The Christian’s Responsibility – Part III
This is the last post in this 3 part series, which was taken from “How Lost Are The Heathen?” by J. Oswald Sanders, former General Director Emeritus of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF):If the Church fails to carry out His command and commission, not only does she become guilty of wilful disobedience, but in so far as she has thus disobeyed, she becomes responsible for those that perish but who might have been saved had we given them the Gospel. If we are not doing all in our power to give the gospel to them, we have need to pray David’s prayer, “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness,” lest we appear before the Judgment Seat with our hands stained with the blood of souls who might have been saved had we been faithful to our trust.
It is to be kept in mind that the generations of men do not wait for the convenience of the Church in respect to their evangelization. Men are born and die, whether or not Christians are ready to give them the gospel. And hence if the Church of any generation does not evangelize the heathen of that generation, those heathen will never be evangelized at all.
… It is always true in the work of evangelization that the present can never anticipate the future, and that the future can never replace the past. What is to be done in soul-saving for any generation must be done by that generation” (Dr. H.W. Frost).
If we argue that there must be a way of entrance into the Kingdom of heaven other than the way of faith in Christ for those who have never heard, then we cut away the ground except that of philanthropy, from beneath all vital missionary enterprise. The idea removes all urgency from our task. We know the reality of hell, and we know the way to escape. How shall we escape if we neglect to warn and woo the unevangelized?
A student once asked C.H. Spurgeon if he thought the heathen who had never heard the gospel would be saved. The great preacher answered, “It is more a question with me whether we who have the gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.”
The words of Ion Keith Falconer of Arabia, though spoken to a past generation, have continued relevance for the youth of today:
“While vast continents lie shrouded in midnight darkness, and hundreds of millions still suffer the horrors of heathendom and Islam, the burden of proof rests on you to show the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant to keep you out of the mission field.”
They’re passing, passing fast away, a hundred thousand souls a day
In Christless guilt and gloom. o Church of Christ, what wilt thou say,
If in that awful judgment day, they charge thee with their doom?
A. B. Simpson
