“One day, about this time, I heard an unusual bleating
amongst my few remaining goats, as if they were being killed
or tortured. I rushed to the goat-house and found myself
instantly surrounded by a band of armed men. The snare
had caught me, their weapons were raised, and I expected
the next moment to die. But God moved me to talk to them
firmly and kindly; I warned them of their sin and its punishment;
I showed them that only my love and pity led me to
remain there seeking their good, and that if they killed me
they killed their best friend. I further assured them I was
not afraid to die, for at death my Saviour would take me to
heaven and that I would be far happier than on earth; and
that my only desire to live was to make them happy by teaching
them to love Jesus Christ my Lord. I then lifted up my
hands and eyes to the heavens and prayed aloud for Jesus to
bless all my Tannese and to protect me or take me to heaven
as He saw to be for the best. One after another they slipped
away from me and Jesus restrained them again. Did ever
mother run more quickly to protect her crying child in
danger’s hour than the Lord Jesus hastens to answer believing
prayer and send help to His servants in His own good
time and way, so far as it shall be for their good and His
glory.”—John G. Paton.
Missions mean the giving of the Gospel to
those of Adam’s fallen race who have
never heard of Christ and His atoning
death. It means the giving to others the opportunity
to hear of salvation through our Lord Jesus
Christ, and allowing others to have a chance to
receive, and accept the blessings of the Gospel, as
we have it in Christianised lands. It means that
those who enjoy the benefits of the Gospel give
these same religious advantages and Gospel privileges
to all of mankind. Prayer has a great deal to
do with missions. Prayer is the hand-maid of missions.
The success of all real missionary effort is
dependent on prayer. The life and spirit of missions
are the life and spirit of prayer. Both prayer
and missions were born in the Divine Mind.
Prayer and missions are bosom companions.
Prayer creates and makes missions successful, while
missions lean heavily on prayer. In the seventy-second
Psalm, one which deals with the Messiah,
it is stated that “prayer shall be made for him continually.”
Prayer would be made for His coming
to save man, and prayer would be made for the
success of the plan of salvation which He would
come to set on foot.
The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the spirit of missions.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was Himself the first
missionary. His promise and advent composed the
first missionary movement. The missionary spirit
is not simply a phase of the Gospel, not a mere
feature of the plan of salvation, but is its very spirit
and life. The missionary movement is the Church
of Jesus Christ marching in militant array, with the
design of possessing the whole world of mankind
for Christ. Whoever is touched by the Spirit of
God is fired by the missionary spirit. An anti-missionary
Christian is a contradiction in terms.
We might say that it would be impossible to be an
anti-missionary Christian because of the impossibility
for the Divine and human forces to put men
in such a state as not to align them with the missionary
cause. Missionary impulse is the heart-beat
of our Lord Jesus Christ, sending the vital forces
of Himself through the whole body of the Church.
The spiritual life of God’s people rises or falls with
the force of those heart-beats. When these life
forces cease, then death ensues. So that anti-missionary
Churches are dead Churches, just as
anti-missionary Christians are dead Christians.
The craftiest wile of Satan, if he cannot prevent
a great movement for God, is to debauch the movement.
If he can put the movement first, and the
spirit of the movement in the background, he has
materialised and thoroughly debauched the movement.
Mighty prayer only will save the movement
from being materialised, and keep the spirit of the
movement strong and controlling.
The key of all missionary success is prayer.
That key is in the hands of the home churches.
The trophies won by our Lord in heathen lands will
be won by praying missionaries, not by professional
workers in foreign lands. More especially
will this success be won by saintly praying in the
churches at home. The home church on her knees
fasting and praying, is the great base of spiritual
supplies, the sinews of war, and the pledge of victory
in this dire and final conflict. Financial resources
are not the real sinews of war in this fight.
Machinery in itself carries no power to break down
heathen walls, open effectual doors and win heathen
hearts to Christ. Prayer alone can do the deed.
Aaron and Hur did not more surely give victory
to Israel through Moses, than a praying church
through Jesus Christ will give victory on every
battlefield in heathen lands. It is as true in foreign
fields as it is in home lands. The praying church
wins the contest. The home church has done but
a paltry thing when she has furnished the money to
establish missions and support her missionaries.
