contained in Genesis blocking his way, instead of heeding the obstruction, he tells us, he broke through it, and what seemed like a formidable looking fence turned out to be merely a "heap of brushwood." All this is but to say that that barrier—"thorny barrier" are his words—which God interposed against skepticism, Mr. Huxley, in his imbibing of evolution, utterly repudiated.
To prevent just such experiences in human lives, God gave the record in Genesis. It is the first part of the Bible ever written. It contains the fundamental truth of how God works, and therefore holds within its seed truth, as it were, all other phases of divine enlightenment.
The record of creation, received by faith, gives us an understanding of the almighty power of God working in behalf of His creatures.
Directly to show this great truth, the Sabbath was instituted at the end of creation week, and the seventh day ever since has been the constant testimony of God's power both to give existence to and to uphold the world.
The Only Explanation of the Week
WERE the Sabbath kept, as God intended, by all mankind, there could be no infidelity, no skepticism, no false science, and therefore no evolution as taught to-day.
The Sabbath idea is the great truth that God in six days performed the gigantic task of creating and embellishing the world. It declares that God worked six days and rested the seventh. It admonishes us to imitate God in this by also working the same six days upon which He worked, and resting on the same seventh day on which He rested, according to the weekly schedule that has been in existence ever since.
In fact, there is no other explanation of the week. We find the week in all civilized nations; yet it is not an astronomical division of time. It seems arbitrary unless we take the explanation for its existence as found in the first and second chapters of Genesis. In this, even the skeptical have an incontrovertible witness that God did create the world in six days, and rest the seventh; for ever since, the week has been in existence—a week of seven days, crowned by the Sabbatic day of rest.
When we consider the fact that almost the entire Christian world has rejected the seventh-day Sabbath, we are enabled to understand the better why there was so little outcry against Mr. Huxley's vigorous attacks upon the Genesis record of creation. The Sabbath had been rejected for ages and generations. The Christian world had forgotten it, did not count it of any importance, felt that the Sunday sabbath might well take its place; and so they were unprepared for the attacks of skepticism and false science against the opening record of the Bible.
To-day we see where this has led. To reject the supernatural, miraculous power of God as declared in the first chapter of Genesis—the means by which the world was created—is to reject that same supernatural, miraculous power in every other place where it may appear. And so, after a generation or two of imbibing the theories of evolution, the Christian world to-day as emphatically rejects the miracles of the New Testament as they previously rejected the miracle of creation.
The Rejection of Truth
THIS professedly Christian rejection of the miraculous wherever it may appear in the Bible is the consistent maintaining of the principle of the evolutionist that the supernatural and miraculous is incredible and unworthy of the human reason.
How frankly ministers to-day are determined to preach only rationalistic religion, may be seen by the proposition of a writer in the Biblical World, University of Chicago Press, of recent date, in which he declared that "the truth of development requires that we cherish only a measured regard for the past." By "the truth of development" is meant the teaching of evolution, which we have already shown to be a false philosophy. There are such things as growth and development; but they are things apart from creation. Growth and development cannot originate, for the words mean an enlargement of that which already exists.
Applying the Blue Pencil to the Bible
IN order to honor, however, this so-called "truth of development," the blue pencil is to be liberally applied to the Bible, until we have it in a humanized edition. This Bible will be only about one twelfth of the size of our Bible to-day. It will contain only about ninety-two pages, and its Christ will not be mentioned "as having preëxisted, as having been the active agent in the creation of the world; . . . no longer think of Him as the object of worship, but only as the unique pattern and the inspirer of the acceptable worship of God." But why quote more! Its Christ will be only a human being, somewhat unique, but nothing apart from humanity itself—all natural, all easily understood, because brought down to what sinful man may judge is proper and right—a humanized religion, a humanized Bible, a humanized Christ, and as worthless as humanity alone is worthless.
To such lengths do we come when we reject the almighty power of God as brought to view in Genesis, and eventually as it is shown elsewhere throughout the Bible.
How clever, then, it was first to rid men of the Sabbath, the great bulwark against all this infidelity and skepticism! How shrewd it was to let the years go by until the Sabbath was practically forgotten and another day instituted in its place, and then begin attacks from the388
BULWARK AGAINST INFIDELITY
(Continued from page 3)
scientific standpoint, by false philosophers and pseudo-scientists, upon the essential element of creation, its reference to all-mightiness! This being once rejected, the whole Bible goes, because robbed of its power.
