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THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
eth”-—The Evangelization of the World In This Generation. Iir. Our Responsibility. For 1900 years the Church has had just this same command that Paul had, and yet two-thirds of the present pop ulation; of the world have not yet heard the “Gospel of tbe grace of God.” We raised more money in our last Liberty Loan than the Church has given since Jesus gave His commission to evanzel- ize the heathen world. We have equip ped, trained, and landed in France, in a little more than one year, over 1,000,- 000 men, and every real American is proud of it. But our Lord Jesus Christ has less than 30,000 missionaries to carry His message of life to 1,000,000,- 000 heathen. Remember, in closing, that our Lord’s command was to evangelize the world, not to win the world for Christ. Says Dr. John R. Mott, in the book already quoted, “the evangelization of the world in this generation . . . does not mean the conversion of the world in this generation. Our part consists in bringing the Gospel to bear on unsaved men. The results are with the men whom we reach and with thè Spirit of God. We have no warrant for believ ing that all who have the Gospel preached unto them will accept it. . . . It does not signify the Christianization of the world, if by that is meant the permeating of the world with Christian ideas and the dominance of the princi ples of Christian civilization in ajl parts of the world . . . Of what country today can it be said that it is governed by the principles of Jesus Christ?”
earthquake that opened the prison doors, broke the prisoners’ bonds, brought the jailer running in dismay and despair, and wrung from him the cry, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” The missionaries “talked” to him of Christ, and he and his household, like Lydia and hers, believed and were bap tized. , This was Paul’s “method of approach.’’ Direct, wasn’t it? In these days, of “classification” Paul and Silas would be recorded on the Board’s roster as plain “evangel istic misisonaries.” There are edu cational missionaries,” and “med ical missionaries,” and “literary mis sionaries,” and all of these are neces sary as means to an end, but the only excuse any of them can have for being on the pay roll of a Missionary Board is that they are bringing men to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Says Dr. John R. Mott: “Today we find the missionaries proclaiming and apply ing the Gospel in sermons or addresses in .mission halls; expounding and dis cussing the truth in bazaars, inns and street chapels; conversing about Christ as they visit from house to house, and as they mingle with the people socially at feasts and public gatherings; teach ing the system of Christian doctrine in schools and colleges, circullating the printed Scriptures and other Christian literature; illustrating the Gospel by Christ-like ministry to the body, and by the powerful object lessons of the consistent Christian life and of the well ordered Christian home; and ever pressing the claims of Christ upon indi viduals- as they are met within the sphere of one’s daily calling. In all these and in other ways the Christian worker by voice and by life, by pen and by printed page, in season and out of season, seeks to set forth those facts about Christ which in all lands have been found to be the power of God unto the salvation of every man that believ-
The topic set forth in this lesson is unfortunate. It suggests an impossible motive for service. We are not told any where to “win the world for Christ”
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