This was the Saviour’s directive to His disciples before He left them. The coming of Christ heralded an era in which the gospel of God’s grace was no longer to be confined within the bounds of Israel. He was to be a “light to lighten the Gentiles” as well as “the glory of His people Israel”. All the ends of the earth were to see the salvation of our God.
The spread of the gospel throughout the nations of the world quickly followed upon the ascension of the Lord to glory. The promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost and many souls out of many nations were gathered into the kingdom of Christ. This was but the beginning of a great harvest of souls to Christ out of the Gentile nations.
As we stand once more at the opening of another year, let us remember that the commission of the Lord to His disciples is still binding on His servants and Church today—”Go ye into all the world”. Multitudes of souls are yet without Christ. Many are in heathen darkness, some in bondage to evil and tyrannical systems, others labouring under the power of unbelief. Such need the gospel preached to them.
It is our duty to ask the Lord to open doors of opportunity, not only to the nations at present closed to the gospel, but also to Christless and heathen in our midst. The Lord is able to open closed doors and closed minds and hearts and make a way for His word and gospel. We are not only to pray for the opening of doors, but we are also to be ready to enter them when God in His Providence opens them.
As we find ourselves in the midst of gospel privileges, it is surely
right for us to remember those to whom these privileges are denied and pray that the gospel may reach them also. We ought to remember especially those who labour under great disadvantages—some openly persecuted, others persecuted in a less open way but nevertheless suffering for the Lord’s sake. How many suffer under the persecution of the Church of Rome, how many under the oppression and tyranny of Communism throughout the world.
Is this not a suitable time to ask ourselves how we stand in relation to this imperative command—”Go ye into all the world”? Has it not some bearing on us personally? Are there not some to whom the Lord is speaking particularly at this time saying—”Go ye into all the world”. Sheltered though we are in the apparent security of our own homes, we cannot hide ourselves from the still small voice of the Lord God saying—”Go ye into all the world”. Nor can we plead as an excuse for refusing His call, the intransigence of those to whom the Lord may be sending us, for the Lord’s voice answers—”A people shall be willing in a day of my power”.
When the message came to Moses he demurred saying—”O my Lord, I am not eloquent . . . but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue”, and God gave him Aaron, his brother, as his spokesman. Jeremiah exclaimed—”Ah Lord God! behold I cannot speak: for I am a child.” But the Lord said unto him—”Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command that thou shalt speak”. When Isaiah saw the vision of the Lord’s glory, he said, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”. Yet when he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us”: because his lips were touched with a live coal from off the altar, he said, “Here am I, send me”.
Is the Lord not still saying to His servants and to His Church—”Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature”? May this command of the Lord be so applied to our hearts that we will not be tempted any longer to settle down in our nest. The Lord requires His true followers either to go forth as His ambassadors with the message of salvation or to uphold constantly at a throne of grace those who go forth to labour in His vineyard.
May 1972 prove not only a year notable for the sending forth of many labourers into the Lord’s harvest, but also a year that will stand out in the annals of the Church of God as a time in which a multitude of souls at home and abroad were gathered into Christ. “Lift up your eyes,” said the Saviour, “and look on the fields: for they are white already to harvest.”