The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 3

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER 3
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sionary policy, yet this is what they were actually
doing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit thrust them out farther and farther
from Jerusalem and would not permit the work of
evangelization to be retarded. The Holy Spirit
searched for men, fitted them out with power and
wisdom, separated them, and sent them out in due
time, and thus impelled the Church to carry forward
the divine order of expansion as announced by Jesus
when He was wending His way to the Mount of
Olives for His triumphant ascension and royal ses-
sion at the right hand of His Father — Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria, the uttermost part of the earth.

Are we in danger of losing sight of Christ’s mis-
sionary policy? Are we so engrossed in our home,
our congregational, problems, so that we forget to
be witnesses for Him in “Judea, Samaria, and the
uttermost part of the earth”? Are we truly evan-
gelistically minded? A periodical published among
us recently expressed the fear that we are less evan-
gelistic than any other church-body in the country.
Would it not be terrible if it were actually so?
Much more terrible for us than for any other body,
since we have God’s pure Gospel,—we are con-
vinced as are no others that the Gospel of Jesus
is the only means of salvation, and WE HAVE
THE MAN- AND MONEY-POWER.

We have the MAN-POWER, for we have liter-
ally dozens of pastors who are standing in the
market-place waiting to be called to work. And
besides we shall have almost three hundred young
men graduating from our seminaries and teachers’
colleges next year who will be eager to work. Yes,
God has furnished us a comparatively greater
amount of man-power than has been allotted to most
church-bodies, and surely God will want us to have
a good excuse for not putting them to work in the
harvest that is ripe and overripe if we should be
guilty of neglecting to send them into the harvest.

And we have the MONEY-POWER. Despite
all cries of hard times we are in possession of suffi-
cient means to send the idle laborers into the har-
vest. It wouldn’t be right on the part of God to
give us the laborers and the opportunity to go into
ripe harvest-fields and not to give us also the neces-
sary means to set the laborers to work. And as sure
as we are God’s children; as sure as we have tasted
the sweetness of redemption; as sure as we are
Jesus’ own, just so sure we shall do our utmost to
save the ripening harvest from being wasted and
falling a prey to Satan’s harvest hands.

Dear readers, I tremble at the thought what will
happen should we in the face of our conviction

that “God wills it” neglect to do what is so plainly
our duty to our fellow-men who have not yet been
brought into Christ’s barn and granary. Some
years ago I read an account of a journey taken by
a traveler in Palestine and other Bible lands. He
stated that every few miles his horse’s hoofs would
strike against some ruin and that often the ruin
would be the remains of an old Christian church.
Where now the Mohammedan Bedouin herds his
flocks and pitches his tents, there had been flourish-
ing towns and beautiful Christian churches. Every-
where he came across traces of old Christian occu-
pation in the form of pictures of Jesus in stone and
Christian crosses on stones. Why have the bloom-
ing gardens become howling wildernesses, and why
are the former flourishing cities now only ruins?
Why does the foot of the ruthless Turk now tread
where once the followers of the Lamb had their
homes? Why this sad spectacle? Why? Because
those churches grew slothful and disobedient. Re-
ceiving the Gospel, they failed to bring it to others.
They neglected to share the tidings of great joy with
their fellow-men. The'people that surrounded them
did not interest them. They turned the light so
that they could see it, but cared not if others were
in the dark. And this selfishness brought forth its
fruit of indifference towards God’s Word and will,
till God let fall upon them the scourge of His wrath
on account of their sins. Their very neighbors to
whom they should have brought the Gospel of peace
fell upon them with fire and sword, destroyed their
churches, slew them by thousands, and compelled
most of the remainder to embrace the false religion
of Mohammed. To-day there remain in those coun-
tries a few poor Christians, hardly to be distin-
guished in their ignorance and superstition from the
Mohammedans, who tolerate them with scorn.
That is the story of one Church; but it is the
story not only of the Church of Syria, but also of
North Africa and other once Christian countries
where the Christians became self-absorbed and for-
got their missionary character, which resulted in
God’s removing the candlestick from amongsthem.
The Church of Christ cannot forget its missionary
duty, its main reason for being, and not suffer dire
consequences as a result of such neglect. The
Church of the Old Testament degenerated, through
growing selfishness, into the scribes and Pharisees
of Jesus’ day; primitive Christianity, once so
zealous in carrying out its Lord’s Great Commis-
sion, losts its old missionary spirit and as a result
became unprogressive and worldly, spending all its
means upon itself, and then lapsed into the dead