All Articles For The Lord Gave the Word

Prof. R. Decker, the editor of this rubric, asked me to write an article for his rubric. His request was that I give a report of the work we have begun in Birmingham. 

Blessed be God!  In his epistle to the Ephesians, the great missionary, the apostle Paul, approaches the church with the beautiful doxology, Blessed be God! 

As we saw in our previous discussion, Jesus limited His earthly ministry almost entirely to the Jews, or, as He expressed it, to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When the Syro-Phoenician woman pleaded with Him to heal her daughter and the disciples were inclined to send her away, Jesus told the disciples that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

For whom did Christ die?  The most common answer is: For all men. 

It is commonly asserted that those who insist on a particular atonement are, nevertheless, compelled to ignore this doctrine in their preaching, particularly in the mission field. Even if one is convinced that Christ died only for the elect, he cannot say so when he is preaching to unbelievers or even to a mixed audience. Actually in the mission field the preacher is compelled to declare to all men promiscuously: “Christ died for you.”  This is what Dr. Daane literally writes in the Reformed Journal of December, 1464.

It is evident, I think, that the subject of missions revolves around the preaching of the gospel. There are those, even in our day, who deny this. But these denials come from liberal circles. And, although we shall turn to this in some future article, the Lord willing, it seems that this is sufficiently agreed upon by more of those interested in our subject to assume its truth for the present. It is therefore, to the general importance of the preaching of the gospel that we turn first of all in this series of articles. 

We are discussing the relationship between the preaching of the gospel as the sole instrument of mission work and the coming of the Lord. It is our intention to demonstrate how the fact that this present dispensation is the age of the Lord’s return determines the character and principles of missions. We have already shown how that, inasmuch as this dispensation is the age of Christ’s coming, this dispensation is the age of the signs of Christ’s coming.

Any discussion of mission work in the early church after Pentecost must necessarily include some reference to the apostle Paul.

By the end of the Apostolic age (100 A.D.) the Church had pretty much been established in all parts of the Roman empire and the Mediterranean world. It is indeed true that “the small mustard seed of the upper room at Pentecost had grown into a mighty tree. And that by the power of Christ Who gathers His church by His Word and Spirit.” (cf. Rev. C. Hanko’s article in the previous issue). In this article we shall attempt to trace the history of the growth and spread of the church in the four centuries immediately following the death of...

In my previous article I spoke of the fact that Christ laid down His life for His sheep. In answer to Daane’s question, What does a repentant sinner believe? the answer is: he believes in Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd Who laid down His life for His sheep. He embraces Christ as His personal Savior, and experiences His power to forgive sins, to feed his hungry soul with the Bread of life and to give him life eternal. In faith he surrenders himself to that Lord with his whole being for time and for eternity.