Those who would destroy the Church have seen it gain new life

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6b)

My dear fellow workers in the Lord: Let me greet you by quoting First Corinthians 16:19, “The churches of Asia salute you.”

It is a great honor for me to attend the World Congress on Evangelism and to share in its vision and aspirations.

Surely it is a time for us Christians to have a worldwide missionary vision and strategy, not only because the gospel is for the whole world but also because the the world is becoming smaller and smaller and because the forces of evil are bolder and more rampant. We are confident that God in his faithfulness will meet us in some special way at this crucial hour in human history.

All of us know the situation in the Scripture lesson we have read this evening. The long period of Israel’s Babylonian captivity was over, and God had fulfilled his promise to his Chosen People “to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified” (Isa. 61:3). So “like them that dreamed, their mouth filled with laughter and their tongue with singing,” they returned to Jerusalem with bright vision and high hope.

On reaching Jerusalem, the Children of Israel gathered themselves together and began to build the temple. They laid the foundations with great rejoicing and with prospects of speedily completing the work. But no sooner was the work begun than adversaries, the Samaritans, rose against them and sent a letter of bitter accusation to the King of Persia. Seeing the smallness of their resources and the enormity of the undertaking, Zerubbabel and his people became discouraged and ceased from their labors. For a full fifteen years they did nothing.

It was in this hour of depression that God appeared to Zechariah, his prophet, in a vision of a golden candlestick with seven lamps and two live olive trees, one on each side. “Knowest thou not what these be?” asked an angel. Zerubbabel said, “No, my Lord.” Then the angel continued: “This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who are thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.” Commenting on this Scripture, John Calvin said:

Here the angel bears witness … that the power of God alone is sufficient to preserve the Church and there is no need of other helps. For He sets the Spirit of God in opposition to all earthly aids; and thus He proves that God borrows no help for the preservation of His Church because He abounds in all blessings to enrich it. Further, by the word Spirit we know is meant His power, as though He had said, “God designs to ascribe to Himself alone the safety of His Church; and though the Church may need many things there is no reason why it should turn its eyes here and there, or seek this or that help from men; for all abundance of blessings may be supplied by God alone.”

I

Let us first of all observe that it is the Spirit of God alone who establishes his Church. It was on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon those who were in the upper room as a rushing, mighty wind and as cloven tongues of fire, that the Church was born. The city that had crucified Jesus was hostile and hateful to his newly born Church, and it is a miracle that the Church survived. Arrayed against it were hypocritical Pharisaism, secularistic Sadduceeism, the intolerant and idolatrous Roman government, and vain, humanistic Hellenism. The Church appeared as a lamb in the midst of wolves.

Yet the lamb survived. And not only did it survive; the Church of Jesus Christ grew and spread until at last it conquered all its foes and changed the course of history with its redemptive truth. How? “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

Ii

The story of the Jerusalen Church during the first century is the history of the Church throughout the centuries. Many thought that the last days of the Church had come when the Roman Empire fell, or when the fanatical Muslim army reached Europe. Nevertheless, despite these foes, the Church not only has survived but also created a Christian civilization.

During the modern era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Church has had to face many new enemies in the form of natural science and humanistic philosophy that denied the supernatural and robbed Jesus of his deity. Yet in these times great revivals broke out in Europe and America that renewed and revitalized the Church and inspired God’s people to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. How? “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

Iii

Let me tell you how the Korean church was born. The first missionary of the modern era who brought God’s word to our people was martyred on the very day he landed on our shores. Robert J. Thomas, a Welshman, was a colporteur of the Scottish Bible Society who was working in China. He learned that the Korean language is based on Chinese and that the Korean intellectuals could read Chinese. And so, despite his enormous responsibility of getting the Scriptures to the hundreds of millions of Chinese, he determined to get God’s truth to the Koreans as well.

Thomas secured passage on an American schooner, the General Sherman, that was sailing for Pyeng Yang, the large city in the north on the Tae Tong River. As the vessel neared Pyengyang, a bitter controversy arose with the native coast guard; the ship was burned, and all the passengers were killed. The death of one passenger was most unusual, however, for as this man staggered out of the water his arms were filled with books that he thrust into the hands of the Koreans who clubbed him to death. This is how the Bible first came to Korea, in 1866.

When Korea opened her doors to the world in 1884, Dr. Horace N. Allen, a Presbyterian missionary, came to the United States embassy as a physician. The Rev. Horace G. Underwood and the Rev. Henry G. Appenzeller, of the Presbyterian and Methodist missions respectively, arrived in Korea on Easter morning of the same year.

By the turn of the century enough missionaries had arrived to establish stations in the principal cities of Korea. New converts were organized into congregations, and various educational institutions were founded for their training. In 1907 the theological seminary graduated its first class, and in that same year—a historical and memorable date—the Korean Presbyterian Church was organized.

Political confusion and social unrest made the future of the church uncertain, however. In 1905 the Russo-Japanese war had been fought over Korea and after the conflict the country was occupied by Japanese forces. Embittered by this loss of their freedom, Korean guerrillas waged warfare all over the country. A violent anti-foreign storm, especially of anti-Americanism, swept across the land because the United States had formally recognized the Japanese annexation of Korea. Torn between two loyalties—to the American missionaries on the one hand and to their anti-American compatriots on the other—Christians turned in their dilemma to God. In his book Gold in Korea Dr. William N. Blair writes:

So it was that God compelled us to look to Him. We had reached a place where we dared not go forward without His presence. Very earnestly we poured out our hearts before Him, and God met us and gave us an earnest of the blessing that was to come. Before the meeting closed the Spirit showed us plainly that the way of victory for us would be the way of confession, of broken hearts and bitter tears.

We went from those August meetings realizing as never before that nothing but the baptism of God’s Spirit in mighty power could fit us and our Korean brethren for the trying days ahead. We felt that the Korean Church needed not only to repent of the sin of discord and schism but needed a clearer vision of all sin, that many had come into the church sincerely believing in Jesus as their Saviour and anxious to do God’s will without great sorrow for sin because of its familiarity. We felt the whole church needed a vision of God’s holiness; that embittered souls needed to have their thoughts taken away from the hopeless national situation to their own personal relation with the Master. We agreed together at that time to pray for a great blessing, especially at the time of the winter Bible-Study class for men in Pyengyang.

The time for the Bible class came. The missionaries met every day at noon for prayer. Dr. Blair describes his own experience as follows:

Monday noon, we missionaries met and cried out to God in earnest. We had been bound in spirit and refused to let God go until He blessed us. That night it was very different. Each felt as he entered the church that the room was full of God’s presence. Not only missionaries but Koreans testified to the same thing. I was present once in Wisconsin when the Spirit of God fell upon a congregation of lumbermen and every unbeliever in the room rose to ask for prayers. That night in Pyengyang, the same feeling came to me as I entered the room, a feeling of God’s nearness impossible to describe.

After a short sermon, Dr. Graham Lee took charge of the meeting and called for prayers. So many began praying that Dr. Lee said, “If you want to pray like that, all pray,” and the whole audience began to pray out loud, all together. The effect was indescribable. Not confusion, but a vast harmony of sound and spirit, a mingling together of souls moved by an irresistible impulse to prayer. It sounded to me like the falling of many waters, an ocean of prayer beating against God’s throne. It was not many, but one, born of one Spirit, lifted to one Father above. Just as on the Day of Pentecost, they were all together in one place, of one accord praying, “and suddenly there came from heaven the sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.”

God is not always in the whirlwind, neither does He always speak in a still small voice. He came to us in Pyengyang that night with the sound of weeping. As the prayer continued a spirit of heaviness and sorrow came down upon the audience. Over on one side someone began to weep and in a moment the whole congregation was weeping.

Dr. Lee’s account, written at the time of the revival, gives the history of that night better than any words written later, however carefully penned, can do. “Man after man would arise, confess his sin, break down and weep, and then throw himself to the floor, beat the floor with his fists in perfect agony of conviction. My own cook tried to make a confession, broke down in the midst of it and cried to me across the room, ‘Pastor, tell me, is there any hope for me, can I be forgiven?’ and then threw himself to the floor and wept and wept, and almost screamed in agony. Sometimes after a confession, the whole audience would break out in audible prayer, and the effect of that audience of hundreds of men praying together in audible prayer was something indescribable. Again after another confession they would break out in uncontrollable weeping and we would all weep together, we couldn’t help it. And so the meeting went on until two o’clock A.M., with confession and weeping and praying!”

I wish to describe that Tuesday night meeting in my own words because part of what happened concerned me personally. We were aware that bad feeling existed between several of our church officers, especially between a Mr. Kang and a Mr. Kim. Mr. Kang confessed his hatred for Mr. Kim on Monday night, but Mr. Kim was silent. At our noon prayer-meeting Tuesday several of us agreed to pray for Mr. Kim. I was especially interested because Mr. Kang was my assistant in the North Pyengyang Church and Mr. Kim an elder in the Central Church and one of the officers in the Young Men’s Association of which I was chairman. As the meeting progressed, I could see Mr. Kim sitting with the elders back of the pulpit with his head down. Bowing where I sat, I asked God to help him and looking up I saw him coming forward.

Holding to the pulpit he made his confession. “I have been guilty of fighting against God. An elder in the church, I have been guilty of hating not only Kang You-moon, but Pang Moksa.” “Pang Moksa” is my Korean name. I never had a greater surprise in my life. To think that this man, my associate in the Men’s Association, had been hating me without my knowing it. It seems that I had said something to him one day in the hurry of managing a school field day exercise which had given offense, and he had not been able to forgive me.

Turning to me he said, “Can you forgive me? Can you pray for me?” I stood up and began to pray, “Aba-ge, Aba-ge,” “Father, Father,” and got no further. It seemed as if the roof was lifted from the building and the Spirit of God came down in a mighty avalanche of power upon us. I fell at Kim’s side and wept and prayed as I had never prayed before. My last glimpse of the audience is photographed indelibly on my brain. Some threw themselves full length on the floor, hundreds stood with arms outstretched toward heaven. Every man forgot every other. Each was face to face with God. I can hear yet that fearful sound of hundreds of men pleading with God for mercy.

As soon as we were able, we missionaries gathered at the platform and consulted, “What shall we do? If we let them go on this way some will go crazy.” Yet we dared not interfere. We had prayed to God for an outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon the people and it had come. Separating, we went down and tried to comfort the most distressed, pulling the agonized men to the floor and saying, “Never mind, brother, if you have sinned God will forgive you. Wait and an opportunity will be given to speak.”

Finally Dr. Lee started a hymn and quiet was restored during the singing. Then began a meeting like to which I had never seen before, nor wish to see again unless in God’s sight it is absolutely necessary. Every sin a human being can commit was publicly confessed that night. Pale and trembling with emotion, in agony of mind and body, guilty souls standing in the white light of that judgment, saw themselves as God saw them. Their sins rose up on all their vileness till shame and grief and self-loathing took complete possession. Pride was driven out; the fact of man forgotten. Looking up to heaven, to Jesus whom they had betrayed, they smote themselves and cried out with bitter wailing, “Lord, Lord, cast us not away forever.” Everything else was forgotten; nothing else mattered. The scorn of men, the penalty of the law, even death itself seemed of small consequence if only God forgave. We may have our theories of the desirability or undesirability of public confession of sin. I have had mine, but I know now that when the Spirit of God falls upon guilty souls there will be confession and no power on earth can stop it.

