PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “A Great Like for a Dark Continent”

     In his book Spiritual Leadership, Oswald Sanders writes, “In the Scriptures, God is frequently represented as searching for a man of a certain type.  Not men, but a man.  Not a group, but an individual.  When God does discover a man, who conforms to His spiritual requirement, who is willing to pay the full price of discipleship, He uses him to the limit, despite his patent shortcomings”. (pg. 18).  Such a man was David Livingstone.  He had heard missionary Robert Moffat talk of the need for medical missionaries for China.  He surrendered and answered the call.  But as he trained and prepared to go to China, the door was closed due to the Opium Wars.  Within six months he heard Moffat talk about the need for missionaries in Southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station, glowing in the morning sun with “the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever gone before”.  Livingstone spent ten years as a conventional missionary opening missionary stations in “regions beyond”.  He married his boss’s daughter, Mary Moffat.  He made some of the most prodigious-and most dangerous-explorations of the nineteenth century.  His object was to open a Missionary Road-God’s Highway into the interior of this Dark Continent to bring the light of Christianity and Civilization to unreached peoples.  The natives loved his common touch, his rough paternalism, and his driven curiosity to explore their continent.  After two years he completely disappeared, without a letter or scrap of information.  (Later he would report that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen to write.  During that time, he read the Bible through four times.  But his disappearance fascinated the public as much as Amelia Earhart’s a few generations later).  It was during this time that American Journalist Henry Stanley was sent to find Dr. David Livingstone.  When Livingstone had arrived in Africa in 1841, it was as exotic as outer space, and was called the “Dark Continent”.  It was also called the “White Man’s Graveyard”.  It was unmapped territory.  Henry Stanley went into the Dark Continent to find Dr. Livingstone.  After a long and grueling search, beginning in 1869, and ending October 28, 1871, Henry Stanley finally found him, introducing himself with the four famous theatrical words that he had often rehearsed, “Dr. Livingstone I Presume“.  He remained with the missionary until March of 1872.  Stanley wrote later about how Dr. Livingstone had an impact on him.  He wrote, “In 1871 I went to him prejudiced as the biggest atheist in London.  To a reporter and correspondent such as I, who had only to deal with wars, mass meetings, and political gatherings, sentimental matters were entirely out of my province.  But there came for me a long time of reflection. I was out there away from the worldly world.  I saw this solitary old man there, and asked myself, ‘how on earth does he stop here-is he cracked or what?  What is it that inspires him?’ For months, after I met him, I simply found myself listening to him, wondering at the old man living out all that was said in the Bible-‘Leave all things and follow Me’.  But little by little his sympathy and love for others became contagious; my sympathy was aroused, seeing his piety and faith, his gentleness, his zeal, his earnestness, and how he went quietly about his business.  I WAS CONVERTED BY HIM, although he had not tried to do it!”

     Stanley went back to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone, in the meantime Livingstone got lost again, in a swamp literally up to his neck.  Within a year and a half, he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer.  But he alone, almost single-handedly fulfilled the imperative of Paul, in Philippians 2:15-16-“shine as lights in a crooked and perverse nation, holding forth the Word of Life”.  He enlightened the Dark Continent with the light of the glorious Gospel.  That light even penetrated the dark heart of a worldly atheist who had come to narrate the missionary’s mission to the world.  He became a part of the mission.  When Livingstone died the whole world wept.  They gave him a 21-gun salute, a hero’s funeral, and a burial in Westminster Abbey.  His tombstone reads, “David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist.  For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore undiscovered secrets, and to abolish slave trade”.

