Definition, or, What Is Meant by the Evangelization of the World in This Generation

The closing years of the nineteenth century have witnessed in all parts of Protestant Christendom an unprecedented development of missionary life and activity among young men and young women. A remarkable manifestation of this interest in the extension of the Kingdom of Christ has been among students. The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, taking its rise at a conference of American and Canadian students in 1886, has spread from land to land, until it has now assumed an organized form in all Protestant countries. It has been transplanted even to the colleges of mission lands, so that to-day the Christian students of the Occident and the Orient, of the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres, are united in the sublime purpose of enthroning Jesus Christ as King among all nations and races of men. The reality of their consecration is proved by the fact that during the past decade over two thousand of them, after completing a thorough college or university preparation, have gone out from North America and Europe under the regular missionary societies of the Church to work in non-Christian lands. A still larger number are equipping themselves for similar service abroad.

In several countries, notably in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Ireland, the members of this Movement have adopted as their watchword, The Evangelization of the World in this Generation. A great number of their fellow-students who, although not volunteers for foreign missions, recognize their equal burden of responsibility for the world's evangelization, have taken the same watchword as a molding influence in their life plans. The idea is taking strong hold, also, on a multitude of other men and women. Eminent leaders of the various branches of the Church of Christ, both in Christian lands and on the mission field, have endorsed the Watchword and have urged the desirability of its adoption by all Christians as expressive of an inspiring ideal as well as of a primary and urgent duty.

A watchword which has in so brief a time gained a powerful hold on the minds of the future leaders of thought, and which is already beginning to make itself felt in the Church, is manifestly worthy of careful consideration. In such a consideration it is important that we clearly understand at the outset what is meant by the evangelization of the world in this generation. It means to give all men an adequate opportunity to know Jesus Christ as their Saviour and to become His real disciples. This involves such a distribution of missionary agencies as will make the knowledge of the Gospel accessible to all men. It would seem that Christ logically implied this when He commanded His followers, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation;" when He told them to "make disciples of all the nations;" when He enjoined upon them "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem;" and when He said unto them, "Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Obviously this does not express all that He in His final charges has given us to do; but it does define the first and most important part of our missionary obligation, — first because knowledge of Christ precedes acceptance of Him, and most important because on a knowledge of Christ depends all else involved in the Great Commission.

The Gospel which is to be preached to every creature is the Gospel which St. Paul and the other early Christians preached. Its main outlines are set forth in the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians, in which St. Paul sums up the Gospel which he had preached to them: "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures." The many side-lights on the preaching of the Apostles given in the Acts and in the Epistles make plain that the substance and burden of their message or gospel were the facts about Jesus Christ — His wonderful life and works and teachings; His death for the remission of sins; His resurrection and ascension; His constant intercession; His sending of the Holy Spirit to convict, to transform, to guide and to energize men; and the promise of His own return.

What is it to preach the Gospel? The Greek words principally used in the New Testament mean to proclaim as heralds, or to transmit good news. Other words or expressions less frequently used are to talk or converse, to reason or discuss, to testify or bear witness, to teach and to exhort. Examples of all these forms of preaching, or of communicating a knowledge of Christ and His mission to men, are to be found in the practice of the early Church. The qualifications of the worker or speaker, and the circumstances in which he found himself placed, determined the manner of his presentation of the truth as it is in Christ.

So to-day we find the missionaries proclaiming and applying the Gospel in sermons or addresses in mission halls; expounding and discussing the truth in bazars, 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; teaching the system of Christian doctrine in schools and colleges; circulating 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 individuals 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 believeth.

The Gospel must be preached in such a manner as will constitute an intelligent and intelligible presentation of the message. This necessitates on the part of the preacher such a knowledge of the language, the habits of thought and the moral condition of those who are to be evangelized as will enable them to understand what is said. Above all it involves the accompanying power and work of the Holy Spirit.

If the Gospel is to be preached to all men it obviously must be done while they are living. The evangelization of the world in this generation, therefore, means the preaching of the Gospel to those who are now living. To us who are responsible for preaching the Gospel it means in our life-time; to those to whom it is to be preached it means in their life-time. The unevangelized for whom we as Christians are responsible live in this generation; and the Christians whose duty it is to present Christ to them live in this generation. The phrase "in this generation," therefore, strictly speaking has a different meaning, for each person. In the last analysis, if the world is to be evangelized in this or any generation it will be because a sufficient number of individual Christians recognize and assume their personal obligation to the undertaking.