The Pyengyang Class ended with the meeting Tuesday night. The men returned to their homes in the country, taking the Pentecostal fire with them. Everywhere the story was told the same Spirit flamed forth and spread. Practically every church not only in North Korea, but throughout the peninsula received its share of blessing. In Pyengyang, special meetings were held in the various churches for more than a month. Even the schools had to lay aside lessons while the children wept out their wrong-doings together.

Repentance was by no means confined to confession and tears. Peace waited upon reparation, wherever reparation was possible. We had our hearts torn again and again during those days by the return of articles and money that had been stolen from us during the years. It hurt so to see them grieve. All through the city men were going from house to house, confessing to individuals they had injured, returning stolen property and money, not only to Christians, but to non-Christians as well. The whole city was stirred. A Chinese merchant was astonished to have a Christian walk in and pay him a large sum of money that he had obtained unjustly years before.

The new Korean Church was organized as had been planned. The first meeting of the new church was really a foreign missionary meeting. A Board of Foreign Missions was organized. The Presbytery laid its hands upon one of the first seven men to be ordained to the Gospel ministry, perhaps the most gifted man in the class, Ne Ke-pung, and sent him as a missionary to the island of Quelpart, south of Korea. The missionary spirit took possession of the whole church, especially of the young men in the college. The Pyengyang College and Academy students raised enough money to send one of their own number, Kim Hyung-chai, to Quelpart, to help Ne Ke-Pung.

Two years later another ordained man was sent by the Korean Church to Vladivostok in Russia, to preach to thousands of Koreans who had settled in that section. In 1912 the General Assembly of the Korean Church decided to send missionaries to China, having been invited to do so by the Shantung Presbytery in China. Three strong Korean pastors were sent, and a work was begun that has continued through the years with much blessing to the Chinese people and to the Korean Church.

The so-called Million Movement in 1909 and 1910 was one of the results of the revival. The Korean Christians made a serious effort to present the Gospel to the whole nation in one year. Tens of thousands of days of preaching from house to house were pledged by individuals. A special effort was made to place a copy of Mark’s Gospel in every house. The Bible Society printed a special edition of one million copies of Mark’s Gospel for this campaign, and over 700,000 copies were sold during the year.

Thus the Korean church was born. How? “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

Iv

Now let me recount briefly what God has been doing in Korea since the Second World War. As you know, Korea was divided at the Thirty-eighth Parallel, and an uneasy truce separates Communist-dominated North Korea from the free South. How has this ceasefire armistice affected the church?

Before the Second World War the church was strongest in the north; fully two-thirds of all Korea’s Christians lived there. Because of the oppression, from the time the Communists began their occupation in 1950 many, if not most, of the Christians fled south. They fanned out in all directions, carrying the Gospel with them, establishing new congregations wherever they went.

Because of the suffering and destruction of war, Christians everywhere began to pray more earnestly than ever before. Early-morning prayer meetings sprang up in almost all churches. The whole church became prayer-conscious, and the Spirit of God moved mightily through these prayer sessions.

With the organization of the Korean armed forces, army, navy, and air force chaplaincies were formed. Since all young men are required to serve in the military, the youth of the land have been challenged for Christ through these Christian leaders. The effectiveness of this ministry is seen in the fact that whereas the percentage of believers among civilians is 7 per cent, in the armed services it is 15 per cent. Freed from the bondage of village tradition, these young men are at liberty to make their Christian commitment.

During the war vigorous evangelism was carried on among the 150,000 North Korean Communist prisoners; about 20,000 turned to Christ, of whom 150 are now in the Christian ministry.

As evidence of church growth that resulted from the suffering and misery of the war years and the peoples’ turning to God, there are today in the city of Seoul about 600 congregations, where previously there were only 30; Pusan now has about 200, where before there were only 12; Taegu has 170, where previously there were only 17. We could go on.

We now have a church in almost every sizable community throughout South Korea. Although we Christians are still a small minority, a mere 7 per cent of the total population, we believe a bridgehead has been made. Our task now, as never before, is to go forward.

What about North Korea? While no direct information is getting through, reports indicate that aside from a few “showplace” churches permitted to operate in the larger cities as “evidence” to tourists of “religious liberty,” all other places of Christian worship are closed. It is dangerous to preach anywhere, or even to admit one is a Christian; but a faithful remnant is working underground as it did in Nero’s time. Many are confident that if and when pressure against the Church by the Communist government is removed, a large and devoted body of believers will emerge.

We believe the unification of Korea will come in God’s own time. When that day comes, Korea will certainly be a Christian Korea, for we know that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” How? “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

V

Now we are gathered here with a great burden on our hearts for the unsaved millions of the world. We are living in the latter part of the twentieth century, when history is moving rapidly in most mysterious ways. The great advancement of science and technology has brought a change not only in man’s mode of life but in man himself. Sometimes we speak even of “dehumanization.” Political, economic, social, and cultural revolutions are occurring in every continent and country.

Communism, with its atheism, materialism, and totalitarianism, now controls about one-third of the people of the world. Asia, the biggest continent with the largest population, is progressing politically and economically and is reviving its ancient, indigenous religions. In some Asian countries the door to Christian missions is being closed; and with secularism and worldly compromise sapping the strength and vitality of considerable areas of the older churches in America and Europe, the Church appears once more to many as a lamb in the midst of wolves. But, praise God, we read in the book of the Revelation that the Lamb will finally conquer all the cruel forces of heaven and earth. How? “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

So, onward Christian soldiers! Let us march forward, for the Spirit of God is with us, ever conquering and to conquer!

Christ’s Gospel revealed the moral rottenness of the times and laid bare the powerlessness of the pagan religions and philosophies

Whenever Christians have sought to return to the first century, they have hoped to search out once again the source of Christianity, its purity of doctrine and simplicity of practice. Here they have hoped to discover the secret that enabled the early Christians, in less than a hundred years, to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world powers of that age—the Roman Empire with its materialistic paganism, illustrious Greece with its philosophy, and Jerusalem with its religion.

Bursting upon every situation like an avalanche that carries everything before it, that new and simple message revealed the moral rottenness of the times. It also laid bare the powerlessness of inconsistent religions and philosophies to apply ethical principles to daily life.

Into a corrupt and decadent society overrun with religious and philosophical doctrines based on pompous language, ancient moral codes, human traditions, and gross practices and superstitions, came the gospel message. It arrived at a point in history when humanity was completely impotent. Only a few choice souls, sickened by the corruption around them and disquieted by a spiritual hunger for the truth, gathered together, often secretly to protect their families and preserve their homes and customs. Others looked to religion and philosophy for comfort, light, and guidance. The great multitude, however, insensitive to spiritual problems, drifted along, indulging in vices and pleasures. Only a few, having a premonition of great things to come, devoted themselves to meditation, all the while alert to signs that pointed to some providential person, significant event, or transcendental solution.

The gospel message contained all three of these elements: (1) the doctrine of a Person, the Son of God, manifest in the flesh, who should come into the world to seek lost man in order to save, dignify, and transform him; (2) the unprecedented event of his death on a Roman cross between two malefactors at the end of a sinless life of incomparable ministry in word and deed; and (3) the effective, immediate solution wrought by the power of the crucified and risen Lord. Christ’s Gospel was the divine dynamite that destroyed the power of sin and brought abundant spiritual life and a glorious and radiant hope. This is the secret of early Christianity. Its purity and authentic glory can inspire us in this day when social, moral and spiritual conditions are so like that of the first century. Actually, with the passing of time, evils have increased, the night has become darker, resources are more limited, and the end is nearer.

Let us return, then, to the beginnings of Christianity, to the day of Pentecost. On that day the Apostle Peter preached Christ. Because Christ was a contemporary of those who were listening, the events were current and the conclusions logical: prophecy and history met and coincided perfectly at the foot of the cross. This, in my opinion, is the relevance of the Gospel we preach after so many centuries—we “upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:11).

The Person of Jesus Christ does not belong to a remote past, is not a product of traditions or carefully preserved legends, is not something surrounded by a halo of mysticism. Christ the Son of God is as much a contemporary of today’s men and women as he was of those on the first Day of Pentecost. His life, his teachings, his death on the cross, his shed blood, are now as then the only basis of redemption, the unshakable rock on which the soul rests for salvation.

God’s message has not changed. His method of salvation has not varied. He has not altered the way of access for the repentant sinner to God and the Saviour. The Lord is as contemporary as the solution he presents to mankind. Only Christ has the answer to man’s tremendous problems. Today, as then, he is the only hope, the true light, the way, the truth, the life. No one—whatever his religious or irreligious state, whatever his academic prowess, his economic or social status—can find God apart from Jesus Christ. It was this Gospel, preached by men, some of whom were considered ignorant, that produced one of the greatest commotions in history. In fact, it made Greek mythology look ridiculous, reduced to impotence the ancestral Hebrew religion, and gave a death blow to the paganism whose center was Rome.

A verse in First Peter (1:12) speaks of “them that have preached unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” The question arises immediately: What kind of Gospel was this? What is the content of the message? What power attends it? How could the glorious Spirit of God, an invisible Person, be the preacher of the Gospel?

To answer these questions we have only to turn to the Book of the Acts of the Apostles and analyze the apostles’ sermons. There is something distinctive about them—the apostles preached Christ. Christ in his Person and in his work was pre-eminent, central in all respects. The apostles did not waste time on human reasoning nor lower the high level of their preaching to dialectics. They knew that their audience represented the three great cultures of that age, Roman, Greek, and Hebrew; yet evident behind the outline of their message was the perfect harmony between history and prophecy. History was so recent that many had known Jesus personally. Prophecy was centuries old and therefore when quoted was given special emphasis.

If we take as an example Peter’s sermon at Pentecost recorded in the second chapter of Acts, we see that of twenty-two verses, twelve refer exclusively to the Old Testament. Other verses refer to the application of these prophecies. The remainder of the great Pentecost message is but two verses: one of these is a quotation from the Old Testament and the other is an exhortation. That is to say, this great sermon, the first apostolic sermon recorded in the New Testament and the first great spiritual “fishing” in the dawn of the Church, is 50 per cent Bible quotations and 50 per cent personal exhortation.

Peter was speaking of the saddest day in human history, of a juridical error and an injustice without parallel, of a most ignominious death, of what from the human point of view was defeat, tragedy, the end. Nevertheless, his sermon could aptly be called a sermon of victory. There are several reasons why this is so.

First, Peter presents Christ’s victory in life (v. 22). From the humble manger of Bethlehem to Calvary, Christ’s life was transparent to both friend and foe. He spent his first thirty years in a village where he became known as “the carpenter’s son.” From Nazareth, where he spent those years after his baptism by John the Baptist and the temptation in the wilderness, he started a public ministry that revealed divine approval and attracted great multitudes. His wonders, miracles, and signs brought him popularity and an audience but also aroused the worst sentiments of jealousy and hate among the religious classes.

