The Spirit of Missions

“Ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses unto Me unto the uttermost part of the earth.’’ Acts i :8.

last promise of the Comforter from the lips of our departing Lord connects the mission of the Spirit inseparably with the evangelization of the world. The book of Acts, which is practically a following out of the thought foreshadowed in this great promise, gives us many fine illustrations of the Holy Spirit’s profound interest in sending the Gospel to the heathen world.

In the first place the day of Pentecost itself was a great missionary rally. The people that came there and went from thence were the representatives of every tribe and tongue, and they carried forth a missionary Pentecost and evangel to all the world.

In the next place no sooner had the Holy Ghost got the apostles sufficiently enlarged to go down to Samaria and preach the gospel to their hated cousins, the result of which was an extraordinary revival in Samaria, than the Spirit immediately separated Philip, the leader of this revival, from all His great and absorbing work there, and sent him down to the desert for the one purpose of carrying the gospel to a single heathen hearer, the prince of Ethiopia, and then sending back this man to darkest Africa to be perhaps the pioneer of Christianity in the heart of Ethiopia.

In the next place we find the blessed Spirit taking infinite pains to get Peter out of His conventional narrowness and sufficiently expanded to go as a missionary the next day to the Gentile Cornelius where the second Pentecost came down in mighty power and became the entering wedge not only in Peter’s mind but in the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem for the opening of the door of faith unto the Gentiles.

A little later we find the Holy Spirit organizing a new church on cosmopolitan lines at Antioch as a new center for the evangelization of the heathen world. From this large hearted church the first great missionary movement was sent forth a little later and the two chief ministers of this church were taken from all other work and dedicated to the one business of preaching the Gospel in the regions beyond.

But still the mighty thought of the Holy Spirit moves on and out on yet larger circles. The Council at Jerusalem, the first great ecclesiastical assembly of the Christian Church, is convened as a missionary convention for the purpose of settling the principles that are to regulate the new movement among the Gentile converts. The final deliverance of that great

Council settles for ever the foundations o( Christian missions and states with inspired force and clearness the scope of the great missionary campaign of the Christian Church, namely, a visitation of the Gentiles in this present age for the purpose of gathering out of them a people for His name preparatory to the personal return of the Lord Jesus and the restoration of God’s chosen people, Israel. Henceforth the church understands her business in this great missionary crusade. It is not to convert the world or bring about a Millennium without Christ, but it is to select from every heathen land a people for His name who shall be prepared to welcome Him when He shall come again.

Still the divine program moves on apace. Armed with this new missionary constitution the apostles go forth with fresh zeal and lay out a vast campaign, covering the whole of their own continent of western Asia and revisiting their former mission stations. Suddenly the Holy Spirit calls a halt. Their work was not pleasing to Him. Doubtless there were conversions, large congregations and faithful labors. But something was wrong. ‘’The assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not.” “They were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia.” Wisely they heeded the divine check and tarried at Troas for further instructions. They soon came. In a night vision Paul beheld a man of Mace’ donia beckoning and calling, ‘‘Come over into Macedonia and help us.” In the morning he related the vision and they communed and prayed about it and finally “gathered” that this must be the explanation of the check that had come upon their plans and that the Lord had a new commission and another field for them. It was a crisis more momentous than perhaps they realized. It simply meant that the old continent of Asia had had the Gospel long enough for the present and that Europe now must have a chance. Europe was to be the continent of the future. Here were to arise the mighty political powers of the twentieth century. The political center of gravity had changed and moved westward and the church must follow.

So to-day the Holy Ghost, if we would but hear His voice, would call a halt on much of our religious activity and even our revival plans and the beckoning finger of the “Man of Macedonia” would call us to the new West which has arisen upon our horizon, the Pacific shore, the Sunrise Kingdom, China’s millions and India’s multitudes and would say to us “Arise from your religious selfishness, and if you would have the Pentecostal baptism in all its fulness go forth where the Comforter has already gone before you, and be witnesses unto Me unto the uttermost part of the earth.”