49. Chapter 45: The Church Grows Once More, 7500 to the Present

CHAPTER 45 The Church Grows Once More, 7500 to the Present

1. Earlier Periods of Growth The first period of great growth of the Church was from the year 1 to 400, from Pentecost to Au­gustine. In that period the Church, the army of Christ, conquered the civilized heathen Roman Empire around the Mediterranean Sea (ch. 2). The second period of great growth was, roughly speaking, from the year 500 to 1000. In that period the Church conquered the new uncivilized heathen nations of northern Europe (ch. 8). But in this second period of growth the Church lost to the Arab Mohammedans much terri­tory previously conquered, and to this day has reconquered only part of it (ch. 9). In this period the Mohammedans also conquered much heathen territory in India. That territory they still hold.

2. The Growth of the Church Is Checked

After the year 1000 the Church lost much additional territory in the East to the Turkish Moham­medans. Spain in the southwestern corner of Europe was regained from the Moorish Mohammedans. That reconquest had important and far-reaching consequences. But it was the only gain made by the Church in this period. From 1000 to 1500, roughly speaking, the Church made no new conquests. It could not, for it was fenced in. To the north there was nothing further to conquer. To the west lay the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south and east the wall of Mohammedanism formed an im­passable barrier.

3. Voyages of Discovery Open the World to the Church The voyages of discovery radi­cally altered the entire situation. They changed the oceans from bar­riers into highways. And that change made it possible for the Church to get around the Moham­medan barrier.

Moreover, the further advance of the Turkish Mohammedans into western Europe was decisively checked in 1683 before the walls of Vienna, by the Polish hero John Sobieski. After that Hungary and the Balkan countries were regained from the Mohammedans for Christendom.

Still, although the voyages of discovery enabled the Church to circumvent the Mohammedan bar­rier, all attempts to take that line itself have so far met with only indifferent success. The Moham­medans, on the other hand, have in the meanwhile gained consider­able heathen territory in Africa. To the present day the great mass of Jews also remain enemies of the cross, and in many cases they are very active and dangerous oppo­nents of the Church. However, the great fact remains that the voy­ages of discovery opened up all the world to the Church for the first time in history, and gave the Church access to all the remaining and as yet unconquered heathen nations. The way was now open for the third, and what apparently will be the final, period of great growth of the Church.

4. The Catholics Do Mission Work From 1500 to 1600 the voyages of discovery were conducted mostly by the Portuguese and the Span­iards. These were Roman Catho­lics. The Reformation started in 1517. Up to the Peace of West­phalia in 1648 the Protestants were completely occupied with their struggle with the Catholics. So for the first 150 years of the new missionary era the Roman Catholic Church had the newly opened mission fields all to itself.

Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Order of Jesuits, was the man who aroused the Catholic Church to a sense of its missionary duty and opportunity. The Catholics were stirred with zeal for winning the heathen in the newly dis­covered lands for the Church. In this way the Catholic Church would make up for the losses it had suffered as a result of the Ref­ormation.

Inspired by Loyola, Francis Xavier became the first great Catholic missionary of the new era. In 1542 Xavier reached Goa in India, where he labored until 1549, when he went to Japan. There his work gained many converts. In 1552, as he was about to begin work in China, Xavier died. His work was taken up by other mis­sionaries.

Spanish missionaries won the Philippines, South and Central America, and Mexico for the Cath­olic Church. French Jesuits estab­lished the Catholic Church in the province of Quebec in Canada, around the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi River into Louisi­ana. Spanish missionaries also built up Catholic churches in Flor­ida and along the coast in Cali­fornia.

Today Catholic mission work is being carried on in Ceylon, India, China, Manchuria, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Africa, Australia, the is­lands of the Pacific, and among the North American Indians. Catholic missions are conducted almost en­tirely by the monks of the different orders.

