CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FEATURE A SURE WINNER
by W. A. Criswell
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas
T h e s e a r e t h e words of our omnipotent Saviour as we read them in the concluding portion of the Gospel of Matthew. “ All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. . . : and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” The disciple who obeys that command cannot lose. He is as certain of victory as the sun is certain to rise in the morning. The man who obeys this great commission is a sure winner in any election, in any year, in any nation under God’s blue heaven. W ill you notice the vast, all-inclusive circumference of this great assignment? The word “ all” is used four times: “ all authority,” “ all peoples,” “ all things com manded,” “ all the days.” There are four verbs in the great commission and in the original Greek language, the verb “ teach” is in the imperative mood. It is a timeless, aoris- tic imperative— through all time, in all ages, to all men. Herein lies the pertinency of the question of the shoe cob bler, William Carey, when he asked in the convocation of God’s peoples in North Hamptonshire, England in 1789— “whether the commission given to the apostles to teach all nations was an obligation on all men to the end of the world.” The answer to that question is an everlastingly emphatic “yes!” This is God’s will for His disciples to the end of the age. There is a famous painting in which the artist depicts Jesus pointing to the whole world in the presence of the determined and committed faces of his faithful disciples, Peter and John. The whole world is the field— this nation, our neighbor nations and the lands and peoples beyond the seas. When this commission was given, Jesus matched eleven men against the whole creation. He matches our souls against the needs of this present hour. We are to go to the right side of the railroad tracks and to the wrong side of the railroad tracks. We are to go to the down and outs, and to the up and outs. We are to go through our churches, through our missions, through our preaching
and teaching establishments, wherever God will give us opportunity to build them. The birth of the Sunday School movement is to be found in this deep, moving commit ment to reach our people for Christ. In 1780, Robert Raikes, owner and editor of the Gloucester Journal, moved by the neglected children in the streets of his city, organ ized the first Sunday School. He told his story to the world and through the encouragement of his Queen and through the journals of England, the Sunday School movement enveloped the entire globe. In these crowded streets of our vast cities are children who desperately need the teaching ministry afforded by the Word of God. The city streets offer no diplomas; they confer no degrees, but they educate with a terrible preci sion. What these children now are, our national destiny will be tomorrow. “ Behind them in the distance, Are the shadows that I see Of the grown-up men and women That some day they are going to be.” Last year there were over 800,000 boys and girls who entered careers of crime—in murder, armed robbery, lar ceny, rape and other violent and aggravated offenses. The curve of crime statistics is rising in every major Western power under the sun and fearfully so in our own Amer ica. It was not a preacher, but a national political leader who recently said over the radio: “ Lack of moral respon sibility in American life threatens the very foundations of our civilization.” How shall we approach this vast assignment commit ted to us by our Lord? Our methods must be commen surate with the fast, furious pace of our modem day. Principles never change, but methods do. God’s truth, God’s love is the same forever and ever. The old gospel, with its message of hope and redemption, never changes, but the method and the “how” of the mediation of the
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