As Christ said in explanation of how the tares came among the wheat, so we say again,—"An enemy hath done this."
A Fundamental Truth
BUT the Sabbath still exists, and God's truth still stands. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Heb. 11:3. "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. . . . For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." Ps. 33:6, 9. It is this power of God to speak a world into existence that is memorialized and commemorated and evidenced by the Sabbath institution. So long as men regard the Sabbath of God, just so long will they believe the great truth which it upholds, and the spiritual lesson is plain and significant.
Because when God said, "Let there be light," light came, so now He bids light to shine into our minds; and when we yield to the divine will, light floods the darkened chambers of the intellect. Thus the God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness shines in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, from the mirror of Christ's own face. (2 Cor. 4:6.)
Because the world was made by Christ (Col. 1:16, 17), He is the divine creative Word (John 1:1-3). His word is the word of creative power. (Heb. 1:3.) Hence He could speak to the stormy waves and the raging wind, with the result that there came a great calm. He could speak to the dead, and call them once more back to life. By that same investment of divine majesty, He can give life to those who are spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. This is the fundamental truth of the gospel. Only creative power can create us new creatures in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:10.)
And so we see how empty of power is this new Bible, which is to be the exponent of the new so-called "Christian" religion.
What men need to-day is a great, divine power, to take possession of the life, to subdue the evil passions and the sinful lusts, and control the mind, even to bringing every thought into obedience to Christ. Human reason and theories of development and plans of growth can never do it.
Commemorating a Mighty Principle
THEN do you not see that the principle of creation is the principle of all God's working, and that His power comes in response to His word? that where God does not speak, there is no power, and that everywhere and every time He does speak, there is power, and that power is God's unlimited creative energy?
To reject the word of God, then, is to reject the power that comes through that Word, and is to be left impotent, utterly weak against the malignant evil that is in the world, that is in our hearts, that possesses us as truly as the demons possessed the demoniac. There is no deliverance from the dead body of sin, save through the mighty power of God's word, which, personified, is Christ Himself.
The Sabbath was given to commemorate this mighty principle. It is to cause men to know and remember that God made the world in six days by His word; and if it evidences this principle of divine working in the one place, it must evidence it in every place where the divine working is manifested. The Sabbath, then, is as truly a memorial of God's creative work in the human soul in saving a man from sin, as it was of the work that God did on creation's morning.
Since the Sabbath is a memorial of the creative work (so we read in the second chapter of Genesis, and also in the fourth commandment itself, as recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus), it stands as a monument to the fact that God gave life to man formed of the dust of the ground; but it just as truly evidences the other kindred fact,—that through Christ, many once dead in trespasses and sins, alienated from the life of God through evil works, are now made nigh by His blood, and made alive according to the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
As the Sabbath memorialized that creative work of God when He commanded the light and thus caused it to shine out of darkness, it must now also memorialize the workings of God when He causes the light of the gospel to shine in our minds. The work is the same in both cases, merely being manifested in two different realms.
As the Sabbath was given at the end of creation, when all things were completely and perfectly accomplished, it stood as the crown of creation, as the memorial of a finished work. Being thus a memorial of a finished work, and being still in existence, standing yet as a memorial of the same thing,—God's finished, creative work,—it is a pledge that the creation shall be again all that it then was.
It Opened the Floodgates
As the Sabbath points back to God's finished work, when the Lord saw all that He had made, and pronounced it very good, so does it point forward to that time when, according to His promise, there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and all things shall be made anew, when God's work shall be truly finished. The Sabbath, then, teaching the great principle of God's working, stands as a mighty pledge that God's work cannot be permanently marred; that His purposes cannot be thwarted, and that there shall yet stand an upright man in the midst of a creative work that God Himself sees to pronounce very good.
These merely suggested meanings of the Sabbath—for space forbids its elaborate treatment—indicate, in a little degree, how much the Christian world has lost in its losing of God's holy Sabbath day; and it brings us back to the statement made at the first,—that the Sabbath would have prevented this great flood of infidelity and skepticism which to-day is robbing us of both God's word and God's power. Naturally there arises, therefore, the question, How came the Christian world to lose the Sabbath? By what means has that day become obsolete as a Christian observance, that thus infidelity and skepticism might sweep away from us the very charter of our redemption? The question is pertinent, and its answer imperative.