To consider negatively the meaning of the evangelization of the world in this generation may serve to prevent some misconceptions. It does not mean the conversion of the world within the generation. Our part consists in bringing the Gospel to bear on unsaved men. The results are with the men whom we would reach and with the Spirit of God. We have no warrant for believing that all who have the Gospel preached unto them will accept it. On the other hand, however, we have a right to expect that the faithful preaching of the Gospel will be attended with conversions. We should not present Christ in an aimless and unexpectant manner, but with the definite purpose of influencing those who hear us to believe on Him and become His disciples. Like St. Paul at Thessalonica, we should preach the Gospel "in much assurance." We are not responsible for the results of our work, however, but for our fidelity and thoroughness.

It does not imply the hasty or superficial preaching of the Gospel. Professor Warneck wisely emphasizes the truth that the "rejection [of the Gospel] can be made only with knowledge, and that this can be the case only when the announcing has been completely understood." The deliverance of the message must be effective, as lawyers would say, from the point of view of the hearer as well as of the speaker. This is necessary in order that the hearer may have full responsibility for his choice. So the work of evangelization is not an easy task. At rare times it may be accomplished by proclaiming the message once or twice; it may necessitate, however, not only frequent repetition of the facts about Christ but also long and patient instruction. The missionary must reckon with and surmount difficulties incident to language, age, grade of intelligence, heredity and environment. If the enterprise of world evangelization calls for urgent and aggressive action, with equal emphasis it calls for perseverance and thoroughness. It is maintained that the idea of the evangelization of the world in this generation does not do violence to such a conception of the proclamation of the Gospel.

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 principles of Christian civilization in all parts of the world. If we may judge by history, that would require centuries. Of what country to-day can it be said that it is governed by the principles of Jesus Christ?

It does not involve the entertaining or supporting of any special theory of eschatology. For example, the holding of this idea does not, as some have assumed, necessitate a belief in the premillennial view of the coming of Christ. Nor does it stand in the service of any other particular theory of eschatology. Men entertaining widely different opinions as to the second advent of Christ accept alike this view of world-wide evangelization. Moreover, in advocating the evangelization of the world in this generation a limit is not set within which God is to accomplish any given part of His purpose for the world. A period is described, however, in which Christians should discharge their responsibility toward an unevangelized world.

It is not to be regarded as a prophecy. Stress is placed on what may be done and ought to be done, not on what is actually to occur. Is it not possible thus to urge a duty without venturing a prediction?

It does not minimize, but rather emphasizes, the importance of the regular forms of missionary work. A clearer understanding of the subject will be gained by considering the relation of the principal methods of missionary work to the enterprise of world-wide evangelization. These are educational, literary, medical and evangelistic. These methods must not be regarded as antagonistic to one another. On the contrary, where their true relationship is recognized and maintained, they support and strengthen each other. Each is indispensable to the common object of world evangelization. "The evangelistic method," as Dr. James S. Dennis has observed, "must not be regarded as monopolizing the evangelistic aim, which should itself pervade all the other methods." In a non-Christian land everything which manifests the spirit of Christ is in an important sense evangelistic. Every method should be employed which makes the Gospel intelligible and acceptable to men.

The various means of carrying on missionary work are well summarized in the words of the resolution framed and introduced by Alexander Duff at the Union Missionary Convention held in New York in 1854, and unanimously adopted by the delegates:

"Resolved, As the general sense of this Convention, that the chief means of divine appointment for the evangelization of the world are — the faithful teaching and preaching of the pure gospel of salvation by duly qualified ministers and other holy and consistent disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ — accompanied with prayer and savingly applied by the grace of the Holy Spirit, such means, in the providential application of them by human agency, embracing not merely instruction by the living voice, but the translation and judicious circulation of the whole written word of God — the preparation and circulation of evangelical tracts and books — as well as any other instrumentalities fitted to bring the word of God home to men's souls — together with any processes which experience may have sanctioned as the most efficient in raising up everywhere indigenous ministers and teachers of the living Gospel."

