The Calling of the New Apostles
‘’There were giants in those days” is the terse record of the age before the flood.
Every age has its own giants; some great in physical stature, others mighty in mind, majestic in moral character, born to command and control. Even in earth’s golden ages the giants are rare, for God does not make such gifts too common; but it is the few, always, whose words shake the world, whose deeds move and mould men, whose lives shape the history and destiny of the race. Carlyle calls history but the ‘’lengthened shadows” of the world’s great men. Is it not rather the lingering twilight, prolonging their influence, perpetuating their memory even when their sun has set, and long lighting up the evening sky? Is not the horizon still aflame from many a grand and noble life, long since withdrawn from among men?
The modern missionary era has given birth to a royal race of giants; in fact, so mighty have been these men and women, so herculean their labors, so heroic their achievements, that they seem rather to have made the age than the age them. Some of them were before our day, but we trace the path they trod, by their gigantic footprints. Others we have seen growing to great stature and mounting to thrones of power; and still others yet walk among men, and make the continents shake beneath their tread. They have made the priests of idol fanes tremble with fear; and as the God of this world sees them, like their Master, working the works and speaking the words of God, he knows that his time is short. They are not always recognized as great by the world, for their greatness is not of this world nor measured by its standards. God’s giants have not always great heads, but they always have ‘’great hearts.” His captains are not the princes of this world that come to naught, not the wise, mighty, noble in men’s eyes; but those of great faith, holy love, who walk with God and work and war in His name, like those of old whose names are graven in that record in Hebrews — that “Westminster Abbey” of Old Testament worthies — “who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. “Let us thank God for a type of gianthood to which all believers may both aspire and attain! Not only venerable” fathers,” but “young men,” in whom the word of Godabideth, may be strong, and even “little children” may overcome the evil one; because greater is He that is in them than he that is in the world. The fable of Hercules is in Christian History become fact; for new-born babes while yet in the cradle of faith have laid hold of the serpent with a giant’s grip.
The study of the missionary age is the story of the giants, and let us hope to read so well the lessons of their lives as to work wonders in the same Almighty name!
Every work must wait for workmen, trained to fitness in their work. And so this book of the Acts and facts of the Apostolic age, reveals the actors, the factors in this work for God. The history of priniitive missions gives glimpses of the primitive missionaries.
Because history is the record of facts which demand the personal factor, the key of history is biography, that most suggestive and instructive of all studies. To portray the lives of men is, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus said, to “teach philosophy by examples.” By the analysis of character we detect the elements of success and the causes of failure. Principles and precepts are abstract statements of truth, but virtue and vice teach best through concrete forms; and hence this, best of all books, is a gallery of portraits, where we may study the lives of men, following their faith and shunning their faults and follies; a gallery where the picture of one perfect life, so lustrous as to disdain even a frame of gold, forever challenges imitation.
Thus, then, our study of the Acts of the Apostles leads us to look at the actors who took part in missions to a lost world. First there was Peter, to whom it was given to open the door of faith to both Jew and Gentile, and whose figure stands out boldly in the opening scenes of this history. But a more significant point, both critical and pivotal, is reached further on, in the formal selection and separation of Barnabas and Saul, to a distinct and distinctive missionary career and service.
Let us place prominently before us the opening verses of the thirteenth chapter of the Acts:
Now THERE WERE IN THE CHURCH THAT WAS AT AnTIOCH CERTAIN PROPHETS AND TEACHERS; AS BaR-NABAS, AND SiMEON THAT WAS CALLED NiGER, AND
Lucius OF Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been
BROUGHT UP WITH HeROD THE TETRARCH, AND SaUL. As THEY MINISTERED TO THE LORD, AND FASTED,
THE Holy Ghost said, separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. so they, being sent forth by the holy Ghost, departed.
The oversight of the Spirit of God is plainly seen in the very words here used. What precision of terms, not one useless phrase or needless adjective; no superfluous suggestion to divert the reader from the one lesson God would teach! How majestic the march of the narrative! How rapid and resolute the onward movement! What an impact of impression! A hundred words in the English, standing for but eighty in the terse Greek, put on eternal record one of the grandest lessons that God ever taught His people about the work of missions. Well may we ask for the open ear and the teachable spirit, that we may learn.
