Quiet Talks with World WinnersGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks with World Winners
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
We ought to remind ourselves of just what that word "Church" means in this
connection. It has many meanings. There are at least two that we should
note here in thinking of it as a great winning force. In its broadest
meaning, the word is commonly used for the whole group of church
organizations taken together, the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox,
the Protestant, and the few primitive societies that still retain their
old original organization. In the deeper, less used meaning, it stands
for the body of those men and women everywhere who are trusting Jesus
Christ, and are allied with Him in the purpose of their hearts.
These two meanings, of course, should be the same. All who trust Jesus
should be in the church organizations. And all who are in the
organizations should be there because of their relation to Jesus. Whatever
the facts regarding that may be, the mission of each is the same. And it
is with that mission that we are concerned just now.
Jesus planned that His Church should be a great man-winning and
world-winning organization. <i>The</i> mission of the Church is to take Jesus
to all men. It is God's messenger of His truth to all. In that it is the
direct lineal descendant and heir of the Hebrew nation.
That nation was chosen to be a messenger or missionary nation. That was
the one purpose of its special creation as a nation. It was not to be as
the other nations, in the characteristics that commonly mark strong
nations. It was to be a <i>teacher</i>-nation, receiving its message of truth
direct from God, embodying that message in its own life, personally and
nationally, and giving it out clearly and fully and winsomely to all the
nations of the earth. And, in spite of its failures and breaks, that
mission was accomplished to a remarkable extent.
The Church is its heir. It was born in the Jewish nation. It became the
heir to its world-wide messenger mission. The great commission given by
Jesus as He was leaving is the Church's commission for its great
life-work. It was spoken to the group of Jewish men who were the nucleus
of that body called the Church, that came into being on the day of
Pentecost. That ringing, "Go ye into all the world and preach my gospel to
the whole creation," is the Master's command to the Church which He
brought into being. That is the Church's marching order by which its life
is to be controlled and its faithfulness judged.
The scene of the Church's birth gives a vivid picture of its
world-mission. It was born in a world-gathering. It was a world-church in
its make-up at its birth. Men from all parts of the world became united in
one body by the Spirit's touch that great Church birthday. Its birth-gift,
the power of speaking many tongues, reveals at once the wide sweep of its
service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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