Educational work sustains a vital relation to that of evangelization. In some parts of the world more people have been led to accept Christ through educational missionary effort than through any other agency. George Bowen maintained that a majority of all converts in Western India were the result of educational work. Mission schools have been the most successful agency in reaching certain classes, for example, the higher castes in India. One of the few ways of bringing a knowledge of Christ to Mohammedans, as in Egypt and India, has been through education. This also has been one of the chief forces in opening the zenanas to women missionaries. In Japan, mission schools proved to be as much an entering wedge as did medical work in China. Education has done more than any other agency to undermine heathen superstitions and false systems of belief, thus facilitating the work of preaching the Gospel by removing false ideas which already had possession of the mind. It would be a calamity to the missionary enterprise to leave the mighty weapon of education to be wielded alone by agencies hostile to the spread of Christianity. Education, from the point of view of evangelization, is essential as a means for raising up and training native preachers and teachers and Christian leaders for all departments of life. If mission schools fail as an evangelistic agency, it is not because they teach, nor because of what they teach, but because they lose sight of the evangelistic aim, or because they are not conducted by men of evangelistic spirit.

Literary missionary work is of very great value in promoting evangelization, both as a direct agency and also as supplementary to all other forms of missionary activity. The evangelization of a people necessitates native evangelizing agencies, and these cannot be developed without the Bible. Without the translation of the Bible into the various vernaculars and without the development of Christian literature in them, it would be impossible to diffuse the knowledge of the Gospel throughout the world in a generation. Vernacular Christian literature, especially of a practical, spiritual and energizing kind, is also of great service both in spreading the knowledge of the Gospel and in building up Christian character.

Medical work also constitutes a necessary factor in the great work of evangelizing the world. It affords access to all classes of people, the highest as well as the lowest. It disarms hostility and breaks down prejudices and barriers, thus making possible the preaching of the Gospel in communities otherwise inaccessible. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop reports that in Central Asia she found fanatical Mohammedan tribes who, when asked whether they would receive a resident missionary, invariably replied that they would do so if he were a doctor.

Medical missionary work is an incontrovertible evidence of Christianity and of the power of the Gospel. The ministry of healing also wins the heart, and thus gives acceptance and added meaning and power to the message of salvation. Dr. John Lowe, a leading authority on this subject, maintains that medical work is "one of the most powerful, effective, and directly evangelistic agencies which the Church possesses." This is true where the pervading and controlling aim in all the work is, as it should be, evangelistic. Where this is not the case, it is a misnomer to speak of the physician as a medical missionary. The true medical missionary will constantly commend the Gospel to his patients by word as well as by deed, and will be satisfied with no lower aim than that of winning them to Christ.

Notwithstanding the value of other methods, the proclamation of the Gospel by the living voice will always hold the pre-eminent place. The spoken Gospel is absolutely essential to the propagation of the Christian faith. The command is, "Preach the gospel." It was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe." Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" The value of medical, educational, literary and all other forms of missionary activity, is measured by the extent to which they prepare the way for the Gospel message, promote its acceptance, manifest its spirit and benefits, multiply points of contact with human souls, and increase the number and efficiency of those who preach Christ. The preaching of the crucified and risen Saviour always has been and always will be the power of God — the most effective means of leading men into everlasting life.

The evangelization of the world in this generation should not be regarded as an end in itself. The Church will not have fulfilled her task when the Gospel has been preached to all men. Such evangelization must be followed by the baptism of converts, by their organization into churches, by building them up in knowledge, faith and character, and by enlisting and training them for service. While the missionary enterprise should not be diverted from the immediate and controlling aim of preaching the Gospel where Christ has not been named, and while this work should have the right of way as the most urgent part of our task, it must ever be looked upon as but a means to the mighty and inspiring object of enthroning Christ in individual life, in family life, in social life, in national life, in international relations, in every relationship of mankind; and, to this end, of planting and developing in all non-Christian lands self-supporting, self-directing and self-propagating churches which shall become so thoroughly rooted in the convictions and hearts of the people that if Christianity were to die out in Europe and America, it would abide in purity and as a missionary power in its new homes and would live on through the centuries.