The Leading Voice: The Voice of the Master

‘’After this, I looked, and behold a door was opened in heaven; and I heard a voice, as it were of a trumpet, talking with me.” — Revelation iv. i.

The Apostolic age was both pictorial and vocal: it was an age of visions and voices of God. A door was opened in heaven. Such sights the eye beheld, and such sounds the ear heard, as left no doubt with saints, and sometimes with sinners, that God was in close touch with man. As through a rent veil flashed the hidden glory; and, whether the sound was that of a trumpet, or of the ‘’still small voice,” it was awe-inspiring and soul-subduing. The gospel message itself was the voice of God, and, as was fitting, it was emphasized and accentuated by other utterances clearly divine. Both by His providence and by His Spirit He spake so often, so loudly, that the whole age of the Apostles echoed with these divine voices. In effect the visions were voices, for as messengers of God they were vocal, only that their language entered the city of Mansoul through eyegate rather than eargate.

Not even in the time of the ancient Theophanies has God more manifestly appeared and spoken to men. Nor were these visions and voices vain. They mark, in the history of missions, turning points, both critical and pivotal; hinges whereon the golden gates of the kingdom hung and swung. Nor were they meant for that age only. A mere glance at the Acts of the Apostles shows that what God taught the early Church was a lesson for all time: He was giving signs and signals for all ages. To a devout reader this book records and reproduces what primitive disciples saw and heard, somewhat as the photograph and phonograph may yet serve future generations.

One mark of the close analogy between the age of modern missions and that of the Apostolic, is found in the new visions and voices of God, which though less characterized by the purely miraculous or supernatural element are no less unmistakable in their purpose and purport. Every page of these new chapters is thus illustrated and explained by the Divine Teacher; and the fact is both curious and significant that the main lessons, thus taught the Church in our day, follow the same lines as those of that first century. The Heavenly Schoolmaster, like the earthly, finds needful to use repetition for the sake of impression; and so, after the long interval of centuries, we are still in God’s school, learning the same old lessons from the same old text-book, only it is a new edition with notes by the Author, illumined by new illustrations, its teaching enforced and vivified by new arguments and appeals.

The first voice we hear in the Acts of the Apostles is that of the Lord Jesus Himself. His words have a double value; as His last words before He was taken up, they form the sum and substance of all His previous teaching; and as His first words before the new age of missions opens, they, like a table of contents, give the sum and substance of the history that is to follow. All other voices and visions found in this book are meant to fix in the minds of believers what they saw and heard when the Lord last appeared unto them before His ascension, — to echo, explain, amplify, illustrate His great commission. Because every word that He then spake is a little world full of meaning, let us write His farewell message in large letters:

*’ DEPART NOT FROM JERUSALEM,

BUT WAIT FOR THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER
WHICH YE HAVE HEARD OF ME;

FOR JOHN TRULY BAPTIZED WITH WATER,

BUT YE SHALL BE BAPTIZED WITH THE HOLY GHOST,

NOT MANY DAYS HENCE, YE SHALL RECEIVE THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST

COMING UPON YOU,
AND YE SHALL BE WITNESSES UNTO ME
BOTH IN JERUSALEM AND IN ALL JUDEA,

AND IN SAMARIA, AND UNTO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH.”

Here then is the loud and leading voice of the Apostolic age, and how majestic and commanding! In this final word of our ascending Lord three things stand out conspicuous like lofty peaks against the horizon:

First, the work of witness is the duty of the whole Church. Second, the field of witness is the territory of the whole world. Third, the force of witness is the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Again we affirm it, this farewell message is all-comprehensive. From it was omitted nothing vital to the Church’s great mission; to it nothing- has been, or can be, added. The keynote is struck, and the divine melody is sung; all that follows is but a variation upon this theme, the harmony which only makes more conspicuous the melody. The chapters that succeed add only emphasis to this first chapter, and so it will be of the unwritten records yet to follow; every failure or success in our mission work only gives fresh force, heavier stress, to this great message of the departing Master.

Immediately, with but ten days of interval, the farewell word of the Lord, and the promise of the Father, find fulfilment in the outpouring of the Spirit. Pentecost was both a vision and a voice, emphasizing and confirming what Jesus had said.

The work of witness now began. Hundreds of tongues, like a chorus of silver trumpets of jubilee, proclaimed in unison the acceptable year of the Lord; and, although at times this work has suffered contraction through unbelief an,d worldliness, it has never entirely ceased, nor will it, until the end of the age.

The field of witness now began to be first seen in its true length and breadth. Peter officially said, “The promise is unto you and unto your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” And this he spake not of himself; he had little conception of the meaning of his own words, as subsequent events prove. It was the voice of the Spirit, repeating and enlarging the covenant promises of a former dispensation; repeating them for the sake of Jewish believers; enlarging them for the sake of the gentiles, who had hitherto been aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise. Christ had made the field of witness to embrace the uttermost part of the earth; and so now the Spirit leads Peter, still fettered with Jewish exclusiveness, to add, “” and to as many as are afar off! “The golden links of prophecy connect the Hebrew race with a larger grace, that is to touch the whole family of man. And so this same Peter was led, a little later, to say to the unbelieving Jews, ‘’ Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” The reclamation and restoration of God’s elect people is a condition, preliminary and preparatory, to that last great time of refreshing which is to come upon all flesh. In Abraham’s “seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed! “but that promise made to the father of the faithful will be fulfilled only when Abraham’s seed, receiving the Messiah they despised and rejected, become witnesses to the nations. And so Paul adds his testimony to Peter’s: ‘’ Now, if the fall of them be the enriching of the world, and their diminishing the enriching of the gentiles, how much more their fulness! For, if their rejection be the reconciling- of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead.” — Romans, xi. 12-14.

The field of witness was not only now first seen to be the world, but in a peculiar way its occupation began. From every quarter of the inhabited globe had gathered those representatives who, on the day of Pentecost, received the word and the blessing; and going back to their far-off and widely separated abodes they naturally became witnesses unto the peoples among whom they dwelt. The sheaf of first-fruits thus laid on that Pentecostal altar, supplied seed for the sower to scatter in regions beyond.

The power of witness was now for the first time revealed in its fulness. Pentecost emphasized our Lord’s words by bringing the promised baptism, the chrism of power, the nameless charm and virtue which make all witness effective. Then began the great endowment and enduement, so indescribable yet indispensable; through human tongues the Holy Spirit spake, with a demonstration of truth far beyond all the demonstration of logic, making simple witness to Christ to accomplish what all the wisdom of the schools has never been able to effect. And, from that day onward the secret of power to testify for God, to convince and persuade men, has been the same, namely, to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

We have thus seen that the first two chapters of the Acts furnish the key, not only to this book, but to all missionary history. Our Lord’s last words describe the work of witness, define the field of witness, and reveal the force of witness; and the third person of the Trinity adds His confirmation of the word of the Lord Jesus, by leading disciples to begin the work, to enter the field, and to use the power. Where God thus teaches three lessons, and stamps them as of such supreme importance, it must be our duty to learn them thoroughly. We therefore tarry to study them with more care and closeness of application.