5. The Protestants Carry the Gos­pel to Other Lands The first great impulse to the work of missions by Protestants in the new era was given by August Francke (ch. 39, sec. 6) and the Pietists. Their greatest missionary was Christian Schwartz, who from 1750 until his death in 1798 labored in India. From 1732 to the present day Moravian missionaries (ch. 39, sec. 11) have carried on missionary work with utmost devotion in every part of the world. Today all Protestant Churches participate in the work of missions. In our day the great missionary command of Christ to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth is at last being obeyed. The Christian Church is being planted in Africa, India, China, Korea, Japan, South Ameri­ca, and the islands of the Pacific.

6. Missionary Results The work of missions strictly speaking consists in nothing else but in the preaching of the Gospel. But in speaking of missionary re­sults we think of the effect of the preaching of the Gospel. We ask the question: To what extent are the heathen being truly Christian­ized as a result of the preaching of the Gospel? The results are often meager as to the number who accept the Gos­pel and live transformed lives. The results are often so discouraging that many ask the question: Is it worth while? To judge fairly the results that have been achieved we must under­stand what difficulties and ob­stacles stand in the way.

First of all, many missionaries have lacked the necessary qualifications. There was a time when it was thought that men who lacked the ability to become good minis­ters could nevertheless work suc­cessfully on the mission field. To­day it is realized that a missionary must have fully as much knowledge and ability as a minister, besides specialized knowledge and talents not required of the minister who works in his home land. The mis­sionary must learn to understand the people to whom he brings the Gospel; especially must he know their language, their history, their customs, and above all their reli­gion.

Other obstacles to successful mission work are these: The vast majority of heathen to whom the missionaries preach are extremely ignorant. They cannot read or write. They are superstitious. Then, too, like people the world over, the heathen have a dislike for foreigners; and missionaries are usually foreigners in the lands where they work.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE
David Livingstone was a young doctor of twenty-seven when in 1841 he left Scotland to serve as a missionary in Africa. His devoted service to the people of that continent is a thrilling chapter in the history of missions.

WILLIAM CAREY
In 1793 William Carey left his home country, England, to carry the Gospel to India. His great pioneer work there, especially in the field of trans­lation, opened the way for the spread of the Word in that needful land.

We must also remember that the heathen, like us, want to cling to the religion of their fathers. We love to sing, "Faith of our fathers, we will be true to thee till death." We are not willing to give up the faith that our fathers have taught us. So, too, the heathen are not readily willing to give up the re­ligious beliefs that their fathers have taught them. Only the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts can cause them to give up their heathen superstitions and accept the Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Another difficulty is this: The heathen often gain wrong ideas re­garding Christianity by observing so-called Christians from Christian lands, who are really not Chris­tian; and by coming to our uni­versities and learning the religion of the Modernists who falsely claim to be preaching the Gospel of Christ.

Also there are many mission­aries out on the foreign fields who are Modernists and who under the name of Christian missions are spreading their false gospel among the heathen. When all these things are kept in mind, it can be said that mis­sionary results are simply marvelous. The results obtained in the face of the many and great ob­stacles can be explained only by the fact that Christ, who founded the Church and whose it is, has been constantly active from heaven from age to age, maintaining and extending His Church. He is doing this in our day in spite of all ob­stacles and all the weaknesses and sins of His Church. He will con­tinue to do so to the end of time. The missionaries in heathen lands are in the thick of the battle, and that battle between Christ and the Devil is hard. The heralds of the Gospel sense and experience the power of both these captains. The battle for the Truth in the home land is of first importance, for without a proper base of opera­tions Christ’s army, the Church, cannot wage war successfully in the foreign field. The list of great missionaries is a long one. You must all have heard of Carey, Brainerd, Living­stone, Taylor, Zwemer, Huizenga, and many others. Dr. Huizenga, an American medical mis­sionary to China, specialized in work among the lepers. During World War II he was taken prisoner by the Jap­anese and died in a concentration camp. His work in China won the high regard of medical authorities as well as the deep gratitude of his pa­tients.