Readings for such a time as this(1): - from: Wingspread, by A.W. Tozer ____________ This dreamer cometh God had found a man after His own heart, a man too great to keep shut up in one parish or in one city. The world would be his parish, as Wesley had phrased it, and A. B. Simpson was beginning to sense his high destiny. Yet there can be little doubt that Mr. Simpson, at this point in his life, was as unaware of the great career that lay before him as Moses had been at the burning bush. He kept hearing a strange and secret whisper like a dream of night that told him he was on enchanted ground. There remained within him still a strong love for the established church, a wish to carry out his large purposes while yet continuing to serve his denomination. It is no reflection on that honored body that he could not do it. He was walking softly, seeing only a little way ahead, letting each providential step explain the one preceding it. Unknown to him he was taking the prescribed way of the gospel witness, Jerusalem, Judæa, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. Hamilton had been his Jerusalem for eight years; his Judaea had been Louisville, and now he is feeling himself stirred to move on to Samaria. From there it would be the uttermost parts in a degree known to few men in the history of the Christian Church. But he did not know this yet. He did know one thing, however: the call of the unevangelized was upon his heart. He felt a strong tug toward some larger field of service; maybe it would be New York, he was not sure, but he wanted to get near to a center of missionary activities, and New York looked like the place. To some extent Mr. Simpson had always been interested in foreign missions. His father had been a warm friend of the missionary cause and he had heard missions talked around the table as early as he could remember. While still a mere boy he had been stirred to the depths of his heart by the story of Rev. John Williams, the missionary martyr, and he had wanted then to become a missionary. All through the years there had been times when he felt, or imagined he felt, the holy hand of John Geddies upon his brow. He had been too young to remember that scene there at his baptism when the great Apostle to the Islands had dedicated him to God, but his mother had never let him forget the fact or the circumstances, and the knowledge of it remained as a charge and a benediction. The new missionary impulse felt currently among the churches on both sides of the Atlantic, personal contacts with missionary minded Christians, and, above all the new anointing which he had received from God sharpened up his missionary interest till it glowed like a hot point. A world of reasons, of information, of practical missionary truth broke around him, sweeping away apathy, answering every objection and compelling him to be a missionary. And still he would not say yes. It was the way of this God-possessed dreamer. His call must come direct from the Throne. Logic would not do. Reasons were not enough. There must be a spiritual experience concerning the matter or there would be no response. So one night he lay down to sleep, not consciously thinking about the lost world, but subconsciously very much troubled. By intellectual conviction he was a missionary, but he was not satisfied. Everything was so human yet, so mental, so much a matter of texts and statistics. It was all only half-way down in his heart. But he was waiting, and suddenly it happened. I was awakened from sleep, he says, trembling with a strange and solemn sense of Gods overshadowing power, and on my soul was burning the remembrance of a strange dream through which I had that moment come. It seemed to me that I was sitting in a vast auditorium and millions of people were sitting around me. All the Christians in the world seemed to be there, and on the platform was a great multitude of faces and forms. They seemed to be mostly Chinese. They were not speaking, but in mute anguish were wringing their hands, and their faces wore an expression I can never forget. As I woke with that vision on my mind, I trembled with the Holy Spirit, and I threw myself on my knees and every fiber in my being answered, Yes, Lord, I will go. When the Book of the Chronicles of the Holy Ghost is written, that night will mark the beginning of a new chapter, for then was born a movement which has proved to be one of the greatest missionary agencies of modern times. A missionary must had come to a Spirit-filled man, a man big enough to do something about it, a man great enough to make himself heard to the farthest corners of the earth. The cold-hearted will frown on the words vision and dream, the timid will wonder, the psychologist will look interested, reach for his book on abnormal psychology, and leaf over to the section that treats on religious delusions, and smile knowingly. But the years tell another story. A. B. Simpson had become a world-missionary, whatever men may think of it, and he had come through in the only way a man of his temperament could. for better or for worse that was the way he moved. He would first get an idea, a concept, then must come a heart experience to set it off, to detonate the charge it contained. Until the explosion came, he could wait, sometimes for years, mulling his idea over, half forgetting it, burying it under a mountain of work; then the great day would come and he would be prostrated, almost slain under the impact of that idea, his and yet Gods idea, leaping up now, and powerfully compelling as it came out at him like a blast of creative force. To the earth-walking Christian, ankle-deep in dust, who has never seen heaven opened or beheld a vision of God, this will seem all out of order, too emotional, too extreme. But it is the way of the strong eagles of the kingdom, the prophets, the apostles, the reformers and revivalists. These fly high and see far, and that they are not understood is no great wonder. The sky-loving eagle, screaming in the sun, may be a puzzle to the contented biddy scratching in the yard, but that is no good argument against the eagle. The years, I say, tell their own story. Nowhere else in the field of human endeavor can so little pass for so much with so many as in religion. It affords unlimited opportunity for men to rise like a rocket—and come down like the stick. And the catch is that those who saw the pseudo-Moses go up are seldom around when he comes down, so no one notices it anyway. But time puts the correct price tag on everything. The true test of spiritual greatness is permanence. By this test A. B. Simpson stands triumphant. It is now sixty-seven years since he dreamed his dream of world-evangelization, and fifty-six years since was formed the society that arose at his call to give realization to that dream. The work he founded has stood up under the strain of two world wars and three major economic depressions, and is going stronger with each passing year. It has lived through how many moral revolutions in society, philosophical about-faces in learned circles, shifts in theology among the churches and radical changes in religious methods everywhere? Yet the work goes on, turning not to the right hand nor to the left, its original vision undimmed and its initial purpose unaltered. The early