Quiet Talks with World WinnersGordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Religion
Quiet Talks with World Winners
Gordon, S. D. (Samuel Dickey)
Christian life
It was the Master's plan that His Church should speak all the languages of
the earth then and now and always, as well as the language of heaven, the
language of love. So every man would learn of Jesus in his native speech.
The language of the cradle and of love-making and of the fireside, the
language that most quickly kindles the fires in a man's heart, that was
the language to be used in carrying Jesus to every man. That was Jesus'
plan. The Church was rarely equipped with winning power for a
world-service on its birthday in the gift of tongues.
Of course, this is not the only mission of the Church. That is to say,
there are other purposes necessarily included in this. Taking the Gospel
of Jesus to all men means more than merely taking it and telling it. The
teaching and training and developing of those won to Jesus is an
inseparable part of the Church mission. The great service of worship has
always been recognized as a vital part of the Church life. Sometimes
indeed these have been thought of, and still are thought of, as its only
mission. But they grow distinctly out of the chief mission and are
distinctly contributory and secondary to it. Indeed, they come into being
only through the faithful doing of the chief task. Men were won. Then they
met for worship and for training.
<u>Reaching Out For a World.</u>
The Church of those first years thoroughly understood what its great
mission was to be. The first chapters of the Book of Acts vividly describe
the ideal Church as planned by the Master, and as understood by those who
felt His own personal touch upon themselves. Everybody went. They went to
everybody. They went everywhere. There is pretty clear evidence that they
actually went everywhere that men could go. They held their lives, and
even their property, subject to the one great gripping purpose.
The greatest leader of the first century of the Church, Paul, who
contributed most to its literature and exerted the greatest influence
upon its life, was above all else a missionary leader. He went practically
everywhere. He didn't go hastily, but by carefully thought-out plans. He
won men to Christ, organized them into church societies, taught them, and
sent them out to win others.
He worked in and out of the world's great city centres of his time.
Ephesus, the Asiatic centre, Corinth, the centre of Greek influence, and,
Rome, the centre of the world's governing power, were the scenes of his
longest and most thorough campaigns. His choice of the centres was a
master's strategic choice. For these centres sent their influence out to
the ends of the earth. Paul's body might be in Ephesus or Corinth or Rome,
but his thought and heart were on the world these cities reached by
constant streams of influence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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