     The first word God spoke in creation was, “Let there be light-and light became”.  When He recreates us through the New Birth, one of his first acts of re-creation is to “command light to shine in our hearts!” and to transform us into Lights shining into our own Dark Continents.  Lewis B. Smedes, in his book All Things Made New, says “because of Christ’s reconciling work a New Creation has come into existence, and all who are in Christ are a new creation in themselves.  The familiar text about being new creatures, (II Cor. 5:17), should not be waved too easily as a slogan for what happens in me when I am converted.  The design of Christ’s new creation is far too grand, too inclusive to be restricted to what happens in my soul.  No nook or cranny of history is too small for its purpose, no cultural potential too large for its embrace.  Being in Christ, we are part of a new movement by His grace, a movement rolling on toward the new heaven and earth where all things are made right and where He is all in all” (p. 127-128).  John is telling his little children that they are new creations in Christ, partakers of His Eternal Life, and therefore they can walk in the light as He is in the light, and they can light up their dark continents!  Go be a light!

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “WHAT SHALL THIS MAN DO?”

     Back in 1971 I was a student at Missouri Baptist College of Hannibal, Missouri.  We had a group of students that were seeking for the deeper Christian life.  They began to have weekly fellowship groups that were reading and discussing the teachings of a Chinese Pastor by the name of Watchman Nee.  They studied his books The Normal Christian Life, Sit, Stand, and Walk, and the book What Shall This Man Do?  Having been led to Christ by a Fundamentalist Pastor, and having focused my early ministry on books by John R. Rice; Jack Hyles; and Simple Sermons by Herschel Ford, as my Pastor taught me, I looked upon anything new like a cow looks at a new gate! (Later in life while putting up a new gate for our barnyard I found out that horses share that same suspicious look at anything new added to their environment!).  Being given copies of the Nee books, and invited to the fellowship, caused me to read the books.  Now I have since learned that you do not grow much but only reading those authors who reinforce your own prejudices and beliefs!  All TRUTH is God’s truth, and though we must be discerning in what we embrace theologically, we need to be familiar with what teachings are circulating in our environment and culture.  Paul was very aware of the Greek Mystery religions, and the practices of idolatry that permeated the Greek and Roman religions.  He was very familiar with the Jewish Legalistic religion that offered only an outward conformity to a religion, that was bankrupt of any inward spiritual reality.  He found that truth out personally, later calling his progress in Judaism as “refuse”.  The Greek word he chose to describe it, “skuballa”, was a very “graphic” word!  The Apostle John, fighting off the wolves of false teachers that Paul warned would come in Acts 20, was very familiar with the Gnosticism that was gradually drawing members of his Churches into the web or their errors!  As a matter of fact, that is one of the reasons why he wrote I John.  So, I read the books by Watchman Nee.  I must admit that they left me scratching my head, and with mixed emotions theologically.  So much of what he wrote really spoke to the desire to walk with the Lord in a deeper way!  To surrender yourself more fully to love the Lord, and to give all of yourself, to all of him.  To Nee that was to be the norm, not the exception in the Church of Jesus Christ…i.e., the message of his book The Normal Christian Life. Our Greek professor, Dr. John A. Burns, did his best to give us guidance, without restricting freedom, or dissuading us from pursuing a deeper commitment to Christ.  He warned of a “false spirituality”, and preferred we read books like True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer.  He warned us that Nee was influenced by British missionary Margaret E. Barber with her Keswick Theology, and the mystic theology of Catholic mystic Madam Guyon.  He warned us that Nee had a very vague theology, that embraced Salvation by Grace through Faith, but was very unclear about how the second level of the Christian walk was embraced, and leaned heavily toward “perfectionism” and even “baptismal regeneration”.  He encouraged serving our Lord in “deeper walk” and certainly “surrendered commitment” but was concerned where this “new wind of doctrine” might lead.  Indeed, it did cause a bit of a division among the Christians on campus.  Some walked about with an air of superiority for having embraced and discovered the secret of a closer walk, that so many others somehow did not have spiritual eyes to see.  