AH the surroundings comport with the august solemnity of the occasion. It is Antioch, the Syrian capital, the first gentile centre of Christianity. It is a season of worship, with fasting and prayer. At least five of the early prophets and teachers were there, for they are mentioned by name. While this devout assembly draws near to the secret place where God dwells, the Holy Spirit, no doubt in an audible voice, through one or more of those prophet teachers, says:
‘’Separate Me Barnabas and Saul For the work whereunto I have called them!”
That was the signal for the birth hour of foreign missions, the true nativity, of which Christ’s Ascension message of ten years before was the annunciation. Every circumstance and detail is precious, for it is a presage of things to come, a forerunner to guide the Church to the end of the age. God says, “Write the vision and make it plain upon the tablets set up along the highway of missions, that even by a cursory glance he that runneth may read.” All true missionaries, most of all pioneers in mission work, always have been and always will be, those whom the Holy Spirit has singularly separated unto His work. Seldom, if ever, has the Church led the way in setting them apart; in almost if not quite every case, the pioneers have led the Church, and have found sometimes their main hindrance in the apathy, if not antipathy, of those who should have been prompt to encourage and help. As at Antioch, it was not the Church but the Holy Spirit of God that took the lead in selecting and separating the first foreign missionaries, so, always, God by His providence and His Spirit has called out his servants, and the Church has sent away those whom the Spirit had already sent forth.
Thus it came to pass that in this earliest of gentile Churches, missions to the gentiles had their origin. The five prophet-teachers who there ministered before the Lord stand for gentile peoples. One a Cyrenian, one from Cyprus, one perhaps from Idumea, like Herod, another from the Cilician gates, and the last may have been a black man. When the Lord called his pioneers of missions, he went outside of the sacred circle of Jewish communities and turned from the mother Church to her first-born gentile daughter. And, even then, had not the Antiochan Church been fasting and praying, they might not have heard, or hearing they might not have heeded, the voice of God; they might not have sent away promptly, if at all, those whom the Spirit separated and called, and so would have forfeited that rich blessing that within two years returns to the bosom of the Church in that first missionary report!
In the New Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit, if not as audibly, not less surely, has separated unto Himself and His work His select servants. By unmistakable signs He has set apart His pioneers. But instead of a Church praying, fasting, responsive, how often He has found a Church prayerless, feasting, secularized, corrupt. It is a sad chapter which records the separation of the New Apostles. Torpor and indifference, spiritual decay and death, ridicule and resistance often to the point of persecution, these holy men and women have found even within the ’ ‘body of Christ!” Sometimes what should have been a sanctuary where the Spirit’s voice was clearly heard and devoutly heeded, has been a sepulchre, where selfishness wound about God’s messengers the cerements of inertia and would not loose them and let them go.
This lesson, so supremely taught in the inspired narrative, must have urgent emphasis. The one hope of missions is the faith that God’s Spirit does select and separate unto Himself, call out from His Church and send forth into His work, His own divinely appointed and divinely anointed messengers.
Such only can be the apostles of missions. For what is an apostle, or missionary, but one ivJio is seyit! Apostle is missionary spelt Greek-wise, and missionary is apostle spelt Latin-wise. But both words mean one thing: Godsent. Take fast hold of this thought, let it not go, for it is the life of missions; and our daily risk is in losing sight of it and depending on human argument and appeal and the wisdom of man’s selection, to furnish the force for the field. The new apostles, like the old, must be selected, separated, sent forth, by the Spirit.
Because this lesson is vital to success, let us linger yet longer to learn it fully. Two marked passages of Scripture stand confronting each other, like two pillars that hold up a grand arch: one gives us the theory, the other the practice — one the law, the other the example of God’s methods. We set them side by side for comparison:
“Then saith Jesus unto His disciples:
The harvest truly is plenteous;
But the labourers are few:
Pray le therefore the Lord of
the harvest,
That He will thrust forth
labourers
Into His harvest.”
—Matt. ix. 37, 38.
