November, 1933
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
378
point where advocates o f Re-Thinking Missions go astray is in their interpretation o f what that emphasis consists. They have completely ignored Christ’s emphatic declara tions: “ I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” ; “ I am the way” ; “ No man cometh unto the Father, but by me” ; “ For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Our Lord Jesus Christ made Himself the one essential to salvation. When some came to Him asking, “ What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” the reply o f Jesus was: “ This is the work o f God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” This was the testi mony also o f the Apostle Peter and the other witnesses mentioned in the book of Acts. Yet in spite o f all that Christ Himself and the writers o f the Epistles and the book o f Acts have to say about the necessity o f believing in Jesus Christ for salvation, modern men would ignore the state ments and continue to spin their smug philosophies. So far as the Laymen’s Commission is concerned, these scrip tures might as well never have been written. The position that these men take illustrates a fact stated by Professor Bruner some time a go : “ Modernism differs less from the religious mysticism of the Orient than it differs from the faith of the Bible and the church.” The laymen in ques tion and their financier have much more in common with the Oriental religions than with the proclamation o f the Saviour, virgin born, who died a vicarious, atoning death, and who was raised from the dead. Humanistic philosophy has seized our colleges, even though these institutions were founded and supported by the gifts o f Christians. This same philosophy is now trying to seize the missionary movement, to make it an agent of propaganda for the eastern world. Shall we believers in Jesus Christ cooperate? N o ! A thousand times no! Shall we submit? N o! The book o f Acts and the book Re-Thinking Missions cannot get along very well together. If one is right, the other is wrong. The one says there is nothing unique in Christianity. The other says the Christian message stands alone; it proclaims one Saviour, Jesus Christ the Son o f God, the only Saviour offered to all the world. Let us insist upon the absolute uniqueness o f the Christian message! The Mission o f the Church hen G od called home His faithful servant, Dr. I. M. Haldeman, on September 27, a voice was si lenced that has long contended nobly for the faith, For nearly half a century, Dr. Haldeman was the famous pas tor o f the historic First Baptist Church o f New York. On one occasion, speaking o f the mission of the church, he said: “ The church is not here to decorate the world and sing siren songs of hope, cry peace when there is no peace, but to save men out of the world. There are three ways in which the church is to do this: First, by preaching the gospel; second, by invoking and surrendering to the oper ative power of the Holy Ghost; third, by individual rescue work, the impingement of personal life upon personal life . . . The church is to go forth, and with unhesitating utter ance proclaim the immense fact that, ‘as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son o f man be lifted up.’ . . . Let the church in the hour of her opportun ity be faithful, and while testifying of a living and coming Lord, not only invite men to surrender to Him and be saved, but in all steadfastness o f truth lift up her voice of warn ing to a world each day rushing on to judgment.”
any other : for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (v. 12). T he U nique P ower of the M issionary This section of Scripture, the fourth chapter o f Acts, reveals, first o f all, that the power o f the missionary is unique. Verse 8 begins with the phrase, “ then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost.” Contrariwise, you will search in vain fop. any réference to the work o f the Holy Spirit in the pages which come from the report o f these modern commissioners. You would gather from them that mis sionary qualifications are only materialistic. It is agreed that it is necessary that the witnesses who carry the gospel to other lands should have the best possible educational equipment; but some o f us understand from the Word of God and church history that the real resource o f the mis sionary is his spiritual equipment. It is not the call o f the missionary board, but the call o f the Spirit o f God that makes the missionary. The great essential is not natural endowment, but spiritual enduement. The right kind of training is splendid, but unless a man has been under the tutelage o f Christ, he is not qualified to serve on the foreign field, or anywhere else. T he U nique M essage of the M issionary The same scripture, Acts 4, shows us that the message o f the missionary is unique. In the twelfth verse, Jesus Christ is presented as the only Saviour o f the world; in verse ten, that Saviour is presented as crucified and risen : “ Be it known unto you all, and to all the people o f Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ o f Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.” This is a unique message. Has Hinduism such a gospel ? Is there in Shintoism o f Confucianism such a promise o f salvation through one who died and rose again? On page 46 of the report we read : But perhaps the chief hope for an important deepening of self-knowledge on the part of Christendom is by way of a more thoroughgoing sharing o f its life with the life of the Orient. Sharing may mean spreading abroad what one has; but sharing becomes real only as it becomes mutual, running in both directions, each teaching, each learning, each with the other meeting the unsolved prob lems o f both. What a far cry it is from the Apostle Peter in the fourth chapter o f Acts to these men o f 1933 ! Yet the latter think they are building on the same foundation ! And they think they are giving the same message ! “ Sharing” is their idea ! Take the best out o f Christianity and the best out o f other religions ; this seems to be their thought. But the Apostle Peter says, referring to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, “ There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” T he P oint of E mphasis The whole volume, Re-Thinking Missions, carries an attack on doctrine. The writers say again and again that there must be less emphasis on doctrine. One quotation, taken from page 95, is typical of others : The Christianity which is to convince and bring spiritual content to thoughtful and serious-minded persons in any part o f the world today must put the emphasis where the founder o f Christianity himself put it from the first, namely, upon the realization and fulfillment of life and upon those methods and processés and energies by which life can be brought to its divine possibilities. Every earnest Christian would agree with the first part o f this sentence. Surely we must put the emphasis where the Founder of Christianity put it from the first; but the
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