months of the year 1879 were important months in the life of A. B. Simpson. His world-call was becoming stronger, and his plans were beginning to take shape. He was getting more confident now, surer that his vision was from God, that the uttermost parts of the earth were to constitute his field of service. His dream of multitudes, in mute anguish, wringing their hands, was slowly interpreting itself to him, making itself plain, and he was not forgetting his promise, Yes, Lord, I will go. To dream, in the language of Mr. Simpson, was not to sit in pleasant reverie within some ivory tower mercifully apart from the harsh realities of the world. Rather it was to reconnoiter, to search out the strength and position of the foe, to decide strategy and to mass for the attack. Not that there had been no other dreamers before him, no others who had caught a vision of world-evangelization. Indeed, the work of foreign missions had lately come into greater notice than at any time for centuries gone. There was quite a stirring among the dry bones in those days; a respectable army of missionaries had stood up out of the dust of generations of neglect of the Great Commission. God was laying sinews upon them, putting breath into them, and they were going to hitherto forgotten parts of the earth with the message of Christ. But their numbers were small and their efforts were scattered; the field was wide and, at its best, the interest among the churches was slight. Something was being done, to be sure, but it was only as a drop of rain now and then on a thirsty desert, to be instantly, eagerly swallowed up and lost in the parched vastness that was heathenism. A new all-out effort was needed, a wider dissemination of missionary information, a magazine—yes, that would be it, a magazine to promote the work of missions. Mr. Simpson saw it now like a flash of light. He would launch a new kind of magazine, one devoted wholly to the cause of world-missions, a digest of missionary news, full of reports of work accomplished, interesting descriptions of conditions among the heathen, a challenge to the churches, and a call. And why not get into step with the modern trend toward pictures and illustrations? It would be different, but that would be in its favor. Yes, he would illustrate his new magazine with the newest type wood cuts, and maybe, later, engravings made from actual photographs taken on the trail. Then the people could see, as well as read about the tribes and tongues and peoples to whom the Gospel must be sent. To carry out this plan it would be necessary for him to be close to some center of missionary operations, some port from which missionaries sailed, and to which they returned again brimming over with missionary enthusiasm. There was just one such city in the United States; he was sure of it now. It would be New York. He must locate in New York where he could see and interview men and women who knew the fields, who could furnish fresh information to make his magazine live. The various denominational boards stayed mostly each within its own little half-acre; the work of one did not greatly help the others. Denominational barriers interfered. What was needed was a journal that could serve as a clearing house for missionary news of all the churches, that could toss the fire across the fences and spread it everywhere. His heart glowed with the thought of what might be done. But Louisville was not the city from which could be launched such an ambitious undertaking. The good people of Chestnut Street Church, for all their evangelistic zeal and their love for the lost, were not ready to follow their pastor in his vision of world-missions. He must find more favorable surroundings. Then suddenly the way was plain before him. A call came from New York. Dr. Burchard was leaving the Thirteenth Street Church, and the church officers were sure that no one but A. B. Simpson would do as his successor. He had preached there some time before and was no stranger to the people. The call that came was cordial and urgent. Would he come? And at once? It did not take him long to put two and two together. An urge from within and a call from without: He immediately resigned his Louisville charge and moved on to his new field in the city of New York, beginning his work there in November, 1879. The arrival of the new pastor marked a sharp upturn in the life and activities of Thirteenth Street Church. A new spiritual impulse was evident at once. The people were revived; church attendance increased rapidly; many were converted and numbers were added to the church. As the months went on everything looked good to the church officers, mighty good, if the pastor would only stick to his parish and not show so much interest in the poor and the lost of the city streets. Certainly someone had to labor for their salvation, but not the pastor of fashionable Thirteenth Street Church. That church was not a rescue mission. They hoped the pastor would keep that in mind. Its members were well-to-do people, fairly along toward the top of the social ladder. They were real Christians, and they would support any project as long as it was for the strengthening of their own church. They welcomed any new member who was of their own kind. But after all, the church is the church, and it must be protected from the—well, inelegant influences of the commoner classes. Mr. Simpson sensed their attitude, but he did not quite know what to make of it. His vision was bigger than one church, his love deeper than one social stratum. He wanted his church to give up its narrow exclusiveness and become a center for the evangelization of the masses. The church officers could not see this. Definitely, Thirteenth Street Church had its traditions to maintain and its prestige to protect. They watched the pastor with considerable uneasiness, though for the time being they spoke gently and kept their anxiety to themselves; they dare not risk losing such a giant from their pulpit. He was young, and besides he was from the west. He would learn. But when, one day, the pastor came before the session and asked permission to bring into the church upwards of a hundred converts from the Italian quarter, which he had won while preaching on the streets down in the poor neighborhoods, they felt the time had come to lay upon the young man a firm but kindly hand. They were more than pleased, they explained, that those poor Italians had been won to Christ, but did the pastor think they should come into their fellowship? They would not be the social equals of the rest of the members, and would likely not feel at home anyway. Could he not find a spiritual home for them among others of their own kind? Mr. Simpson said he thought he could (and he subsequently did), but this experience opened his eyes to the futility of trying to carry out his plans through the medium of a regular church—at least that church. He accepted the rebuff graciously, but he began to dream again, and his dream did not include Thirteenth Street Church. - via WORDsearch10 #readingsforsuchatimeasthis #christjesus #theword #studyscripture #god #biblestudy #bible #jesus #faith #awtozer #vineofchristministries
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 01:00:24 +0000
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