“There were in the church that was
at Antioch certain prophets and
teachers;
” As they ministered to the Lord
and fasted.
The Holy Ghost said:
Separate Me Barnabas and Saul,
For the work whereunto
I have called them.”
—Acts, xiii. 1-4.
The correspondence here shows one hand and design in both; they fit each other, like tenon and mortise, ball and socket. Our Lord, already foreseeing the harvest field waiting for seed and sickle, and the fewness of labourers ready to reap, also foretold us what was to be done. We are to resort from first to last, to Prayer.
We face a vast field of world-wide need. Where is the source of supplies, and who shall furnish workers? Do you answer, they are to be found in the Church, in her colleges and theological halls? But who shall choose and make them willing, send them forth and give them power? What if the Church, like Sarah, be barren of offspring, or having sons and daughters, be loath to give them up to God? What if those whom the Church may choose, have not the self-sacrifice to go, but cling to the easychair of home comfort and careless indulgence?
Hear the voice which spake as never man spake: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send — thrust forth — labourers into His harvest!” Why are our eyes thus to be fixed on God alone? Because He only is the competent Judge of who are fit for His work — because He only can make them willing, can train them to greater competency and higher efficiency, and then thrust them forth into the actual field.
This is the law, and of this law the narrative before us is both example and illustration. The mother church at Jerusalem was the natural cradle of missionaries to the gentiles; yet God passes her by, and at the breast of her eldest gentile daughter suckles His first messengers to the heathen. The first two missionaries selected are neither of them from Palestine: one is a Levite from Cyprus, the other a converted persecutor and blasphemer from Cilicia.
The Holy Spirit is the one prominent personality in their appointment. He spake in an audible voice and named the very men — declared, ‘’I have called them,” and demanded that they should be separated unto Himself. All that the Church at Antioch had to do was to hear and heed this Voice from above. In laying hands upon them and sending them away, those disciples took no initiative step, but followed where the Spirit went before, ordaining and separating those whom He had first ordained and separated. Our last glimpse of them as they depart recalls not the action of the Church but of the Spirit: ‘’So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed.” Christ’s words thus find an exact example. The Church prays the Lord of the Harvest, and takes no other step until He lays His hand on the very men He has chosen.
Not only this history, but all history, illustrates the same law. We cannot raise up luorknicn. We do not know God’s chosen men and women. Our wisdom is folly; our steps will be missteps and mistakes. We must resort to prayer. At our peril we seek to multiply workmen by human means. God must call, select, separate and send forth, those whom He ordains — who hear His call and willingly offer themselves; those on whom He sets His seal in their conscious calling to His work and evident knowledge of Him, those who prove their fitness by their passion for souls and the fulness of the Spirit — upon such the Church may safely lay hands, commissioning them with such authority as she can confer. All other choice of labourers is premature, officious, unsafe.
This book of the Acts opens with the election of an Apostle to fill out the original number. Peter is here conspicuous, and not the Spirit of God. It was before the day of Pentecost had set this Divine Leader in the foreground of Church history. Of Matthias we hear nothing more; but, later on, God in His own marvellous way makes choice of Saul of Tarsus, and of his career the rest of the New Testament history is full. Hence many reverent students of the Word have been constrained to ask whether, in the supplying of Judas’ place, Peter was not hasty, acting in advance of the Spirit’s leading; whether Matthias be not an example of a man chosen of men but not called of the Spirit, owned of men rather than recognized of God.
Whatever may be thought of Peter’s course on this occasion, no reader can compare the first and the thirteenth chapters of the Acts without feeling the marked contrast. In one case the leading steps are obviously human; in the other, as obviously superhuman; and while we must resort to doubtful tradition to follow Matthias further, Paul was the most active missionary of all history.