He lived a natural life—so human, so simple, so humble, yet so victorious. His triumph was more than a mere victory of truth over error, of God over the works of Satan, of health over disease. It was a triumph over temptation, over sin and its chains, over false prejudices, over inconsistent human traditions, over a tacit admission of sin, corruption, bribery, vested interests, injustice, outrage, hypocrisy, avarice. This triumph of Christ established a pattern for presenting a clear interpretation of the law, bringing heaven closer to the sinner, revealing God the Father in his infinite heavenly love in order to show the way of salvation, the opportunity of regeneration, and the reality of individual transformation through the power of the Gospel.

Moreover, Christ lived what he preached, and preached what he lived. Nobody could point a finger of accusation against him; even his worst enemies recognized that “never man spake like this man” and that his works were unequalled. Most important of all, Christ’s victory in life was shown by the victory of holiness, purity and truth, compassion, grace, love, tolerance, kindness, understanding, faith, meekness.

The apostle refers secondly to Christ’s victory in death (v. 23). Once again, from the human perspective, the cross does not appear to be a symbol of victory. The multitudes who followed our Lord abandoned him and returned to their towns and villages. The crowd that on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem sang hosannas and fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah now on the day of his crucifixion joined his enemies in demanding his death. Not even the sight of “the Man of Sorrows, despised and rejected of men,” crowned with thorns, dressed in a scarlet robe with his hands tied, showing his wounds and shedding his blood in silence like a meek lamb, excited sympathy. In payment for his love he received the worst of all tortures; in exchange for the riches and glory he left behind, he accepted the opprobrious poverty of Calvary; insults and taunts were the only echo of his wonderful teaching.

Finally, nailed to the cross, he is denied water for his thirst, and comfort for his affliction. At the cross, all man’s hate and all God’s wrath seemed to converge. Only a few followers at the foot of the cross stood out against that overwhelming rejection and despisal. Christ was heard to cry, “It is finished.” Did he mean merely that he had finished his teaching, his miracles, his works of love, and was now leaving the earth as he found it—plunged in darkness and in the power of the Evil One? Had he failed in the work his Father entrusted to him? Had the glory of the night of Bethlehem ended in another night of misery and pain? Had he who walked on the sea and with his voice calmed the wind and the waves now himself plunged into the cold waters of death? Was he who freed the captives from the power of Satan, from the pain of their wounds and the inertia of paralysis, now to die, now to bleed from his own wounds, now to be powerless to descend from the cross and to save himself? Was he who could have worn a king’s crown and crushed the power of human empires to wear a crown of thorns and die without honor?

Christ’s victory on the cross is the victory over death, sin, and hell. In dying, he gave life. In shedding his blood, He opened a way for the sinner to be reconciled to God. The sinner, disinherited by sin and weakened by his experience, can now call himself a son of God, an heir of God and joint heir with Christ. In the cross, the eye of faith perceives a death so necessary that if it had not occurred, man would never have found the road to God, reconciliation with the Father, forgiveness of sins and peace of soul.

In the third place, Peter’s sermon is a sermon of victory because its climax is the victory of Christ in his resurrection and ascension (v. 24). He who lived a victorious life ended his earthly ministry by a victorious death. Risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, he is exalted and seated at the right hand of God. He has poured out upon men and women the gifts of his spirit, thereby sharing the trophies of his victory and the power that he himself possessed.

Christ’s ascension into heaven not only confirmed the supernatural event of his resurrection from the dead, destroyed the power of the tomb forever, removed the fear of death; it also demonstrated that when the Son rose from the dead. God the Father accepted his sacrifice for sin. Christ’s offering for our sins, his payment of our debt, his perfect righteousness, his infinite merit, are sufficient to atone for our iniquity. We are reconciled by his death and saved through his life. He who died to save us now lives to keep us, makes intercession always for us, and occupies the undisputed place of High Priest of his people. He who “was tempted in all points” now succors those who are tempted. His throne is a throne of grace to which we can draw near in every circumstance of life to obtain mercy and find “grace to help in time of need.”

Finally, Peter’s sermon at Pentecost is a sermon of victory because Christ’s victory was a complete one with eternal consequences. Although not all people on this planet of his vast universe have experienced Christ’s victory, yet God has “made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself … whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1:20).

One of the Gospel’s main characteristics is its personal nature. “What shall we do?” ask the multitudes. The apostle’s answer is likewise personal: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).

“Every one of you,” says the text. As we analyze the Gospel preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, we discover the emphasis is on man’s lost condition. This is shown in Jesus’ teachings about the man who fell among robbers on the road to Jericho; the woman who was a sinner in the house of Simon; Zacchaeus, who climbed into the sycamore tree. It is seen in the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son; in that of the publican in the temple, the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, the blind man by the wayside, the dead man whose soul has crossed the boundaries of life, the thief who dies on a cross. Each case reveals man’s lost condition, his spiritual ruin, and his separation from God. Jesus the Christ, this greatest Preacher, not only spoke as no man had ever spoken but did so with such power and so winningly that multitudes followed him for days, forgetting even to eat.

After pointing out man’s ruined state, the Gospel preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven indicates that God’s day of judgment will come, and the Supreme Judge and inflexible arbiter will be none other than he who was once judged unjustly, betrayed, slandered by false witnesses, beaten without compassion. He who appeared before the mob and was condemned to die on a cross will be Judge. At the Great White Throne he will judge the dead for their words, their deeds, their failure to use their privileges and opportunities. Those whose names are not written in the Book of Life, says God’s Word, will be cast into the lake of fire; this is the second death.

Moreover, the Gospel preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven looks to Christ as Saviour. This message is complete. Not only does it contain the solution for all present ills and sins through God’s gracious salvation bestowed by faith to everyone who believes, but it also looks to the future. This same Jesus who died to save us, who lives to keep us and is interested in every one of his own, is coming again. He will not come to Bethlehem in poverty, nor return to be scorned, wounded, and crucified by the world. His second and glorious coming will be in the clouds to take his Church from this world to the Father’s House, where he is now preparing a place for each of those who believe on Him. The Gospel preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven looks toward a future day when all human problems will be forever ended, sin will have been removed from the earth, and death will be no more.

The Gospel, in other words, announces the definite triumph of good over evil. Heaven and earth as they now exist will give place to God’s world of tomorrow. In the new heaven and the new earth, righteousness will reign. This glorious order of things, this sublime ending to the story of man’s miserable and sad history, will not come through the efforts of men or nations. It will come by the will of God, who said concerning that day, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Let me emphasize that when the Gospel is preached, however eloquent and complete its presentation may be by doctrinal standards, and however simple its appeal, it will not accomplish the desired effect unless it is accompanied by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

The Apostle Peter speaks of “the Gospel preached … with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” This he said toward the end of his fruitful ministry, and his words are illustrated by what happened on the Day of Pentecost. God’s seal to Peter’s preaching was the Holy Spirit, which came down from heaven and fell on all those who were listening to his sermon. This was not intended to create a psychological or emotional state; the power of the Holy Spirit was first displayed in deep conviction of sin by repentant hearts that suddenly, in the divine light of the Gospel, saw the magnitude of their errors, the wickedness of their conduct toward Jesus, the seriousness of their sins, and the punishment they deserved. This same power of the Holy Spirit created the faith that when placed in Jesus for salvation brought pardon and peace as fruits of Calvary. Thus empty and sad hearts were filled with joy. Baptism followed as a sign of obedience to and identification with him who died, was buried, and rose from the dead.

Once the new Christians became part of the new Church they were not satisfied with merely being members and participating in all the activities and privileges of their new spiritual state. Faith had to manifest itself in a changed life full of good works, the fruits of righteousness. The eyes of the world that for thirty-three years had observed the most admirable and perfect life, that of the Lord Jesus, were now fixed on them. They had to live Christ; or rather, Christ lived in them and made himself manifest to the world through them.

Among the many dangers that now threaten the Christian pulpit, two are particularly common. One danger is that of presenting a Gospel without a biblical basis, without the cross of Christ. Such a message pretends to be modern by adapting itself to the spirit of the times, to a mentality that has departed from the divine purpose both in language and in spirit. Although it pretends to fill a present need, this message has lost authority and spiritual power, influence on lives and hearts. It is empty and hollow, the product of a sophisticated age. Though it professes to be relevant, it cannot be, because the desperate spiritual state of humanity cries out for the true Word of the Gospel.

Another serious danger today is a Gospel that, though rich in Bible quotations, presents the way of salvation as something very easy and asks that one only believe. It is true, of course, that the Scriptures say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” “Only believe” is not merely a slogan but a blessed reality. The grace of God has made it possible for a sinner to receive eternal life, the gift of God, through personal faith. But we must not forget that the same Scriptures underline the fact—so often illustrated in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles—that genuine faith is followed by a life of works, by an undeniable transformation. The sinner becomes a saint, the miser a generous man; the cruel becomes gentle, the proud humble. This is what happened to those who heard and heeded the first Pentecost sermon. They believed in Jesus Christ.

The closing part of Acts 2 tells of those blessed days of heaven on earth. While divine power accompanied the apostles, those who believed had something more than a creed. They had brotherly love. They showed a spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity. Their hearts abounded with works of mercy, faithfulness to doctrine, perseverance in worship, fullness of joy. They were simple and sincere. Their lives were lives of continuous praise to the God they called their Heavenly Father. They were very well thought of by the public. And God gave an astounding but normal growth to the mystical body of Christ, his Church.

While this pattern is many centuries old, it is not an impossible utopian scheme. What God did then he can do now. God has not changed. His Gospel has not lost its power. The Holy Spirit of God is still in the world, convicting men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Human need has grown immensely. There have never been so many destroyed homes, so many broken hearts, so many young people drifting as slaves to vice and sin, so much crime and hate, so much international unrest, so many social problems. There is no peace and even less hope. Only the Gospel has the solution for so much evil, the answer to so many questions, for only the Lord Jesus Christ, the Desire of all nations, can put an end to this tragic state of affairs.

Let us preach the Gospel and nothing else; and may our lives, totally surrendered to the Holy Spirit, demonstrate what we preach. Then the Spirit will accompany the Word of God with his power. And only then will the world hear what it needs: “The voice of God and not of man.”

An invitation to place ourselves anew beneath the Cross of Christ

Four hundred and forty-nine years ago, on October 31, hammer blows fell on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg. These blows echoed quickly on the wings of the wind throughout all the Christian civilized world of that day. The Reformation became a cosmic event of the first magnitude and the threshold of a new Western era.

The World Congress on Evangelism here assembled does well to remember this birthday of the Reformation. In doing so let us consider three points: (1) the various ways of viewing the Reformation; (2) the inner meaning (Selbstverständnis) of the Reformation; and (3) the challenge of the Reformation for us today.

Various Views Of The Reformation

History is the teacher of life; that is, we learn about life from history. Beginning in 1517 the Reformation penetrated the decades and centuries that followed, making a strong impact even upon us in 1966. Unfortunately, the Reformation could not escape being subjected to dire misconceptions.

There are four different views of the Reformation.