Money is important, but money without prayer is
powerless in the face of the darkness, the wretchedness
and the sin in unchristianised lands. Prayerless
giving breeds barrenness and death. Poor
praying at home is the solution of poor results in
the foreign field. Prayerless giving is the secret of
all crises in the missionary movements of the day,
and is the occasion of the accumulation of debts in
missionary boards.
It is all right to urge men to give of their means
to the missionary cause. But it is much more important
to urge them to give their prayers to the
movement. Foreign missions need, today, more the
power of prayer than the power of money. Prayer
can make even poverty in the missionary cause
move on amidst difficulties and hindrances. Much
money without prayer is helpless and powerless in
the face of the utter darkness and sin and wretchedness
on the foreign field.
This is peculiarly a missionary age. Protestant
Christianity is stirred as it never was before in the
line of aggression in pagan lands. The missionary
movement has taken on proportions that awaken
hope, kindle enthusiasm, and which demand the attention,
if not the interest, of the coldest and the
most lifeless. Nearly every Church has caught the
contagion, and the sails of their proposed missionary
movements are spread wide to catch the favouring
breezes. Herein is the danger just now, that
the missionary movement will go ahead of the missionary
spirit. This has always been the peril of
the Church, losing the substance in the shade, losing
the spirit in the outward shell, and contenting itself
in the mere parade of the movement, putting the
force of effort in the movement and not in the
spirit.
The magnificence of this movement may not only
blind us to the spirit of it, but the spirit which
should give life and shape to the movement may be
lost in the wealth of the movement as the ship,
borne by favouring winds, may be lost when these
winds swell to a storm.
Not a few of us have heard eloquent and earnest
speeches stressing the imperative need of money for
missions where we have heard one stressing the imperative
need of prayer. All our plans and devices
drive to the one end of raising money, not to
quicken faith and promote prayer. The common
idea among Church leaders is that if we get the
money, prayer will come as a matter of course.
The very reverse is the truth. If we get the Church
at the business of praying, and thus secure the spirit
of missions, money will more than likely come as a
matter of course. Spiritual agencies and spiritual
forces never come as a matter of course. Spiritual
duties and spiritual factors, left to the “matter of
course” law, will surely fall out and die. Only
the things which are stressed live and rule in the
spiritual realm. They who give, will not necessarily
pray. Many in our churches are liberal givers who
are noted for their prayerlessness. One of the
evils of the present-day missionary movement lies
just there. Giving is entirely removed from
prayer. Prayer receives scant attention, while giving
stands out prominently. They who truly pray
will be moved to give. Praying creates the giving
spirit. The praying ones will give liberally and
self-denyingly. He who enters his closet to God,
will also open his purse to God. But perfunctory,
grudging, assessment-giving kills the very spirit of
prayer. Emphasising the material to the neglect
of the spiritual, by an inexorable law retires and
discounts the spiritual.
It is truly wonderful how great a part money
plays in the modern religious movements, and how
little prayer plays in them. In striking contrast
with that statement, it is marvellous how little part
money played in primitive Christianity as a factor
in spreading the Gospel, and how wonderful part
prayer played in it.
The grace of giving is nowhere cultured to a
richer growth than in the closet. If all our missionary
boards and secretaryships were turned
into praying bands, until the agony of real prayer
and travail with Christ for a perishing world
came on them, real estate, bank stocks, United
States bonds would be in the market for the spreading
of Christ’s Gospel among men. If the spirit
of prayer prevailed, missionary boards whose individual
members are worth millions, would not
be staggering under a load of debt and great
Churches would not have a yearly deficit and a
yearly grumbling, grudging, and pressure to pay a
beggarly assessment to support a mere handful of
missionaries, with the additional humiliation of debating
the question of recalling some of them. The
on-going of Christ’s kingdom is locked up in the
closet of prayer by Christ Himself, and not in the
contribution box.
The Prophet Isaiah, looking down the centuries
with the vision of a seer, thus expresses his purpose
to continue in prayer and give God no rest till
Christ’s kingdom be established among men:
“For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for
Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest till the righteousness
thereof goeth forth as brightness, and the salvation
thereof as a lamp that burneth.”
Then, foretelling the final success of the Christian
Church, he thus speaks:
“And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and
all kings thy glory, and thou shalt be called by a new
name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name.”
