Foreign Missions: Five Considerations

John Leighton Wilson (1809–1886) was a missionary in West Africa for several decades, and a Presbyterian pastor. He wrote many articles and pamphlets, especially on missions. Originally published in The Southern Presbyterian Review, and newly republished in Selected Writings of John Leighton Wilson, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions” was a theologically rigorous call for Christians to go and share the gospel, expounding five biblical considerations for the importance of missions. Though more than a century old, the principles Wilson outlines in  “Thoughts on Foreign Missions” remain relevant for the church today. As Chad Vegas says in his foreword to Selected Writing of John Leighton Wilson, “Ours is a season in which the heat of missionary zeal has grown cold, the light of missiological thought has grown dim, and the feet of those who carry forth the good news are few.”

The following is a lightly edited and abridged excerpt of “Thoughts on Foreign Missions.” The full text is available in Selected Writings of John Leighton Wilson, purchasable at Log College Press.

1. Christ’s Will

If the Lord Jesus Christ has made known his will more clearly in relation to any one matter than another, it is that his gospel should be made known to all the nations of the earth. We touch at once the mainspring of Christian activity. The man who feels no desire to do the will of Christ can have no well-founded hope of interest in his atoning blood. Christ himself has emphatically said, “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Not only has the Savior made known his will in commanding that his gospel should be preached to every creature on the face of the earth, but the very circumstances under which it was uttered give great emphasis to the command itself. He had completed the work of redemption, so far as that work was to be completed here upon earth. He had by his sufferings made atonement for sin; by a life of obedience he had wrought out a perfect righteousness in behalf of all his own chosen people; he had come forth from the grave, not only for the justification of his people, but thereby furnished the assurance of their resurrection also; he was just about to ascend to heaven to take his seat on the mediatorial throne; he had just made the grand and sublime announcement that all power in heaven and in earth had been committed to his hands. It was in connection with these impressive surroundings and this grand announcement, that he gives the command to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He saw distinctly all that was involved in the execution of this command: how much self-denial would have to be practiced, how much hardship would have to be endured, how much danger would have to be encountered, how much persecution would have to be borne. In view of all this, he fortifies the minds of his disciples with the precious assurance that he would be with them to the end of the world; and with this assurance, they went everywhere proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ; realizing at every step his personal presence and protection… 

2. The Church’s Assigned Work

The work assigned the Church by her Divine Head is to make known the salvation of Jesus. The field he has given her to cultivate is the world. If this is not the special work of the Church, then the Scriptures may be searched in vain to find out what that work is. The apostles and primitive Christians made no mistake in relation to this matter. They felt that a special work had been given them to do; that the world was truly and literally the field that was to be cultivated. They commenced their labor in Jerusalem, which was not only the most natural course, but was in strict accordance with the command of the Savior himself; but in a comparatively short time the glad news of salvation were made known, not only in Judea and Samaria, but to the distant ends of the earth. They never thought of using the miserable pretext “that there is work enough at home,” for lingering indefinitely on the confines of their own native homes. The same unmodified obligation rests upon the Church at the present day.The Church is not responsible for the conversion of men, either here or in the heathen world, this being preeminently the work of the Holy Ghost. But she is responsible, at least to the extent of her ability, for the universal dissemination of the gospel among all mankind. And this responsibility is greatly heightened by the fact, that, so far as we know, the Holy Ghost never regenerates the heart of an adult man except through the medium or instrumentality of that truth which it is the special business of the Church to disseminate. In the order of God’s grace, therefore, the sowing of the gospel seed, which is the work of the Church, must precede the converting power of the Holy Ghost. It is unreasonable, therefore, for us to expect or to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon any portion of the human race among whom the knowledge of salvation has not been previously diffused. In this view of the matter, the duty of the Church becomes solemn and momentous to the last degree… 

3. The Necessity of the Word

Another consideration of great moment, and one that ought to be deeply impressed upon the heart of the Church, is, that so far as we are informed by the word of God, there is no possibility of salvation for the heathen without some knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Of course no reference is made to the millions who die in infancy in heathen lands, and who, never having committed actual transgression, may be saved through the merits of redeeming blood.In relation to this general matter, there has recently sprung up (and we are sorry to say to some extent in the evangelical Church) a widespread skepticism, which is undoubtedly closely allied to that general disbelief in future retribution which has become so rife of late. Now without citing the almost innumerable passages of Scripture, both from the Old and New Testament, which declare that all the nations that forget God shall be destroyed; without stopping to show that the denial of the punishment of the heathen is a virtual abrogation of all God’s denunciations of sin; without dwelling upon the solemn declaration of the Savior himself that those who refused to hear the gospel would be damned; without commenting upon the statement so frequently and so emphatically made in the New Testament Scriptures, that the gospel was just as necessary to the Gentiles as to the Jew, we come directly to the well-known creed of all evangelical denominations, that there is no salvation for man (that is, adult man) without faith in the merits of a crucified Redeemer. And here the apostle, as if he were writing with special reference to this modern skepticism, settles the question beyond all reasonable controversy: “How shall they (the Gentiles) call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?”But the question presents itself and is pressed with no ordinary pertinacity, how shall the heathen be condemned for rejecting the gospel when that gospel has never been presented to them, or for turning away from Jesus Christ when they never heard of that blessed name? The answer is, that they will not be condemned on either of these grounds. The same apostle makes this point just as clear as the other: “The Gentiles which have not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written on their hearts.” The law of God, of course not in all its fullness, is indelibly written upon the human heart. This is not more in accord with the teachings of God’s word than it is with the experience and the observations of all those who have had the opportunity to study the matter under favorable circumstances. There exist in every heathen mind, it is confidently believed, some conceptions of a supreme governor of the universe, some perceptions of the distinction between right and wrong, and some ideas, though indistinctly developed, of future accountability. There are those, and among them some for whom we have great respect, who doubt the correctness of this statement. But this doubt, we apprehend, arises from one of two things, or from the two combined. First, the heathen (the great majority of them at least) are not in the habit of formulating their religious creed in any very intelligible phraseology. Indeed, they cannot always tell what they do believe, and their creed has to be inferred from their actions rather than their words. In many cases those who seek this knowledge are not sufficiently acquainted either with the language or the character of the people to ascertain precisely what they do believe. All nature reminds the heathen that there is one great first cause of all things. The laws and usages by which all their social intercourse is regulated are based on the conviction that there is an essential difference between right and wrong, good and evil. Then the custom, which is amazingly prevalent in all heathen communities, of burying persons of notoriously bad character apart from those that have been orderly in their deportment, shows not only a belief in a future state of existence, but also in a state of future retribution. Without the existence of such convictions it would be almost impossible for a missionary to bring the gospel to bear upon the hearts of the heathen at all; as the matter stands, it is not necessary for him to attempt to prove the existence of a personal God. This is already admitted. His work will consist in giving right views of God’s moral character. So it is unnecessary for him to attempt to show that lying, theft, adultery, murder, and sins of like nature, are all wrong. The heathen not only knows this, but these crimes against society are often severely punished. It looks like an absurdity to the heathen to try to convince him that he has a soul that is to exist hereafter. He carries food almost every day to the grave of his parents. When reminded of future accountability, he plainly shows that a painful apprehension has been confirmed, rather than a new idea suggested…