1. There is the cultural-historical view. This was particularly popular around 1900. Here Luther is praised as the founder of the German language and as the herald of freedom of conscience. He is lauded as the pioneer of a humanistic view of man. Luther and Erasmus, the Reformation and humanism are drawn together. But it was this optimistic, rosy picture of man as given by Erasmus to which Luther objected sharply. Mankind should have learned from history that the Reformation gained its cause by its biblical and therefore sober and realistic view of man. The horrors of two world wars, the concentration, prison, and internment camps have decisively refuted humanism. Humanism is finished. For in humanism man becomes something harmless and inoffensive. Never dare we put the Reformation and humanism in one package. The cultural-historical view of the Reformation, therefore, is definitely false.

2. There is a nationalistic view. This is represented especially by Paul de Lagarde and by National Socialism. Here Martin Luther is seen as the great German who freed Germany from the bonds and tutelage of Rome. But this nationalistic interpretation of the Reformation is also false. It is true that Luther believed in his people and country, as every Christian ought to do. But something else was of central importance for him. “When Germany buries its last minister,” he said, “then it will be burying itself.” With these words Luther clealy pointed beyond that which is but national to that which truly abides. It was this that was Luther’s concern.

3. There is the confessionalistic view. This appears in both Protestant and Catholic garb. Even today many inside the Catholic church interpret the Reformation as the great downfall of Western man. The Reformation brought about defection from the church. The Reformation, they say, is responsible for the fateful division of Christianity; it even supplies the root for later secularism and for the autonomous man of our times. This view of the Reformation subjects one to a distorted view of history, for the root of secularism and autonomy is not in the Reformation but in the Renaissance. Happily, a change is taking place in the Roman Catholic Church’s view of the Reformation.

But we find an erroneous understanding of the Reformation even among Protestants. There are those who lull themselves into confessional self-satisfaction, become exhausted in polemics against the Roman Catholic Church, and are no longer self-critical. This confessionalistic view of the Reformation is likewise false. Luther did not see himself as a confessionalist; very humbly he saw himself as a preacher of the Word in keeping with the admonition, “Preach the Word!,” given by the Apostle to the Gentiles to his pupil Timothy.

4. There is the view of the Reformation as related to the entire Church. This view has a great deal of truth. It says, for example, that Luther wanted, not a new church, but simply renewal of the existing church. He desired continuation, not inauguration of something new. For this reason the actual birthday of the Protestant church is not October 31, 1517, but rather the first Day of Pentecost, A.D. 33. This view also notes, and properly, that Luther was no revolutionary but rather a reformer. The Reformation was simply something that happened in the Church.

It is likewise correct to say that every one of Luther’s successors bears a responsibility to the entire Church. Even this World Congress is in no way exempt from this responsibility. Yes, we bear responsibility also toward the Roman Catholic Church, for everyone who takes seriously Jesus’ high-priestly prayer in John 17, “Holy Father … may they be one as we are one,” considers the division a great, gaping, bleeding wound in the body of Christ, his Church. For just as there is but one God, so there is but one Church. A divided Christendom is a self-contradiction. Because the successors of the Reformation have a responsibility to the total Church, all of us both inside and outside this Congress Hall are called to confessionalistic cleansing.

No matter how correct this is and remains, no matter how properly it is seen from the total church perspective of the Reformation, nonetheless the Reformation was concerned not about the Church as such but about something else. This brings us to the next point we must consider.

The Reformation’S Inner Meaning

If someone asked, What was the Reformation all about, the answer would include three things: (1) the absolute glory of God; (2) the all-sufficiency of the redemptive work of Christ; (3) the joyous Christian who has assurance of personal salvation. The inner meaning or core of the Reformation, therefore, is Theo- and Christo-centric.

Let us briefly ask ourselves: What is contained in this threefold inner concept of the Reformation?

In the first place, it stresses the absolute glory of God. The basic concern of the Reformation lies in consistently taking seriously the first commandment: “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods beside me.” Luther’s opposition to the papal church derived from his recognition that it had indeed placed something “beside me.” Because the entire Reformation took very seriously God’s revelation in his Word, the Reformation movement became a movement of the Bible. Because it was concerned for the absolute glory of God, the Reformation was concerned, too, for the honor of God’s Word. This basic passion of the Reformation—to let nothing stand alongside the God revealed in his Word—helps us understand Luther’s revolutionary, and in his day heretical, comment: “Even councils can err!”

This basic concern of the Reformation helps us understand also its denial, not of tradition as such, but of an equal status for Scripture and tradition. The Reformers deeply revered the church fathers. But everything the fathers said was to be measured in the light of the Holy Scriptures. It was this concept of the Bible as the exclusive, determinative norm for all the teaching of the Church, that prompted the poet Konrad Ferdinand Meyer to say of Luther: “He senses the monstrous rupture of the times, and securely clasps his Bible.”

In the matter of God’s glory, the Reformation was concerned about a clear witness to what constitutes ultimate authority (Erstinstanz). And what is this ultimate authority? The triune God. The Reformation found the witness to this triune God in sola scripture, in Scripture alone.

Second, the Reformation was concerned with the all-sufficiency of Christ’s redemptive work. We are wrong if we think that the Reformers were opposed to good works and pious exercises; what they did deny was the meritorious nature of good works. The Reformers vehemently opposed any suggestion of synergism, the false teaching that man cooperates with Christ to bring about faith and does so in a manner that grants him personal merit. All of us somehow have a touch of synergism.

Why should there be this impassioned opposition to cooperatively gained merit? Simply because to the extent that man can help earn his salvation by good works, to that extent Christ’s merit is lessened and thus the all-sufficiency of his redemptive work is undermined. For this same reason we must also understand the Reformation’s total negation of invoking the saints. The Reformation takes seriously the words of Scripture: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1b).

In the last analysis, this second principle of the Reformation is concerned with the glory of Jesus Christ, in that it stresses the all-sufficiency of his atoning work and of the objective redemptive facts.

Third, the Reformation is concerned with the joyous Christian who has personal assurance of salvation.

What does this mean?

Despite God’s greatness and incomprehensibility, man is called to the possibility of having the joyous certainty of being a child of God. This means nothing less than that personal assurance of salvation is a special concern of the Reformation. As Luther says: “It is idle talk to say man is uncertain whether or not he is a recipient of grace. Beware lest you ever be unsure; instead, be sure.” This assurance of personal salvation is possible because of the gracious and merciful gift of Christ’s redeeming work. We see, then, that the third concern of the Reformation is closely related to the second.

The Reformation discovers anew the words of Scripture: “Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver or gold … but with the precious blood of Christ …” (1 Pet. 1:18, 19); “we know that we have passed from death unto life …” (1 John 3:14).

It was this awareness of personal salvation that brought the joyful Christian into being, that created the freedom a Christian knows in his bondage to Christ. The Reformation proclaimed certitudo, certainty of salvation, over against securitas, security of salvation depending on the number of meritorious works.

First we must note that the problems apparent on October 31, 1517, were different from those of October 31, 1966. The World Congress must take this fact into consideration. This change in problems has come about in two ways: (1) the concept of the world (Weltbild) has changed; (2) the view of man (Menschenbild) has changed.

The prescientific concept of the world still held at the time of the Reformation eventually had to succumb to the scientific view. For many people, this scientific concept of the world is that of natural science, a causal-mechanistic view. In this construct of natural science, this causal-mechanistic view, there is no longer any room for anything that would explode the causal-mechanistic theory. In other words, there is no room for anything miraculous, supernatural, or mystical, no room for anything that deals with wondrous and inexplicable things, no room for soteriology and eschatology.

Just as the concept of the world has changed, so has the concept of man. Today’s man has a different attitude toward life than did medieval man. Today’s man is the man of technology and science.

But I would ask, dear friends, have those two changes—in viewing the world and in attitude toward life—not also thrust the Reformation into the wheel of history, into the panta rhei, the flow of all things? Is it still possible to speak seriously of a challenge of the Reformation?

Paradoxically enough, the answer must be that the very fact of these changed concepts of the world and of man makes attention to the Reformation all the more necessary and the challenge of the Reformation all the more urgent. This we must see.

Challenges Of The Reformation For Us Today

The Reformation presents us with a threefold challenge: (1) that pertaining to supreme authority (Erstinstanz); (2) that pertaining to the correct view of man; and (3) that pertaining to fullness of spiritual power.

The first part of this challenge concerns the matter of supreme authority. It is true that man’s concept of the world has changed. But it is wrong to exalt this changing world view to the place of supreme authority (Erstinstanz). Even logic opposes this. That which changes cannot be norma normans. Only that which itself is removed from the cycle of changeability can be supreme authority. God is this ultimate authority, and not some construct of the world (Weltbild). God is unchangeable.

The Weltbild is even less justifiably enthroned as final authority now that the natural scientific concept of the world has once again been enthroned in our day, and that in fact by natural scientists. The time is past when it is considered possible to absolutize a causal-mechanistic view of the world, and to raise it almost to the status of a philosophy. Even if the existence of God cannot be scientifically proved, neither can it be scientifically denied.

It follows then that if the question about ultimate authority is made clear, and if God and not some concept of the world, not some human rationalistic idea, is the ultimate authority, then the threefold concerns of the Reformation are still fully valid today. Today, therefore, we are still concerned with: the absolute glory of God, the all-sufficiency of Christ’s atoning work, and personal assurance of salvation.

We shall now consider the second challenge of the Reformation, the question of a valid concept of man.

It is true that many people today are influenced and impressed by science and technology. But it is wrong to capitulate to this fact, to make it a gauge for one’s proclamation of the Gospel. It is foolish to argue, for example, that because many people today no longer believe in miracles, we must tell them that there never were any miracles. Any theologian or Christian who does this is offering the white flag of surrender to the followers of science and technology. Such a one is not in a position to be of any real help to modern man.

We must clearly acknowledge that there are those who are indeed influenced by science and technology. In fact, all of us are influenced by these to some extent, and in some manner. But even those who are especially impressed in this way are aware of other and deeper levels of consciousness that are beyond the reach of technology and science. But it is here that the real and essential decisions of life are made.

Apart from technological persons, there are still many more persons whose thinking and emotions are not decisively influenced by technology and science. Against this background, we will see how totally wrong and absurd it is, even from a religious-psychological perspective, for Bishop Robinson (in his book, A New Reformation?) to deal with a concept of man that—although I won’t say it is totally unknown—is what one might at least say is practically non-existent. Moreover, it is the greatest of errors to make this obviously false view of man the yardstick for Christian proclamation.

Let me state the situation clearly: neither some view of the world nor some concept of man can be or can become the ultimate authority (Erstinstanz) for proclamation. While views of the world and of man are not overlooked in the right kind of proclamation, they are subject to correction in the light of the revealed Gospel. The Gospel helps secular man recognize his self-estrangement as, in fact, an estrangement from God.

For these insights into the proper view of man we are indebted to the Reformation in its totality. Seen from this perspective, the Reformation of 1517 becomes real and imperative for us also. We are still concerned with justification of sinners by God and with personal assurance of salvation. Today, when a great deal is being done in depth psychology and when much is in danger of being dissolved in psychologizing, we must tell people in all clarity that assurance of salvation is not something measured by some kind of a barometer of the emotions. If this were so, man would be thrown back on his own resources. And that would be wrong. Assurance of salvation, though it has to do with persons, nevertheless comes from, derives its life from, the fact of salvation. Assurance of salvation comes about through the objective redeeming work of Christ. God imputes it to anyone who personally avails himself of it in an act of faith. Certainty of salvation therefore rests not in man’s psyche but in the redemptive work of Christ.