Fortunately, the new Nee-fad was short-lived.  But Watchman Nee books are still as popular as ever.  He was martyred for his faith by the Communist regime in 1971.  His books, properly understood, have some value if they are read with discernment.  One of his books, What Shall This Man Do?  is based upon the question that Peter asked Jesus, after being told that he would eventually be martyred for his commitment to Jesus, he asked Jesus about John’s future with these words, “what shall this man do?”  (John 21:21). Of course, Jesus answered Peter with the words, “what is that to you?  If I will that he lives until I come again, that doesn’t involve you…YOU KEEP ON FOLLOWING ME YOURSELF!” (John 21:22).    Watchman Nee took that question “What Shall This Man Do?” and wrote an entire book about how God calls people to various types of ministry to fulfill the commission and edification that Christ gave to the Church.  He points out that when Jesus called Saul of Tarsus to join the ministry of the Church, that he was a “tent-maker”.  Likely that was a trade that he had learned from his father from a young age, and F.F. Bruce, in his book Paul: Apostle of Freedom, sees this profession as more than building temporary dwellings for recreational purposes, like we might think of today.  He feels that Paul’s father may have been key in providing military dwellings for regimens in the Roman Army, and might have been honored with Roman Citizenship for such service to his country.  Of course, the Hebrews were known for their Bedouin tendencies too, and often used tents as their dwelling places.  Paul, and Priscilla and Aquila were gifted in this profession.  Nee went on to conclude that since this was Paul’s giftedness at the time of his calling, that he became a “master-builder” (I Cor. 3:10- Greek word is “archetekton” “archetect”-) which Paul became in the work of the Lord, building strong Churches, all over the Roman world.  Nee then draws on the example of Peter.  Peter was casting his fishing nets for fish, when Jesus, walking the shores of the Sea of Galilee, called him to forsake those nets, and come follow Him, and he would “become a fisher of men!” (Matt. 4:19).  Nee points out that the ministry of Peter, in the Book of Acts, is casting a net out in evangelism, and gathering converts into Christ’s Church.  The third example chosen by Nee concerns the Apostle John. At the time that Jesus called him to follow Him, John was in the ship “mending his nets” (Matt. 4:21).  He then shows how that the Apostle John seems to fulfill Jesus’ prediction of living until he comes, by seeing the coming outlined in the Book of Revelation vision, and then spending the rest of his elderly days mending the theological tears that had entered the Church, and helped mend the Church back to truth and usefulness in its ministry for the Lord.  While I think that Nee, as he often did, takes a thought and goes well beyond the limit in developing it with his own imagination, there is definitely truth in the fact that our Lord did call the Apostle John to do a lot of theologically mending of the tears of error that left holes in the Churches evangelism nets, as they ministered in the last days of the first century.  I John is one of those mending epistles that was desperately needed by the Churches of Asia minor, as they faced the onslaught of this insidious Gnosticism that was wreaking havoc with the Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, and with His Incarnate Life in the Lives of His followers.  We will study how John, mending the nets, writes to distinguish truth from error, light from darkness, righteousness from sin, reality from pretense, and encourage his little children to keep on walking in Life, in Light, in Liberty, in Love, and in Loyalty, not by trying harder, but by taking each step in the power of the incarnated and indwelling Christ Jesus, as they partner with Him, in showing the “real Jesus Christ” to the world around them, by manifesting the eternal life that knowing Him makes a reality in them, for all the world to see.  A key verse of I John is I John 4:17 “As He is, so are we in the world”.  I John 2:6 is another key verse, “He that saith he abides in Him, ought himself so to walk as He walked”.  The Church of the 21st century has some major “holes in our nets” of theology and practice.  An in-depth study of John’s first epistle will go a long way in “mending our nets” and returning us to useful ministry in these last days.  I hope you will join me in this exciting study that begins this morning, will go on Wednesday nights, and the next several Sundays. The question isn’t “What shall this man do?” but “What shall we, this Church do?”  I John will give us some “real” answers, if we will heed the “Apostle of Love”, and his edifying words to “his little Children”.