Then the Lord, Himself, by the mouth of this
Evangelical prophet, declares as follows:
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,
which shall never hold their peace, day nor night.
Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence.
And give him no rest till he establish and till he make
Jerusalem a praise in the earth.”
In the margin of our Bible, it reads, “Ye that
are the Lord’s remembrancers.” The idea is, that
these praying ones are those who are the Lord’s remembrancers,
those who remind Him of what He
has promised, and who give Him no rest till God’s
Church is established in the earth.
And one of the leading petitions in the Lord’s
Prayer deals with this same question of the establishing
of God’s kingdom and the progress of the
Gospel in the short, pointed petition, “Thy kingdom
come,” with the added words, “Thy will be
done on earth as it is done in heaven.”
The missionary movement in the Apostolic
Church was born in an atmosphere of fasting and
prayer. The very movement looking to offering
the blessings of the Christian Church to the Gentiles
was on the housetop on the occasion when Peter
went up there to pray, and God showed him His
Divine purpose to extend the privileges of the Gospel
to the Gentiles, and to break down the middle
wall of partition between Jew and Gentile.
But more specifically Paul and Barnabas were
definitely called and set apart to the missionary field
at Antioch when the Church there had fasted and
prayed. It was then the Holy Spirit answered from
heaven: “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
work whereunto I have called them.”
Please note this was not the call to the ministry
of Paul and Barnabas, but more particularly their
definite call to the foreign field. Paul had been
called to the ministry years before this, even at his
conversion. This was a subsequent call to a work
born of special and continued prayer in the Church
at Antioch. God calls men not only to the ministry
but to be missionaries. Missionary work is God’s
work. And it is the God-called men who are to do
it. These are the kind of missionaries which have
wrought well and successfully in the foreign field in
the past, and the same kind will do the work in the
future, or it will not be done.
It is praying missionaries who are needed for the
work, and it is a praying church who sends them
out, which are prophecies of the success which is
promised. The sort of religion to be exported by
missionaries is of the praying sort. The religion
to which the heathen world is to be converted is a
religion of prayer, and a religion of prayer to the
true God. The heathen world already prays to its
idols and false gods. But they are to be taught by
praying missionaries, sent out by a praying Church,
to cast away their idols and to begin to call upon
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No prayerless
church can transport to heathen lands a praying
religion. No prayerless missionary can bring
heathen idolaters who know not our God to their
knees in true prayer until he becomes pre-eminently
a man of prayer. As it takes praying men at
home to do God’s work, none the less does it take
praying missionaries to bring those who sit in darkness
to the light.
The most noted and most successful missionaries
have been pre-eminently men of prayer. David
Livingstone, William Taylor, Adoniram Judson,
Henry Martyn, and Hudson Taylor, with many
more, form a band of illustrious praying men whose
impress and influence still abide where they laboured.
No prayerless man is wanted for this job.
Above everything rise, the primary qualification
for every missionary is prayer. Let him be, above
everything else, a man of prayer. And when the
crowning day comes, and the records are made up
and read at the great judgment day, then it will
appear how well praying men wrought in the hard
fields of heathendom, and how much was due to
them in laying the foundations of Christianity in
those fields.
The one only condition which is to give world-wide
power to this Gospel is prayer, and the spread
of this Gospel will depend on prayer. The energy
which was to give it marvelous momentum and
conquering power over all its malignant and powerful
foes is the energy of prayer.
The fortunes of the kingdom of Jesus Christ are
not made by the feebleness of its foes. They are
strong and bitter and have ever been strong, and
ever will be. But mighty prayer—this is the one
great spiritual force which will enable the Lord
Jesus Christ to enter into full possession of His
kingdom, and secure for Him the heathen as His
inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for
His possession.
It is prayer which will enable Him to break
His foes with a rod of iron, that will make
these foes tremble in their pride and power, who
are but frail potter’s vessels, to be broken in
pieces by one stroke of His hand. A person who
can pray is the mightiest instrument Christ has in
this world. A praying Church is stronger than all
the gates of hell.