All that we have said thus far confronts us now in the Reformation’s third challenge for us today, the matter of fullness of power (Vollmacht). The reformation was accompanied by such fullness of spiritual power that it spread like a life-giving breath through much of Europe.

We, on the other hand, suffer because many of our churches are tongue-tied. Yet our many diverse churches and fellowships yearn for a word of authority.

Two questions are prominent, then, as we look back to 1517: (1) what is fullness of power?; and (2) how are we to preach, in order that proclamation may be accompanied by this fullness of power?

To experience fullness of power is to be filled with the power from on high, filled with the Holy Ghost. Fullness of power is total dependence upon Christ and independence of men. It is unconditional assent to Christ and denial of self.

In Jesus, fullness of power as dependence upon God, selflessness, and freedom toward men were coupled with seeking and sacrificial love. “For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Today we have only as much fullness of power as Jesus has power in us. For fullness of power is not a matter of determination. It comes, not by personal choice and of oneself, but from what is given.

All fullness of power in the lives of his Reformation servants is a reflection of Jesus’ indwelling power. Fullness of power is captivity of the conscience to the Lord. It was Luther’s total dependence on Christ and the captivity of his conscience to Christ that prompted him to declare before kaiser and kingdom: “Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” Fullness of power as dependence upon God gives an inner feeling of being able to rise above people and circumstances. This explains Luther’s letter to his sovereign in which he said: “I should rather protect your Highness than that you should protect me.”

Now we consider the second question (2), which concerns the relation between proclamation and fullness of power. First we must distinguish between fullness of power in regard to the message (Sache) and fullness of power in regard to the person. Fullness of power in regard to the message refers to the inescapable validity of the revealed fact of the triune God as given in his infallible Word. Bible criticism destroys fullness of power. Therefore we unhesitatingly say yes to the Holy Scriptures. Fullness of power in regard to the message and in regard to the person are inseparable.

And so, because the concerns of the Reformation are actually the basic concerns of Scripture, it follows that we can expect fullness of power in proclamation today only if we make the foundations of the Reformation in their entirety the basic concern of all our proclamation, teaching, and life.

Authoritative proclamation in preaching and evangelism, in written and spoken word, must have as its purpose the glory of God and the salvation of men.

Today one often hears it said that during the Reformation, man’s main concern was, How shall I apprehend a gracious God? But today, presumably, man’s concern is, How can I have good neighbors? In our response to this widespread attitude, we must make it very clear that certainly we are concerned about good neighbors, whoever they might be—whether American, Russian, Chinese, or even the neighbor on the street or at the office. But we will have gracious neighbors only when men find their way back to a gracious God. Even the anthropological problem of our day is a theological one.

Fullness of power as dependence upon Jesus Christ and independence of men and of theological ideas and trends has in it the courage to face unpopularity. It has also the courage to face the consequences. Such authoritative proclamation must trumpet forth the truth that the deepest reason for the spiritual illness of our feverish world is man’s proud self-glorification, which stops not even at the doors of the church. The constantly greater turning away from God is the basic evil of our times. The scourge of our age is autonomy and anthropocentrism. To the extent that autonomy and anthropocentrism gain room in the Church and in theology, to that extent will the church and theology become savorless, discarded salt; more than this, both will become traitors to the ultimate authority (Erstinstanz) and to the Reformation of 1517.

On the other hand, to the degree that we take seriously the revelation of God as given in his Word and keep it untainted from secular philosophical questionings, inasmuch as the Bible is not at all interested in such, I say, to that degree we may hope God will open the gates of heaven and pour forth torrents of his power that will surge through the Church and theology, through our preaching and our evangelizing.

Authoritative preaching today in 1966 as in 1517 consists in the full, undiluted proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Fullness of power is total absence of compromise in both the message and in the messenger.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, who of us does not see the connection between the Reformation of 1517, this Reformation Memorial Day of 1966, and the World Congress on Evangelism? Is there anyone who does not recognize his personal responsibility?

The Reformation of 1517 shall and must under all circumstances live on, both today and in the future. Never must the Reformation chimes become a death knell. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Reformation bells of Easter will ring out today also in each of our hearts if we, like our fathers, are filled with the honest determination that to God alone shall be the glory. Soli Deo gloria!

The torch of faith is passed from believer to believer

“When they arrived, they gathered the church together and declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles (Acts 14:27, RSV).

The major concern of evangelism is winning souls for Christ, “bringing many sons into glory” (Heb. 2:10). The Book of Acts—the book of great events and mighty movements of the Spirit—is the least theological of all the New Testament writings. We find that the apostles advanced no theories of evangelism but shared their experiences when they had gathered the Church together. In that same spirit and conviction I also speak to you (2 Cor. 4:13).

A missionary doctor from England came to the northern tip of Pakistan on the border of Afghanistan to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the followers of Islam. Although the people were illiterate, bigoted, and wild, he labored among them for more than fifty years. The first two converts to Christ were murdered. The next were also martyred. Despite such discouragements, this faithful servant of Christ continued his work until a hospital and chapel had been established in this border town. Today there is a church here of nearly five thousand souls.

Each clay the Gospel was faithfully proclaimed from the hospital. Among those reached was a Muslim businessman who, after his cure was completed, came daily to the out-patients’ ward. Told that he could return home, he indicated that while he knew his body had been cured, he was looking for the cure of his soul. It was my privilege, after instructing him, to baptize this man into the Body of Christ.

After his baptism, this convert from Islam lived by the conviction that if someone came to his door—be it even a postman or tradesman—it was Christ who had sent that person so that he might share the good news. When he went to live among the people of his own tongue, I was very fearful for his life. Several months later he invited me to visit him and, to my amazement, I found in that area a great interest in Christ. The Holy Spirit was truly at work and had gone before us.

Returning home I challenged thirty-four other workers to unite in team evangelism in that area. After four weeks of teaching, sixteen villages signified through their head men that they were prepared to accept baptism. We now have several thousand Christians in this region, and every month more are being brought into the fellowship of Christ’s Church.

Very near my country lies the mystery land of Tibet, fast in its superstition and little known in the outside world. A traveler from Germany returned home and told the story of this vast, mountainous country that had no witness for Christ. Two missionaries from Switzerland were challenged and decided to go there as witnesses. Since they could not gain entry, they settled on the border on the Indian side to wait for God’s time.

About that time, because of political unrest in Tibet, a cultured and educated Tibetan migrated from his country. He chose not the usual routes through Sikkim or China, but an unknown route toward India, and settled on the border. Here he met the two missionaries. At their request he began teaching them the Tibetan language, and the missionaries started a translation of John’s Gospel.

The manuscript of this Gospel fell into the hands of the eleven-year-old son of the Tibetan teacher. Light dawned on the soul of this lad. He accepted Christ as his Saviour and resolved that after his education he would dedicate his life to translating the Bible into Tibetan, so that his people could hear about Christ. He labored for thirty-five years, from the age of twenty-one to fifty-six, until he had completed the translation of the Old and New Testaments.

But there was no type or press to print the Bible. So this elderly man undertook to write the entire manuscript on sensitive paper in his own handwriting from which litho-copies could be made. He worked so hard that his health began to fail. I begged him to employ some scribes, so he chose two men to help him in the writing. Both these men accepted Christ as they read the Bible. Later it was my privilege to publish the Tibetan Bible. Today there are several hundred Christians on the borders of Tibet.

Copies of the Bible, the new Testament, and Scripture portions were sent into Tibet through traders. One of these Bibles got into the hands of the Dalai Lama. Recently he wrote from his exile in India and asked for another copy: he had to leave his Bible behind when the Communists overran his country. We wondered, too, at the unusual demand for Bibles from Tibet. On making inquiries we found that the Communist Chinese were learning the Tibetan language by comparing the Chinese and Tibetan Bibles! “My word shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please” (Isa. 55:11).

I myself was not brought up in the Christian faith but accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour when I was twenty-seven. I was born in a Hindu family. My lovely mother would gather us around her and tell us the stories of our gods and goddesses, our heroes and heroines. When I was seventeen, she asked me if I would like to go with her on some pilgrimages. I was thrilled to be invited to travel with her to all the sacred places of India—to the place where Shiva told the eternal tale to Parvati, where Krishna met with Arjuna and the dialogue of Bhagavad Gita was enacted, where sacrifices are offered to the Kali Mata, where Buddha did his meditations; or to the sacred Ganges, where the Yogis have worshipped for thousands of years; or to the place where the god of duty, Ramchandra, performed his penance. I was thrilled. But as I traveled from one holy place to another, I became conscious of an emptiness. I did not sense the presence of God; I had no communication with him.

When I asked my mother about this, she replied, “I know you miss reality, and I miss it too; but our holy books say that if we do these pilgrimages we shall have a reward in the next life.” Mother was in the evening of her life and passed away within eighteen months of those pilgrimages. I remained dissatisfied. I searched for communion with God in Hinduism, which offered me a million lives in which to work out my own salvation. Knowing I had no merit, I found this a terrible prospect. I studied Buddhism only to find that it was an atheistic philosophy in which there is no hope of communion with God, only an agnostic belief in nirvana. I searched Islam, which believes in salvation by works: on the day of reckoning our good deeds will be weighed against our evil ones to determine whether we merit heaven or hell.

Christianity was a foreign religion about which no one had spoken to me, although I had lived in the city of Karachi for seventeen years. For nine long years I wandered in the wilderness, seeking for the reality of God. Then a Christian friend of mine had trouble with his eyes. His doctor told him he would operate in the hope of restoring at least some sight.

As can be imagined, my friend was very much perturbed at the possibility of losing his sight. When I visited him, he said, “I may never be able to read again, to read my Bible again. Will you read it to me?” I took his Bible, and it opened to the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. As I read aloud, I was amazed at the claims of Jesus: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” And then I read the promise in verse 14: “If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

I turned to this Christian friend and said, “This Jesus of yours makes such amazing claims—why don’t we ask him about your eyes?” My friend and I both knelt by his bed and spent most of that night in prayer. That night I became conscious of the reality of God. I turned to my friend and said that when he returned from the hospital seeing, I would follow Jesus. My friend grasped my hand and asked, “Do you believe I will ever see again?” I replied that I believed God had given me my sight and his, too.

We went to the hospital the next morning, a well-known hospital in Simla. A Scotsman was to do the surgery. When the doctor first of all applied some instrument to measure the tension of the eyes, he found the tension reduced. Thinking something was wrong with the instrument he sent for another, only to find that the tension was indeed reduced. Seeing me outside the room the doctor called me in and asked, “What did this man put in his eyes last night? When I examined him last evening, the tension was so high that I decided to do the surgery this morning. Now the tension is greatly reduced!” Then I knew that Jesus truly was alive. I told the doctor about our prayers and how we had felt we were in the presence of God. The doctor shook his head and said, “We don’t believe in miracles.” After thinking a while, he asked, “Were many tears shed while you were praying?” “We were very conscious of the presence of God and of being in his presence,” I replied. The doctor decided it was the tears that had reduced the tension. He would not do the operation then, he said, but should the tension return, the operation would be necessary.

