CHAPTER XXIV
THE TESTIMONY OF FOREIGN MISSIONS TO THE SUPERINTENDING PROVIDENCE OF GOD BY THE LATE ARTHUR T. PIERSON God is in creation; cosmos would still be chaos with God left out. He is also in events; the whole of mission history is a mystery until read as His story. We are now to look at the proofs of a Superintending Providence of God in foreign missions. The word “providence” literally means forevision, and hence, foreaction—prepa ration for what is foreseen—expressing a divine, invisible rule of this world, including care, control, guidance, as exer cised over both the animate and inanimate creation. In its largest scope it involves foreknowledge and foreordination, preservation and administration, exercised in all places and at all times. For our present purpose the word “providence” may be limited to the divine activity in the entire control of persons and events. This sphere of action and administration, or superintendence, embraces three departments: first, the nat ural or material— creation; second, the spiritual or immaterial —new creation; and third, the intermediate history in which He adapts and adjusts the one to the other, so that even the marred and hostile elements, introduced by sin, are made tribu tary to the final triumph of redemption. Man’s degeneration is corrected in regeneration.; the natural made subservient to 320
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