God’s decree for the glory of His Son’s kingdom
is dependent on prayer for its fulfilment: “Ask of
me, and I will give thee the heathen for thy inheritance,
and the uttermost part of the earth for thy
possession.” God the Father gives nothing to His
Son only through prayer. And the reason why the
Church has not received more in the missionary
work in which it is engaged is the lack of prayer.
“Ye have not, because ye ask not.”
Every dispensation foreshadowing the coming of
Christ when the world has been evangelised, at the
end of time, rests upon these constitutional provisions,
God’s decree, His promises and prayer.
However far away that day of victory by distance
or time, or remoteness of shadowy type, prayer is
the essential condition on which the dispensation
becomes strong, typical and representative. From
Abraham, the first of the nation of the Israelites,
the friend of God, down to this dispensation of the
Holy Spirit, this has been true.
“The nations call! from sea to sea
Extends the thrilling cry,
‘Come over, Christians, if there be,
And help us, ere we die.’
“Our hearts, O Lord, the summons feel;
Let hand with heart combine,
And answer to the world’s appeal,
By giving ‘that is thine.’”
Our Lord’s plan for securing workers in the
foreign missionary field is the same plan He set
on foot for obtaining preachers. It is by the
process of praying. It is the prayer plan as distinguished
from all man-made plans. These mission
workers are to be “sent men.” God must
send them. They are God-called, divinely moved
to this great work. They are inwardly moved to
enter the harvest fields of the world and gather
sheaves for the heavenly garners. Men do not
choose to be missionaries any more than they
choose to be preachers. God sends out labourers
in His harvest fields in answer to the prayers of
His Church. Here is the Divine plan as set forth
by our Lord:
“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved
with compassion on them, because they fainted, and
were as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he
unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but
the labourers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord
of the harvest that he will send forth labourers into
his harvest.”
It is the business of the home church to do the
praying. It is the Lord’s business to call and send
forth the labourers. The Lord does not do the
praying. The Church does not do the calling. And
just as our Lord’s compassions were aroused by the
sight of multitudes, weary, hungry, and scattered,
exposed to evils, as sheep having no shepherd, so
whenever the Church has eyes to see the vast
multitudes of earth’s inhabitants, descendants of
Adam, weary in soul, living in darkness, and
wretched and sinful, will it be moved to compassion,
and begin to pray the Lord of the harvest to send
forth labourers into His harvest.
Missionaries, like ministers, are born of praying
people. A praying church begets labourers in the
harvest-field of the world. The scarcity of missionaries
argues a non-praying church. It is all
right to send trained men to the foreign field, but
first of all they must be God-sent. The sending is
the fruit of prayer. As praying men are the
occasion of sending them, so in turn the workers
must be praying men. And the prime mission of
these praying missionaries is to convert prayerless
heathen men into praying men. Prayer is the
proof of their calling, their Divine credentials, and
their work.
He who is not a praying man at home needs the
one fitness to become a mission worker abroad. He
who has not the spirit which moves him toward
sinners at home, will hardly have a spirit of compassion
for sinners abroad. Missionaries are not
made of men who are failures at home. He who
will be a man of prayer abroad must, before anything
else, be a man of prayer in his home church.
If he be not engaged in turning sinners away from
their prayerless ways at home, he will hardly succeed
in turning away the heathen from their prayerless
ways. In other words, it takes the same
spiritual qualifications for being a home worker as
it does for being a foreign worker.
God in His own way, in answer to the prayers of
His Church, calls men into His harvest-fields. Sad
will be the day when Missionary Boards and
Churches overlook that fundamental fact, and send
out their own chosen men independent of God.
Is the harvest great? Are the labourers few?
Then “pray ye the Lord of the harvest to send
forth labourers into his harvest.” Oh, that a great
wave of prayer would sweep over the Church asking
God to send out a great army of labourers into
the needy harvest fields of the earth! No danger
of the Lord of the harvest sending out too many
labourers and crowding the fields. He who calls
will most certainly provide the means for supporting
those whom He calls and sends forth.
The one great need in the modern missionary
movement is intercessors. They were scarce in the
days of Isaiah. This was his complaint:
“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered
that there was no intercessor.”
So today there is great need of intercessors, first,
for the needy harvest-fields of earth, born of a
Christly compassion for the thousands without the
Gospel; and then intercessors for labourers to be
sent forth by God into the needy fields of earth.