The tension has never returned, and my friend’s eyes cleared up gradually. We both know that Jesus is alive. He is a minister of the Gospel and so am I. But my heart was not satisfied even then. My mother had died, and five million people who spoke my language were without Christ and without the Bible. So I entered a theological college to prepare for the ministry. After ordination I was sent to work in Karachi. But for the first nine months of my ministry I did not win a single soul for Christ, for the college I attended had destroyed the authority of the Word for me and had put all sorts of doubts in my mind.

One day a lady approached me and asked if I believed what I preached. I resented the remark and said, “How dare you ask such a question?” She answered me very humbly, and when I finally confided that I had doubts about the Scriptures, she patiently led me back to my evangelical faith. Since then no week has passed that I have not been privileged to lead someone to the Saviour. We now have more than 30,000 Christians in the Karachi area.

I could cite many more conversions from different backgrounds and show how each person in his own way has been instrumental in “bringing many sons into glory.” But let me close with the story of a convert from Sikhism.

I had been very much concerned because seven million Sikhs had no Bible in the Gurmukhi language. The New Testament had been published, and six editions were sold out. So I started praying that the Lord would indicate who was to translate the entire Bible. As I prayed and shared this burden with friends, everyone seemed to mention one man who was a convert from Sikhism. He lived eighty miles away. I went to see him, only to discover an unkempt creature in a dirty home. There was no evidence of spiritual life or joy. I came away feeling my guidance was wrong. As I continued to pray, the conviction grew that this indeed was the man to be challenged. So I went to him a second time. This time I was even more repulsed and realized that the man was a drug addict.

I returned home without indicating my mission, deeply disturbed in spirit. When I prayed the heavens seemed closed. When I went to see him a third time, the man asked, “Why do you come to see me when you do not love me?” I then told him why I had come; I wanted to challenge him to translate the Scriptures into the Gurmukhi language. But since he was a drug addict, how could I do so? Quiet for a time, he then said, “You believe the Lord has sent you. Go home and pray this night, and I will also do the same. If the Lord guides you, come to see me in the morning.”

I spent most of that night in prayer; the joy and sweetness of prayer returned. When I went to see the man the next morning, he was smiling and his face was shining. There had been a transformation. He was radiant and said, “You have returned; I will do it.” So he undertook the task and in seven years completed the translation of the Old Testament into Gurmukhi. The drug habit was broken. He was liberated, and through his testimony many pundits and gianis (learned men) have accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour.

A convert from Islam, a convert from Tibet, a convert from Hinduism, and a convert from Sikhism: the Lord used each man in his own way as an instrument to open the door of faith to the Gentiles. It was the Lord who gave a passion for souls together with an open door of access and who proved the power of the Word under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. May the same Lord give each one of us a vision of the souls in conflict and reveal to us the resources for life abundant.

Faithfulness to God requires proclaiming the Gospel

Confusion is widespread today over the meaning of the word “evangelism.” We would use the term in its scriptural meaning, i.e., the announcing, declaring, or bringing of good tidings, especially “the Gospel.” This announcement may be made person to person, informally or formally, by the spoken word or through the printed page, publicly or privately, in a church or a hall, in a home or in a hovel, indoors or outside, to one or more, anywhere.

It is of utmost importance that this message be announced “to every creature,” that it be accurately and clearly stated in language understandable to the hearer, and that it be proclaimed in the assurance that it is the Gospel of God and “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” This message is God’s good news; and it is God’s plan that this news be announced to every creature and God’s Spirit will quicken men by it. There is, therefore, an urgency to the Gospel beyond what most churches or individuals seem to feel.

Perhaps, before we go further, a word about what constitutes the Gospel is in order. The Gospel is not a few verses from one or another of the four Gospels. The four Gospels give us a portrait or portraits of the Saviour and record the important events that form the historical background of the evangel. But the Epistles reveal the significance of the events recorded in the Gospels.

The Gospel is not a system of religion, nor the dogmas of one or more churches. It is a divine communication, “… the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom: 1:1–3a). It is beamed to sinners—not to the worthy, but to the unworthy; not to those who deserve heaven, but to the hell-deserving. It is the Gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24), because its theme is unmerited divine favor to sinners. It is the Gospel of our salvation, because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes (Eph. 1:13; Rom. 1:16). It reveals the only remedy for sin, the only way of deliverance for the sinner. It is the Gospel of peace, because by believing it, men are reconciled to God. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).

Paul speaks of it as “my gospel” (Rom. 2:16) because he was in a special way its messenger. But it did not originate with Paul. He could say of it, “… the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11, 12).

Since it is a communication from God to man, and since its propagation is committed to men, we have a divine mandate to give ourselves to the task.

Paul considered himself under obligation to preach the Gospel to every creature. He wrote, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” “So,” he says, “as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” He said of the urgency of it, “Necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” As he went up to Jerusalem, knowing that bonds and afflictions awaited him there, he said, “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.”

There was no other course for Paul, and there is no other course for the faithful servant of God today.

The urgency of evangelism is underscored by the fact that the message of the Gospel is desperately needed by every creature, because sin is both universal and ruinous. I am one of many thousands of Africans who would all have been hopelessly lost in sin were it not for the prospect of salvation first carried into Africa by the Ethiopian eunuch in the earlier days and in more recent times by Livingstone, Miller, Bingham, and many other faithful servants of God, whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

My ancestors were Muslims and my fate would have been tragically sealed but for the grace of God, which through the written word in the Arabic script revealed the Saviour to my grandfather and some of his contemporaries. I have had the privilege of a Christian home and education in a Christian school, for which I am eternally grateful. I was moved to become a doctor by the example of a devoted Christian missionary doctor who looked after me during a period of illness. In spite of that, Satan kept me away from true faith and salvation. With my elementary knowledge of science, I thought the Scriptures could not be relied upon. I thought I could work out my own salvation by good works. God in his infinite goodness and mercy very soon showed me the utter impossibility of that course and led me to accept salvation by faith in Christ as a free gift, “not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Regarding the universality of sin the Bible is clear. “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Ps. 14:2, 3). This includes Jews and Gentiles (Rom. 3:9–12), those under law and those without law (Rom: 2:12); for there is no difference—all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). This includes the self-righteous and religious represented by the Pharisees in Luke 18:9–14 as well as the self-condemned represented by the publican in the same passage.

As I mentioned before, sin is ruinous. Not only is it an offense against God; it is like a deep-seated dreadful disease for which there is no human remedy. Apart from the Saviour, it gets worse and worse and will result in death and the lake of fire.

The urgency of evangelism is increased by the fact that there is a sure remedy for sin offered in the Gospel, and that it is a divine remedy, purposed and provided by God himself through the sacrifice of his own Son on the cross. The suffering, and the shame, and the sorrow that the Son of God bore on the cross for our sins (John 3:14; Gal. 3:13, 14; Isa. 53:5) demand an urgency in announcing the good news of redemption for those for whom he died.

To withhold from others the benefits of redemption that Christ has provided at so great a cost shows lack of appreciation for what we have received and indifference to our role in God’s plan of redemption.

Evangelism is urgent because Christ’s command is to preach the Gospel (to announce the glad tidings) to every creature; to withhold the message from any creature by our neglect or disobedience is criminal and cruel. What would you think of a doctor who refused to sacrifice the comfort of his easy chair in order to go to minister to a patient who was distressingly ill, especially if he had a sure remedy for his condition?

It is one of my very great privileges to be a practicing medical doctor (pediatrician) in one corner of Africa. My job can be very satisfying because in such situations, humanly speaking one virtually holds the key of life and death. I recall one particular situation, a child was admitted with very high fever and convulsions due to cerebral malaria. It was the first time that a pediatrician was available in that station. The ward nursing sister said very despondently, “I have never seen anyone of them admitted that bad who had ever recovered.” The child did survive, but it meant, giving not only of skill but also of much-needed sleep for that night. I had more than an adequate excuse to give up. It was at the end of the day, and I was pretty tired. Such cases have always died before; hence no one would have blamed me. But those few hours made all the difference between life and death for that child. What would you truly have thought of me if I had not attended to the child? The most severe condemnation would not be adequate. If this is so in the physical realm, how very much more important it is in the spiritual realm! Our Lord Jesus laid aside his glory, and became man, even a lowly carpenter, and then went to the cross to make salvation possible. Should we do less to make it known?

If we face the facts, we must admit with the Apostle Paul that we are debtors (Rom. 1:14); that we owe it to both Greeks and barbarians, to the learned and to the ignorant, to make known to them the glad tidings that are intended for all people (Luke 2:10). How then can we with impunity limit the announcement to the few while we pursue our own earthly comforts, or wealth, or pleasure?

The urgency of evangelism is further increased when we consider what salvation is. It is more than a fire escape, an escape from the lake of fire, though it affords that. If it were no more than that, it would demand all that we have or are to make it known to every creature, because hell is a dread reality and the Gospel reveals the only way of escape.

But the salvation that the Gospel reveals is more than that. It is a present salvation. Not only will the believer be saved at last; he is also saved now. He is forgiven, justified, accounted righteous now, “being justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). For them who are in Christ Jesus there is now no condemnation (Rom. 8:1; John 3:18).

The believer in Christ, moreover, has passed from death to life already (John 5:24). He has the very life of God in his soul now (1 John 5:11, 12). He has been born again and made a partaker of the divine nature. He is “begotten … again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven” for him (1 Peter 1:3, 4).

Furthermore, he is now no longer a stranger, or outsider, but a fellow citizen with the saints, and of the household of God.

The proclamation of the Gospel not only affords salvation to the sinner who hears and believes it; it also glorifies God (Rom. 15:8–13). It reveals something of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. It reveals his infinite love and the glory of his matchless grace (Eph. 1:1; 2:1–10). It reaches us in the horrible pit, brings us up out of the miry clay, sets our feet upon the rock, establishes our goings, and puts a new song in our mouths of praise to our God. It turns the sinner’s night into day, his darkness into light, and his distress into unexpressible joy. When the battle is over and our race is run, the message of the Gospel will be the theme of our song in glory to the praise of the glory of God’s infinite grace.

Evangelism has all the urgency of the faithful physician when someone is desperately and dangerously ill, of the surgeon when only an emergency operation will save a patient’s life, of the fire brigade when someone is trapped in a burning building, of an army of emancipation hastening to rescue captives held by a cruel tyrant, and of someone who has news too good to keep. It must be told. Necessity is laid upon us, cost what it may.

In Second Kings chapter 7 we read how Samaria was under siege by the armies of Benhadad, king of Syria. Food supplies were cut off; the most distressing famine conditions prevailed in the city. But God’s prophet Elisha had foretold that the morrow would bring relief. That evening there were four leprous men outside the gate of the city. They reasoned that even if they were allowed to enter the city they would die of hunger. Why not go forth to the Syrians? This they decided to do. When they came to the camp, they found that the Syrians had fled, leaving their camp as it was. There was plenty of food. The lepers ate their fill. Then they thought of hoarding what they did not need. As they began to do so, they were convicted and said to one another, “We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household” (2 Kings 7:9).

