Much
has been written, and is still being written, about the
difference in the progress of the Gospel in the first
three decades of Christianity and the much longer time
since. That the progress then was nothing less than
phenomenal is impossible to deny. We have more than once
quoted the words of Dr. A. M. Fairbairn:
“In the year 33 A.D. a few
Galilean fishermen were seeking liberty of speech in
Jerusalem and were hardly handled as men poor and
ignorant. In the year Paul died (about 30 years later),
how did the matter stand? There were churches in
Jerusalem, Nazareth, Caesarea, in all Syria, Antioch,
Ephesus, Galatia, Sardis, Laodicea, in all the towns on
the west coast throughout lesser Asia, in Philippi,
Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Rome, Alexandria, in the
chief cities of the islands and the mainland of Greece,
and the western Roman colonies.”
With
all the tremendous organization, expenditure and
propaganda since and particularly in the last century,
there is nothing to compare with that, especially when it
is observed that in those first years we do not read of
any machinery, appeals, “drives”, deputations,
exhibitions, demonstrations and all the organization of
missions and missionary efforts with which we are so
familiar in our times. It is not that there is a lack of
concern for evangelization or a lack of sacrifice and
suffering on the part of many devoted servants of God.
Whatever we may say, we must guard against belittling or
undervaluing the very great outpouring of life and
strength which has characterized the outreach for the
salvation of souls in these past centuries. Contact with
many such devoted servants of God in these spheres of
service means a sound rebuke to any spirit of criticism.
But,
recognizing every bit of that sacrificial devotion, there
are very few who are not aware of the difference above
mentioned, and masses of literature are being published
on the matter. Our object, under deep exercise, is not to
criticise or cast aspersions but to ask whether — if
the comparison and contrast is right and true —there
are any factors and features which constitute the change?
Were there characteristics in the beginning which do not GENERALLY
obtain now? Where there has been a really living and
effective work to which all may point as approximating to
the first days, is it because of the presence of those
first factors? Let us look at one or two notable examples
and see if they point backward to something in the
original.
In the
first place let us call to mind the amazing and
heart-stirring story of the Moravian Brethren.
In
their first twenty years (twenty years only, mark you)
they actually sent out more missionaries than THE
WHOLE PROTESTANT CHURCH had done in TWO HUNDRED
YEARS. Of the closed lands entered, the sufferings
gladly endured, the range covered, the lives lived and
laid down, the grace of God manifested, it stirs wonder
and shame to read. Someone has said that if members of
the Protestant churches had gone out in corresponding
numbers there would have been a force vastly in excess of
the number estimated as necessary to evangelize the whole
world.
What
was the secret and what were the factors?
In the
first place the cross had been deeply wrought into the
very being of every one of those people. This had been
through deep suffering. Their country was made a field of
blood by massacre. They were driven from their homes.
From three million they were reduced by persecution to
one million population. Indeed, it sometimes appeared as
if they would be entirely exterminated and their
testimony extinguished.
Out of
this fire of affliction there arose a company purified,
with another fire burning in their bones. It was the fire
of a passionate love for the Lord Jesus. The meetings of
these brethren, when later possible, breathed the
atmosphere of the upper room in Jerusalem when the
tension was similar. Covenants were made that self in all
its forms should be entirely banished: self-will,
self-love, self-interest, self-seeking.
To be
poor in spirit would be their quest and everyone would
give himself or herself to be taught by the Holy Spirit.
A prayer-watch was set up which should burn day and
night, and in relays an entire twenty-four hours was
occupied in seeking the Lord. Their motto was: “To
seek for the Lamb the reward of His sufferings.”
All
this is its own argument. A deep inwrought work of the
cross issued in a mighty personal love for the Lord
Jesus. Personal considerations were lost and no
persuasion was necessary. Is it necessary to argue or
even indicate, that this was a real correspondence to
those early days of Christianity?
So
much for our first example. We turn to another, in which
much of what we have said was taken over with other
features. How often has the early story of the China
Inland Mission been pointed to and how much appealed to
as a great example of a work truly of God in its
spiritual life and effectiveness! Books are still being
published in retrospect with the object of inspiring and
recovering by the example of that work. But it would be a
mistake to make everything of the work, the
“Mission”, and overlook the spiritual
background and explanations. With all his vision and
passion for the evangelization of inland China, it is
well known that as he went from place to place with his
heart-burden, addressing gatherings of Christians, Mr.
Hudson Taylor said comparatively little about China,
often nothing at all. He poured out his spiritual message
to bring the Lord’s people to the fuller knowledge
of what their union with Christ meant. The central and
supreme thing in his message and with the Lord was his
emphasis upon THE UNIVERSAL EFFICACY OF PRAYER!
