C 09 - Establishing Kingdom God World
ESTABLISHING THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE WORLD
9. There is a still wider attraction at this point. The writer has already referred to foreign missions, and this work opens our vision into the Kingdom of God as it sweeps its horizon beyond our local community out across the country and continent around the world. The minister is committed to this work also. His pulpit can be no local and cramped field and opportunity, but it is as big as the globe, and he is a true cosmopolite, a citizen of the world. The little arc of his pulpit, after all, is a great circle and runs around the equator. He is just as near to the center of the earth and to the stars, standing in his pulpit, however obscure it may be, as he would be if he were in a conspicuous pulpit in New York or London. He is thus a man of planetary proportions and power.
He is helping to shape the moral and political, educational and social, and the religious and spiritual life of the country; and through the agencies of foreign missions he is reaching his hands around the globe and helping to lift and roll it into the light and love of God. The touch of his hand and the thrill of his voice really reach every human being on the earth: for humanity is one web or a vital, sensitive organism, so that whatever touches it at one point is propagated through the whole vast body. No other man is handling such a big business as the minister. We are always impressed with the statement that the sun never sets on the British Empire; yet this empire is only a few red patches on the map, while the Kingdom of God encircles the globe around the equator and from pole to pole, and the Christian minister is ever presenting this business to his people and instructing and inspiring them in it. He is in touch with the geography of all continents and islands; he knows something of their lands and languages, races and customs, governments and religions. His brain is a telegraphic or telephonic exchange where messages arrive from and go out to all the earth.
He has a vision of a world redeemed and unified in common brotherhood, peace, and prosperity. He is laboring to build the true League of Nations, which will never be realized as the prophets foresaw it and the poets dreamed it as “the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world” until it comes under the rule of Him whose right it is to reign, and the kingdoms of this world “become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. “This inspiring, world-wide work is a splendid attraction of the ministry, and young men of vision and courage should leap to its call and opportunity.