The New Acts of the Apostles adds emphasis to this lesson. The Potter sits at His wheel, with the clay in His hand. He needs the earthen vessel to bear His name to the gentiles, and He moulds it Himself, and sometimes out of material the most unpromising, and into shapes most strange. But He knows what He wants and can use. The Church has her faultless machinery of pulpit and pastorate, home-training and theological school. The State erects great universities, and sets running the golden wheels of scholarly culture, at which preside the skilful hands of great educators. But all these never yet moulded one apostle or turned out of human clay one true man. The shelves of man’s great pottery stand to-day full of choice wares — polished porcelain, hand-painted with oriental designs and occidental art — brilliant and costly products of education, rated at the highest market-price, graceful and ornamental, the pride of nineteenth century scholarship. Yet, how often the Divine Potter passes them all by, and takes instead a rude, crude lump of earth from the slime pits, full of flaws and defects, and shapes it beneath His own hand as He wills. Then He puts it into His furnace, and in fires of hot trial bakes it into hardness and firmness, and glazes it with an unearthly lustre. Man’s fine delicate wares cannot stand the fire, and crack with harsh handling. God’s earthenware may be called common, but hard blows will not break it, and in fierce flames it only takes on a new glory like the face of Him whom John saw in apocalyptic vision.
As God only can choose, so He only can train missionary apostles. Human schools often spoil, puffing up with pride of learning and worldly wisdom, self-consciousness and carnal ambition. What an irreverent spirit is it, that under the guise of historical and literary criticism shamelessly and recklessly treads on holy ground, unawed by the burning bush of prophecy or the Shekinah glory of inspired history; that puts the word of God on a level with Homer and Hesiod and Herodotus, Sophocles and Socrates, Plato and Milton, forgetting that only the spiritual man illumined by the Spirit is competent to perceive or receive the revelation of the Spirit. And so it is that God finds humble, uneducated believers more ready to be taught the secrets of His word and will than many of the foremost scholars who lean to their own understanding and are wise in their own eyes.
Strange indeed are the theological schools wherein God trains His workmen. He sent Moses into the sheep pastures of Midian for forty years; Elijah into the caves of Carmel and Horeb; John the Baptist into the wilderness of Judea; Saul, for three years, into the solitudes of Arabia. When that superb Alexandrian orator, Apollos, the Apollo of the early Church, needed to get beyond the baptism of John and learn the way of God more perfectly, God chose two humble disciples, tent-makers at Corinth, and one of them a woman; and their dwelling became a theological school, and Apollos the solitary student. God has his own educators, but they would not be chosen of man; and His own armoury for His soldiers, but it is not stocked with carnal weapons.
As our studies in the New Acts of the Apostles thus compel us to become familiar with the new apostles, no fact is more conspicuous than this fact and law of a divine selection — all the great pioneers and leaders of modern missions have been eminently God-appointed and God-anointed. Again we put this fact boldly to the front — the Church has not led the way in their choice, but they have often, if not always, led the Church. Had the Church chosen, they would not have been selected, for some of them have been a century in advance of their own times, derided as fanatics and fools, apostates of the anvil, the plough and the loom. God has first trained them in His own secret schools, equipped them with weapons forged in the trial fires, then called them out from a reluctant and hostile body; and not a few of them have lived and wrought and died unrecognized as God’s great ones.
This lesson can be learned only by examples, and it should be well learned, for it bears upon the coming age of missions. And here, again, we meet in our study of this grand theme an embarrassment of riches. The names of the consecrated men and women who belong to this new age of missions must be numbered by hundreds, by thousands. To pay even a passing tribute to all, we must use only the most general terms; and many of the most eminent yet survive, and delicacy if not decorum forbids that the story of their heroism should now be written; for there is an anointing which befits only burial, and the spices consecrated for embalming the dead are desecrated when used for anointing the living. It seems best therefore to choose a few representative examples from those who in some department have been pioneers and whose earthly record is complete.
The study of missionary biography reveals a true and remarkable” apostolic succession.” Missions are so vital to Church life that probably should they wholly cease the Church itself would die. Never since the day of Pentecost has Christ been without witnesses. The dark ages were a millennium of death, yet the lamp of testimony, burning however faintly, never went out. No century or generation has been without its missionaries; and these lives have so been linked together, that, since the first link was forged amid the white-heat of Pentecostal fires, this grand succession has continued, without one break or missing link in the chain. Who can fail to see God’s hand in all this? At the same time, in different lands.
without knowledge of each other, messengers have been preparing to work side by side in the great harvest field; or at different times raised up so as to keep up the succession.