Listen
to him: “In the study of the divine Word I learned
that, to obtain successful workers, not elaborate appeals
for help, but earnest prayer to God... and the deepening
of the spiritual life of the church, so that men should
be unable to stay at home, were what was needed.”
Were
we to put the inner history of that work — the
original spiritual background — into a few words, we
should say that it was not by organization, advocacy,
propaganda, appeals or advertisement, but through a man
with a deep knowledge of God born of the Cross being
deeply inwrought, with a living spiritual message for the
Lord’s people as to their fullest life in Him, and
the practical outworking of such a life through prayer.
Mr. Hudson Taylor did not rank with the outstanding Bible
teachers in the sense of presenting truth in a
systematized form. He was not one of the number of great
Bible teachers in the generally accepted sense of that
term in his generation. His was a message which
immediately led to two issues. One, the relationship of
the believer to the Lord and then the practical
outworking of that relationship in prayer and other forms
of service; to bring the gospel to those who had no
chance of receiving it except by consecrated effort to
reach them.
Mr.
Hudson Taylor’s life turned at a given point upon a
deeper realization of what oneness with the Lord really
means.
In our
last chapter we referred to the close connection between
the convention movement, such as “Keswick” and
the worldwide evangelization. In this connection we could
point to the rich spiritual ministries of such servants
of God as Dr. Andrew Murray and Mr. Charles Inwood,
through both of whose ministries strong and fruitful
evangelizing missions came into being.
In
what way, then, does this link up with those first years
of Christianity? The answer surely is found in a right
understanding of the meaning of Pentecost.
What
was Pentecost? We have lamentably failed to rightly and
adequately answer that question. The cumulative and
external effects have been made to obscure the deeper
elements. We have interpreted Pentecost in terms of
activity, signs, waves of emotion, excitability, tongues,
healings, etc.
There
was something that explained all the manifestations and
was more than these. It was — THE ENTHRONEMENT OF
THE LORD JESUS AS ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGN, WITHOUT RESERVATION
OR RIVAL OVER AND IN THE ENTIRE LIFE, IN ALL ITS
INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES OF COMMITTED MEN AND WOMEN! What
had happened with the Lord Jesus Himself was made true by
the Holy Spirit in the church at its birth. That
exaltation to and in heaven meant that Jesus had been
released. The book which we know as the Acts of the
apostles could well be renamed The Lord’s Release.
Up
till the time of His death, Jesus had been severely
limited. He Himself said so. His statement regarding this
was:
“I
came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it
is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized
with; and how am I straitened till it be
accomplished!” (Luke 12:49, 50).
(“Straitened” there means “under strain
and stress”.)
His
spirit was longing for release; straining against the
limitations of His present position. The incarnation in
nature and purpose meant geographical and physical
limitations. It meant national limitations. It meant the
limitations in the men whom He had chosen; their present
lack of spiritual intelligence and understanding; their
inability to see the nature of the new dispensation which
He had come to inaugurate; their earthboundness; their
self-interest and ambition; their pride, assertiveness,
and natural judgments. Then the terrible limitation of
the unfulfilled Law in Israel, the reign of legalism,
crushing and imprisoning the souls of those under its
rest-destroying power. “O”, He cried,
“that the baptism (of the passion) were
accomplished, so that I, and they, could be
released.”
That
release came through death and resurrection - ascension.
After the passion no more was He subject to physical,
geographical, national, and natural
“straitness”; He was emancipated and free.
Universality was the new order, and the “earth could
know the scattered fire”. No longer by outward
persuasion and command did He have the limited and
restrained response of His men. Now by an inward dynamic
and illumination they too were escaping their chains and
traditional prison walls. Not fear, but courage! Not
shame, but glory! Not self-defence, but readiness to
suffer, even unto death for His name’s sake! In one
strategic stroke He touched men “of every nation
under heaven” in Jerusalem on one day. What a story
follows that release! How the fire spread!
The
Lord’s release meant the release of the Holy Spirit
and the release of the Holy Spirit effected the release
of the church. Two things therefore arise for
consideration and exercise. One, a new apprehension of
the release through death; that is, what the Cross really
means in the church’s freeing; and two, what the
real nature of the present position of Christ is. It is
here that Christendom has fallen down, where the church
in the beginning rose up. These two things will be our
focus in the next chapter. It is here that, undoubtedly,
there has to be a spiritual return movement if
effectiveness and power are to be recovered.