Sin has brought men very low. Terrible distress is on every hand. Even in the churches there is famine, distressing famine. If God in his providence has disclosed where there is plenty, we have no right to keep this intelligence to ourselves. The good news we have in the gospel message is not meant for us alone. It is to be shared with all people. It is knowledge that is urgently needed by all classes and conditions of people everywhere.

Dare we by our neglect keep this intelligence from those who need it so sorely, and whose right it is to have it?

Many are giving a fraction of their income, and some few a larger portion of their income; but very few indeed are giving their capital. Yet even if it costs us our position, our popularity, yea, our very lives, we will be the richer if we leave all and go forth from one person to another, or from one village or town to another, announcing with all possible urgency the good news of a Saviour come, of redemption accomplished, of forgiveness provided, of life offered, and of heaven opened.

Possibly the urgency of evangelism is greater today than at any time in history, because time is running out, people are multiplying, the world situation is worsening, and distress and unrest are increasing by the minute.

The situation in my country, Nigeria, is a particularly sad one. Here is a country of 55 million people who have been set on the road to democratic living as free men and women. Here is a country that almost holds the key to the very survival, peace, and happiness of the people of the whole African continent. While so many of the other countries of Africa one by one are embracing dictatorships, even under the guise of the so-called African Democracy of the one-party political system, Nigeria has remained one country that seems to have held to the principle of freedom for the individual. Recent events have cast doubts in many minds about the promise for peace for Africa and for the world that Nigeria epitomized. There is loss of ground on every side. Why? Is it not because we are all looking up to materialism and preaching it as the key to peace and happiness, while we deny the world around us the only hope of peace, the Prince of Peace himself, who died that we, believing in him, might have peace with God?

It has been my privilege to do a fair amount of traveling around the world; the story everywhere is the same. The situation is worsening hour by hour. We who have the good news that Christ died to save sinners, of whom I am chief—what are we doing about telling it to others? We are not responsible for results; but we are responsible for announcing the glad tidings, and we are responsible for being accurate and clear in making the message known.

Fifty-six years ago a World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland, met to consider the opportunities and responsibilities of evangelizing the world in their generation. From this assembly sprang the Faith and Order movement, the Life and Work movement, and the International Missionary Council. These three movements became the nucleus of what is now called the World Council of Churches.

The Edinburgh conference, attended by 1,206 delegates from all over the world, had been largely organized by John R. Mott. John Mott was one of those who had entered Christian service as a result of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions launched at Dwight L. Moody’s Northfield Conference in 1886. At that time A. T. Pearson’s slogan had been adopted: “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” On December 10, 1946, in Oslo, John R. Mott was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Asked what his vocation was, this best-loved and most prominent layman in the world church for two generations replied simply: “Evangelist!” From the moment of his conversion at Cornell in 1886 until his death nearly seventy years later, John R. Mott was first, last, and always an evangelist.

To the end of his life he lamented the fact that the doors opened in 1910 for evangelism and missions were not entered. The Church, he felt, was losing its evangelistic zeal and passion, and in 1951 he declared: “We are living in a time of special trial. When has there been anything equal to it?”

In many circles today the Church has an energetic passion for unity, but it has all but forgotten our Lord’s commission to evangelize. One of the purposes of this World Congress on Evangelism is to make an urgent appeal to the world church to return to the dynamic zeal for world evangelization that characterized Edinburgh fifty-six years ago. Remembering their Lord’s words, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel,” the Student Volunteer Movement shouted to the world: “The evangelization of the world in this generation!”—or as John Mott once worded it: “Carrying the Gospel to all the non-Christian world.”

For my message tonight I would like to use as background two statements of Christ’s. The first is found in John 4:35: “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” The second one is found in Matthew 9:37, 38: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.”

Christ often used the figure of the harvest. In these two passages it serves to illustrate the urgency of evangelism.

Just before this he had talked with a Samaritan woman. She had been gloriously converted and had gone into the town of Sychar to announce that this marvelous Saviour was nearby. Already the people were streaming out eagerly and curiously to hear the message of Christ. It is against this background that Jesus uses the harvest illustration: the time had come to go out quickly to gather in souls to the Kingdom of God.

Harvest time is the ever-present now! It is always easy to rationalize that the present is not the best moment for action. It will be easier tomorrow or the day after, or perhaps in the next generation. “No,” said Jesus, “there are not yet four months. Now is the acceptable time! Go now, and gather all the workmen you can. The fields are white already unto harvest. Tomorrow may be too late! The weather may have changed, and the crops could be destroyed by a storm.” Throughout the teachings of our Lord there is this note of urgency about evangelism.

The evangelistic harvest is always urgent. The destiny of men and of nations is always being decided. Every generation is crucial; every generation is strategic. We are not responsible for the past generation and we cannot bear the full responsibility for the next one. However, we do have our generation! God will hold us responsible at the Judgment Seat of Christ for how well we fulfilled our responsibilities and took advantage of our opportunities. We have been given greater and sharper instruments to gather in a greater harvest than any previous generation. Our Lord warned: “Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required.” We must not fail to meet the challenge of this hour.

There seem to be periods of special urgency in history when it can be said with peculiar relevance, “The fields are white unto harvest.” I believe that we are now in such a period of history. We stand at the heart of a world revolution. The next twenty-five years will be the most decisive years since Christ was on earth.

Our world is on fire, and man without God cannot control the flames. The demons of hell have been let loose. The fires of passion, greed, hate, and lust are sweeping the world. We seem to be plunging madly toward Armageddon. We live in the midst of crisis, danger, fear, and death. We sense that something is about to happen. We know that things cannot go on as they are.

The prospect of a world whose population is growing at a fantastic rate has inspired nightmares in world statesmen, sociologists, philosophers, and theologians. For example, if I live to reach my seventieth birthday, there will be nearly seven billion people on the earth then—more than twice the present number. Scientists are not talking about “pathological togetherness”—a world not only where disease and poverty stalk but where there are terrifying psychological problems and insoluble political problems.

The very pressure of the population explosion is bringing an increase in racial tension throughout the world. Unless the supernatural love of God controls the hearts of men, we may be on the verge of a worldwide racial war too horrible to contemplate. The population explosion is also increasing the ideological differences that separate men. The world indeed has become a neighborhood without being a brotherhood. Scientists, educators, and editors have become “evangelists,” proclaiming the grim message of a bitter, cynical despair.

The pages of almost every newspaper and every book scream, “The harvest is ripe!” Never has the soil of the human heart and mind been better prepared. Never has the grain been thicker. Never have we had more effective instruments in our hands to help us gather the harvest. Yet at a time when the harvest is the ripest in history, the Church is floundering in tragic confusion.

An official of the World Council of Churches told a group of us at Bossy, Switzerland, a few years ago that if that group were to adopt a definition of evangelism, it would split the council. Within the conciliar movement deep theological differences make it almost impossible to form a definition of evangelism and to give authoritative biblical guidelines to the Church. This is one of the purposes of this Congress on Evangelism: to help the Church to come to grips with this issue and to come to a clear understanding of the evangelistic and missionary responsibilities of the Church for the rest of this century.

First, there is confusion throughout the Church about the very meaning of the word “evangelism.” Definitions are formed to fit personal tastes. Some think of evangelism simply as getting people to come to church. Others think it means getting people to conform to a pattern of religious belief and behavior similar to their own. Some new definitions of evangelism entirely omit the winning of men to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Their proponents look upon evangelism as social action only. The secretary of evangelism of one of the great American denominations said two years ago: “The redemption of the world is not dependent upon the souls we win for Christ.… There cannot be individual salvation.… Salvation has more to do with the whole society than with the individual soul.… We must not be satisfied to win people one by one.… Contemporary evangelism is moving away from winning souls one by one to the evangelization of the structures of society.”

We cannot accept this interpretation of evangelism. Evangelism has social implications, but its primary thrust is the winning of men to a personal relationship to Jesus Christ.

There has been a change in understanding of the nature and mission of the Church, from “the Church has a mission” to “the Church is mission.” There has been a change of emphasis from the spiritual nature of the church task to one of secular reformation. This new “evangelism” leads many to reject the idea of conversion in its historical biblical meaning, and to substitute education and social reform for the work of the Holy Spirit in converting and changing men. All these ideas would have appalled most of the delegates at Edinburgh fifty-six years ago.

The early Christians went by land and sea to spread the “evangel,” the good news that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. This phenomenon of people claiming others for Christ is emphasized in the New Testament by the fact that the Greek word for “evangelize” is used fifty-two times and the noun form of “good news” or “gospel” is used seventy-four times. The early Church proclaimed to the world: “We have found hope for despair, life for death, forgiveness for guilt, purpose for existence!” They shouted to the world, “We have found it, and having found it we must share it!” That was the evangelism of the early Church.

It seems to me that we cannot improve on the definition of evangelism that was given to us by the International Missionary Council at Madras in 1938: “Evangelism … must so present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through him, to accept him as their Saviour and serve him as their Lord in the fellowship of his Church.”

Evangelism means bearing witness, with the soul aflame, with the objective of winning men to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

A lay evangelist once approached a woman in a Boston hotel and said: “Do you know Christ?” When she told her husband of this, he said: “Why didn’t you tell him to mind his own business?” She said: “If you had seen the expression on his face, and heard the earnestness with which he spoke, you would have thought it was his business.”

Oh, that God would give us a love for souls like that! In our prayer groups during this congress, and in our discussion periods, let us ask God to strangely warm our hearts and set our souls on fire until we have a burning passion for the souls of men.

There is not only confusion about the meaning of “evangelism”: there is also confusion about the motive for evangelism. There should never be any doubt that the Commander-in-Chief, the Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ has given a command. Failing to heed this command is deliberate disobedience. Three of the four Gospels end with a commission to the Church to evangelize the world.

In Acts 1:8 we read: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (RSV). At the end of the walk to Emmaus, which is also the climax of Luke’s Gospel, the Lord, in opening the minds of his companions to understand the Scriptures, says: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46, 47, RSV).

The command in Acts 1:8 is all-inclusive, embracing evangelism in all possible circumstances. “The end of the earth” represents every conceivable situation—taking account of every possible language, race, color, or even religious belief. There was no syncretism here! There is an exclusiveness about the Gospel that cannot be surrendered. If there were no other reason for going to the ends of the earth proclaiming the Gospel and winning souls, the command of Christ would be enough! It is not optional. We are ambassadors under authority.

The second motive for evangelism is the example of the preaching of the apostles. An evangelistic objective was at the very heart and core of their preaching.

The third motive for evangelism should be that the love of Christ constrains us, as Paul said in Second Corinthians 5:14.

The most important thing that has ever happened to us as Christians is our acceptance of Christ as Lord and Saviour. We immediately want to share it with others.

One of the greatest tragedies of our day is that so many professing Christians lack the desire to share their experience with others. Dr. James S. Stewart of Edinburgh has said: “The real problem of Christianity is not atheism or skepticism, but the non-witnessing Christian trying to smuggle his own soul into heaven.”

The fourth motive for evangelism is the approaching judgment. The Apostle Paul said: “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11a). The background for the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not only the love of God but also the wrath of God! In the solemn light of the day of judgment, man’s greatest need is for reconciliation with God. Christ bore our sins on the Cross in order that we, through faith in him, might be reconciled to God.