4. The Encouragement of Success

The success of the gospel among the benighted nations of the earth during the present century furnishes a powerful motive for the more earnest prosecution of the work. This is not offered as an argument for the undertaking or the prosecution of the work, for obedience to the command of the Savior makes it the duty of his people to preach the gospel everywhere, whether men hear or forbear. But when God is pleased out of regard to the weakness of his people’s faith, or in fulfillment of his own designs of mercy, to make the gospel effectual to the salvation of multitudes of ignorant and perishing men, a most powerful motive is superadded for a more vigorous prosecution of the work. The cause, thus made to bear the seal of the Savior’s approval, ought to be brought very near to the heart of every believer.But in what does the success referred to consist? In an article like the present this inquiry can be answered only in the briefest manner. It is not necessary to go back to apostolic times for proofs of the power of the Holy Spirit to reclaim the worst and most degraded of the human race. The times in which we live are furnishing even stronger illustrations of that power. Before adducing the actual facts connected with the success of modern missions, it is necessary to premise that the condition and circumstances of the world at the two periods referred to are essentially different. Most of those communities in which early Christianity had its most vigorous growth had been previously permeated by the teachings of the Old Testament Scriptures, and were in consequence measurably prepared to embrace the gospel as soon as it was proclaimed. Again, the Gentile world, in the days of the apostles, occupied a much higher place in the scale of civilization than the present inhabitants of the pagan world. Not only did they occupy this higher place, but human ingenuity had exhausted all of its resources in the effort to acquire more certain knowledge about a future world. The minds of men, therefore, were in a favorable attitude for the reception of the truth. The pagan nations of the present day have sunk so deep in the mire of sin and superstition that nothing short of an extraordinary divine power can reach and save them. More than this. The early propagators of the gospel were endowed with the gift of language and the power of working miracles. What the primitive disciple possessed by intuition or inspiration, the modern missionary can acquire only by laborious study. In view of this state of things, it must be seen at once that a most important work of preparation had to be perfected in modern times before any great ingathering of souls into the fold of Christ could be realized. The minds of the nations had to be aroused from the slumber of centuries, their systems of superstition and false religion overthrown; and the truth had to be disseminated, which involved not only the preaching of the gospel in languages that have been acquired at the expense of great labor, but also the translation and the circulation of God’s word into all such languages. No adequate views of the actual success of modern missions can be formed without taking into the account the nature and magnitude of this work of preparation… 

5. Our Great Resources

Another consideration of great moment is, that there are greater facilities and advantages at present for spreading the knowledge of the gospel among mankind than ever existed before. This is equally true whether regard be had to the condition and resources of the Church, or to the altered condition of the great mass of the heathen world. The number of ministers, as well as the means of training men for the ministry, has been multiplied beyond anything that has ever before been known in the history of the Church. At the same time, wealth has been poured into the lap of the Church without stint; so that there are means and agents in the bosom of the Church at the present day, if they were properly consecrated, to carry the gospel, in a comparatively short time, to every portion of the habitable earth. The heathen world, too, in some respects, is in a more favorable condition for the reception of the gospel. They have been aroused to unusual activity by being brought in contact with modern commerce—have felt the throb of a superior civilized life. They realize, as they never did before, the essential difference between a life of barbarism and one of enlightened civilization.But not only is the mind of the heathen stirred, but the increased facilities of travel and transportation bring the products of the civilized world to their doors, and, what is far more important, they bring the heralds of salvation also to guide them into the paths of truth. India, Burma, China, Japan, and the Polynesian Islands, can now be reached in greater comfort and safety, and in fewer weeks than it formerly required months to perform the same voyage. And not only can these far-off countries be reached in a comparatively short period, but they can be traversed with more ease, speed, and safety than could have been imagined fifty years ago. A missionary can travel and see more of India in one day now than he could formerly have done in a whole month. Similar advantages will soon be enjoyed in China, Japan, and other parts of the world. Recent discoveries show that there are at least twenty thousand miles of navigable inland waters in the heart of Africa, and intended in the goodness of God, no doubt, to furnish facilities of access to the millions of that benighted land…