This brings us to one of the most important points of confusion in the mission of the Church today: Are men really lost? The great weight of modern theological opinion is against the fact that anyone is ultimately lost. The various shades of universalism prevalent throughout the Church have done more to blunt evangelism and take the heart out of the missionary movement than anything else. I believe the Scriptures teach that men outside of Jesus Christ are lost! There are many problems and many mysteries here, and I do not have time to go into the matter in detail. In Matthew 7:21–23, our Lord says to some men: “Depart from me.” Here is final judgment! He said also: “He that believeth not is condemned already.”

Language cannot get plainer than this! To me, the doctrine of a future judgment, where men will be held accountable to God, is clearly taught in the Scriptures.

The fifth motive for evangelism is the spiritual, social, and moral needs of men. “Jesus had compassion on them” is a phrase used more than once in the Gospels. He looked upon men not only as souls separated from God by sin, but also as sick bodies that needed his healing touch, empty stomachs that needed feeding, persons whose racial misunderstandings needed his Word (for example, his experience at Capernaum and his story of the Good Samaritan).

Thus evangelism has a social responsibility. The social, psychological, moral, and spiritual needs of men become a burning motivation for evangelism. However, I am convinced that if the Church went back to its main task of proclaiming the Gospel and getting people converted to Christ, it would have a far greater impact on the social, moral, and psychological needs of men than it could achieve through any other thing it could possibly do. Some of the greatest social movements of history have come about as the result of men being converted to Christ, for example, the conversion of Wilberforce led to the freeing of slaves. Scores of current and up-to-date illustrations could be used. We have made the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. We are exhorting men to love each other before they have the capacity to love each other. This capacity can only come about through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

We have discussed the confusion about the meaning of and the motive for evangelism; but there is also confusion about the message of evangelism. More and more there is pressure to accommodate the Christian message to minds and hearts darkened by sin—to give precedence to material and physical needs while distorting the spiritual need that is basic to every person. This change in emphasis is really changing Christianity to a new humanism.

The great question today is: Is the first-century Gospel relevant for the twentieth century? Or has it as little to say to modern man as some radical theologians would have us believe?

The Apostle Paul sums up the Gospel in First Corinthians 15:1–4: “I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved.… For I have delivered unto you that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”

When Paul preached this message in Corinth nothing seemed more irrelevant to the people of that day. However, the Holy Spirit took this message and transformed the lives of many in that city. Dr. James Stewart of Edinburgh points out: “The driving force of the early Christian mission was not propaganda of beautiful ideals of the brotherhood of man. It was the proclamation of the mighty acts of God. At the heart of the apostles’ message was the atoning sacrifice paid on Calvary.”

The Apostle Paul himself said: “This doctrine of the cross is sheer folly to those on their way to ruin, but to us who are on the way to salvation it is the power of God … God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. As God in his wisdom ordained, the world failed to find him by its wisdom, and he chose to save those who have faith by the folly of the Gospel” (1 Cor. 1:18–21, NEB). Thus the message of the Gospel that we must proclaim to the world is: Christ died for our sins; he has been raised from the dead; you must be converted by turning from your sins and by putting your faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour!

There is confusion about the strategy of the enemy of evangelism. To Jesus and the apostles, Satan was very real. He was called “the prince of this world,” “the god of this age,” and “the prince of the power of the air.” The names used for him indicate something of his character and strategy. He was called “deceiver,” “liar,” “murderer,” “accuser,” “tempter,” “destroyer,” and many other such names.

Satan’s greatest strategy is deception. His most successful strategy has been to get modern theologians to deny his existence. The Apostle Paul said, “… Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.”

When the seed of the Gospel is being sown, Satan is always there sowing the tares—but more. He has the power to blind the minds of those whom we seek to evangelize: “… the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor. 4:4). His strategy is to use deception, force, evil and error to destroy the effectiveness of the Gospel. If we ignore the existence of Satan or are ignorant of his devices, then we fall into his clever trap. However, we have the glorious promise that “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

There is also confusion about the method of evangelism. We who are here tonight represent the vast majority of the countries in the world. Each of our countries differs in its attitude toward Jesus Christ and its willingness to respond to the Gospel. However, I have found in my travels around the world that while the approach may be different here and there, the spiritual needs of men are the same. I no longer speak to laboring men as laboring men—to university students as university students—to Africans as Africans—to Americans as Americans. I speak to all as men in need of redemption and salvation.

Evangelist Leighton Ford has listed six methods of evangelism found in the New Testament:

(1) mass evangelism—John the Baptist, Peter, Jesus, Stephen, Paul; (2) personal evangelism—thirty-five personal interviews of Jesus alone are recorded in the Gospels; (3) impromptu evangelism—Jesus at the well, Peter and John at the Gate Beautiful; (4) dialogue evangelism—Paul at Mars Hill, Apollos at Ephesus (Acts 18:28); (5) systematic evangelism—the seventy sent out by Jesus two by two, the house-to-house visitation mentioned in Acts 5:42; and (6) literary evangelism—John 20:31 and Luke 1:1–14, both clear statements of the evangelistic, apologetic intent of the writers of these Gospels.

No one method will be right for every person in every situation at every time; but some method of evangelism is certainly right for all people in all situations at all times! The Holy Spirit can take any method and use it to win souls.

Our goal is nothing less than the penetration of the entire world. Jesus said: “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). Here evangelism is put into an eschatological context. We are not promised that the whole world will believe. The evangelization of the world does not mean that all men will respond but that all men will be given an opportunity to respond as they are confronted with Christ.

Most of the illustrations of the Gospel used by Jesus—salt, light, bread, water, leaven, fire—have one common element: penetration. Thus the Christian is true to his calling only when he is permeating the entire world. Not only are we to penetrate the world geographically; we are also to penetrate the worlds of government, school, work, and home, the worlds of entertainment, of the intellectual, of the laboring man, of the ignorant man.

The world desperately needs moral reform; and if we want moral reform, the quickest and surest way is by evangelism. The transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only possible way to reverse the moral trends of the present hour.

David Brainerd, in his journal of his life among the North American Indians, said: “I found that when my people were gripped by this great doctrine of Christ and Him crucified I had no need to give them instructions about morality. I found that one followed as sure and inevitable fruit of the other.”

Do we want social reform? The preaching of the Cross and the Resurrection has been primarily responsible for promoting humanitarian sentiment and social concern for the last 400 years. Prison reform, the prohibition of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery, the crusade for human dignity, the struggle against exploitation—all are the outcome of great religious revivals and the conversion of individuals. The preaching of the Cross could do more to bring about social revolution than any other method.

Do we want unity among Christians throughout the world? Then evangelize! I believe that some of the greatest demonstrations of ecumenicity in the world today are these crusades where people by the thousands from various denominations have been meeting to evangelize. There are a dedication, a zeal and a spirit in these meetings not found in other gatherings.

Our greatest need, however, is not organizational union. Our greatest need is for the Church to be baptized with the fire of the Holy Ghost and to go out proclaiming the Gospel everywhere. We must first have spiritual unity in the Gospel. Eight cylinders in a car are no better than four if there is no spark from the battery and no gas in the tank.

But one of the great questions before this congress is: Can the Church be revived in order to complete the penetration of the world in our generation?

The revival that the Church so desperately needs cannot be organized and promoted by human means. It cannot be created by machinery. The two symbols of Pentecost were wind and fire. Both of these speak to us of the mystical, supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in revival. The meaning of the word “revive” in the Old Testament is “to recover,” “to restore,” “to return” to God’s standard for his people. The word for revive in the New Testament means “to stir up,” or “to re-kindle a fire which is slowly dying.”

The Christian continually feels the pull of the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is why Paul exhorted young Timothy to “fan the flame” (2 Tim. 1:6). Even the members of the early Church needed fresh renewings. In chapter two of Acts we find that the believers were filled with the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room; yet in chapter four we read of their being filled once again: “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

In my travels around the world I have met many sincere Christian leaders who believe that it is impossible to have a worldwide revival. They base their assertions on the prediction in Scripture that “in the last days perilous times will come,” when there will be a wholesale departure from the faith. They admit that the Gospel has lost none of its ancient power to save and that here and there a few souls will be gathered in. But they believe that there will be no outpourings of the Holy Spirit before the end of the age. They argue that it is completely out of the plans and purposes of God for the Church to pray for and expect a mighty revival.

Brethren, I do not believe that the day of miracles has passed. As long as the Holy Spirit abides and works on the earth, the Church’s potential is the same as it was in the apostolic days. The great Paraclete has never been withdrawn, and he still waits to work through those who are willing to meet his conditions of repentance, humility, and obedience.

I am convinced that here in Berlin there could begin a movement of God that would touch the world in our generation. If in the next ten days we will meet God’s conditions, he will send us a time of refreshing, revival, and awakening.

After fifteen years in China, Jonathan Goforth came to the deep and painful conviction that God had something mightier to do in his life and ministry. He became restless as he began, under the Spirit’s anointing, an intense study of the Scriptures in relation to revival. After months of study and prayer, he began to believe that God would fulfill his Word in the most difficult field in the world. That was the beginning of the great Manchurian revival.

Henry Martyn once wrote: “If ever I see a Hindu a real believer in the Lord Jesus, I shall see something more nearly approaching the resurrection of a dead body than anything I have yet seen.” But Martyn carried on in faith, believing the promises of God, and lived to see the day when God began to work among the Hindus.

We are tempted at times to cry with Habakkuk, “Oh, Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear?” (Hab. 1:2a). Habakkuk was discouraged as he saw the overwhelming odds against the work of the Lord. He had almost reached the point of despair. God gave him a glorious answer: “For I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you” (1:5b). In other words, God was saying to his despondent prophet: “If I told you what I am doing in the world, you wouldn’t believe it.”

We come from different racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds—but before God with our spiritual needs, we are one race! We have only one Gospel to declare in every generation, and that is, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.” We have one task—the penetration of the entire world in our generation with the Gospel! God help us here in this historic Berlin Congress to learn how better to understand and do our task.

When we first projected CHRISTIANITY TODAY, we made every effort to enlist C. S. Lewis as a fortnightly contributor. A mutual friend, an Anglican clergyman, motored from London to Oxford to present our confidential invitation. But the brilliant and refreshing lay apologist for Christianity (still unlisted in Encyclopaedia Britannica) had already decided to avoid direct theological engagement in order to “catch readers unawares” through fiction and symbol. Through the years, however, C. S. Lewis took friendly interest in this magazine, and once he wrote of the Christian Century that it would be “a pity to swell their sales!”

The search began, then, for a standing contributor to “Eutychus and His Kin,” as we named our letters section in an allusion to Acts 20:9, where a sleepy observer was miraculously awakened to life.

Eutychus I was an unheralded scribe whose gifts we recalled from college days. For 6½ years Edmund P. Clowney (now president of Westminster Theological Seminary) supplied our pages with a column that many readers turned to first when they received a new issue.

Eutychus II carried forward this difficult literary assignment with high skill and warm humor. But with this issue, Eutychus II (see page 40) closes his very readable series and passes along his gifted pen to an unnamed satirist.