World Missions: Total Spiritual Warfare - Chapter 7 - The Cost of Disobedience (2)

One would suppose that nothing more is needed to make us move than the marching orders, the plain, explicit, oft-repeated command of Christ’s “Go ye.” The spirit of missions is simply the spirit of obedience to this command.

However, in spite of all we have said about our sin finding us out, there may be those who, in some form or another and perhaps all unconsciously, have hold of a darling little lie or alibi by which they excuse themselves from their missionary obligations. Certain subtle reasonings have crept in which kill a sense of responsibility and cut the nerve of missionary endeavor. Let us examine some of these alibis.

Doorway of Ignorance

(1) Many Christians hold to the false hope that the heathen are not lost, because they have never heard the gospel. It is said that a student once asked Charles Spurgeon if he thought the heathen who had never heard the gospel would be saved. He answered, “It is more of a question with me whether we, who have had the gospel and fail to give it to those who have it not, can be saved.” It has been the writer’s personal conviction that it is not so much a question of what God is going to do with the heathen who have not heard as it is a question of how he will adjudicate upon saints who have disobeyed more light than the heathen have ever had, and who with such amazing privileges have trampled them under foot.

If for the heathen the entrance into heaven be through the doorway of ignorance, then it would indeed be folly for them to be wise. In fact, were that so, the only reason millions on this continent are lost would be that they have heard the gospel. The fact is the heathen are lost, not because they have not heard the gospel, but because of known light, the light of conscience and creation, that they have disobeyed. Anyone reading Romans, chapters 1 and 2, can see that the heathen are consciously under “wrath” and “without excuse.”

The great missionary leader, Dr. A. B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, has declared:

The heathen pass out of wretched existence here into a darker future beyond. Do you say you do not believe this—that God is too merciful to let them be lost, and that there must be some other way of hope and salvation for them?

Beloved, this settled unbelief of God’s Word is probably the secret of most of our sinful neglect of the heathen world. We are pillowing our conscience on a lie. God has solemnly told us in his Word that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus. The tenderest voice that ever spake on earth declared, “except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” If God could have saved men in any easier way, he would never have given his Son to the horrors of Calvary.

The question actually comes down to this: Shall I charge the Son of God with the unbelievable and unparalleled folly of having come all the way from heaven’s glory to be made sin and die under the wrath of the offended holiness, to save from outer darkness and damnation a people in no danger of ever going there? Shall I further charge the risen Christ, who urged his apostles and disciples to go and preach this gospel to every creature, with ignorance of the uncondemned condition of the heathen? Finally, was that greatest of all missionaries only self-deceived when, in his zeal for lost men everywhere, he cried, “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel”?

Surely it is unnecessary to dwell longer upon this error. Let any man read his Bible in subjection to its plain declarations regarding the lost, and he will know that men without Christ are without God and without hope, either in this world or in the world to come.

One of our own graduates, Earl Carlson, was bitten as a young Christian with the false hope that the heathen would be saved because they had not heard. When, under the providence of God, he was later laboring with Filipinos in Alaska, he said to himself: “Now these are the men who have never heard the gospel; they will therefore go to heaven when they die.”

Before long, however, he came to the conclusion that if these were the men who were going to heaven he did not want to go there. His simple conclusion—one he might easily have reached had he read his Bible aright—was that sinful men are not fit for God’s holy presence. He was converted at once to what the Scripture says about the lost condition of the heathen.

Mr. Carlson early burned out for God among the hill tribes of China. A worthy pioneer of that land said of this young man, “A better missionary than Earl Carlson never went to any foreign land.” However, unless he had become convinced of the lostness of the heathen, he would have made no missionary worthy of the name.

(2) Another subtle insinuation, voiced by some otherwise fundamental missionaries, is this: God knows who would have accepted the gospel had they heard it, and he will therefore save all whom he has foreseen. On this presumption, why the insistence of Christ and the apostles of getting to the heathen with the glorious message? Why go into any part of the world if the foreknowledge of God will take care of the whole problem? This reasoning calls for further treatment.

No Second Chance

(3) Another error which has gained some currency among orthodox believers, manifestly among those inclined to evade their responsibilities to missions, is the assumption that the heathen, whether at home or abroad, will be given a second chance, and that Christ will hereafter be proclaimed to all such. This belief is based upon what seems to be a twisted view of one portion of Scripture. We believe that the much-disputed passage, 1 Peter 3:18–4:6, refers not to the preaching made by Christ to people after death, but to the time when “the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing.”

This is manifestly the sense of 4:6 where those “that are (now) dead,” having had the gospel preached to them during their lifetime, will be “judged according to men in the flesh.” Noah was “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet. 2:5), and Peter informs us that it was “in the spirit” with resurrection power that Christ “preached” through Noah to the men who are now “spirits in prison” awaiting judgment. Only those who lack the spirit and “woe” of missions can be content to leave the eternal destinies of lost men to an assumed after-death preaching of the gospel.

Certainly the general teaching and tone of all Scripture is that man’s state after death is fixed, final, irreversible. The rich man in hell was told of “a great gulf fixed” and impassable. Believers are to exhort others daily “while it is called Today” (Heb. 3:13). How plain is the warning that “Whatsoever a man soweth [in time], that shall he also reap [in eternity]”! Nor does the Scripture say “after death a second chance,” but, rather, “after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Where is there any Scripture proof of probation and second chance after death? Surely the present life determines the final and fixed state of every man. “In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be” (Eccles. 11:3). So Judas went “to his own place.” John’s last word seems conclusive: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still” (Rev. 22:11).

If there be no positive danger of endless punishment awaiting those who die out of Christ—certainly there is no salvation apart from Christ—then our gospel is neither imperative nor necessary. The inexpressible gravity of our message cannot be vindicated apart from the positive danger of eternal woe. That the missionary nerve has been severed among those who fail in these convictions is manifest by the poverty of missionary effort among all such. (We are not here dealing with false sects which manifest a fleshly zeal “not according to knowledge.” Nor are we discussing the varying degrees of punishment according to light and opportunity as in Rom. 2:11–15.)

Not Angels—But Men

(4) Other orthodox leaders are heard to say: “Had God chosen the angels to evangelize the world, heaven would have been emptied in five minutes; but for some strange reason he has not been pleased to employ them to do this missionary work.” We do not presume to know aught of Heaven’s reasons for so ordering this missionary program, neither dare we imply that God has arbitrarily—“for some strange reason”—given us the privilege (privilege verily it is, and a glorious one) of doing this task, whereas he might have chosen any one of several, and possibly better, methods.

Certainly the tone of all Scripture is to the effect that Christ has not only commanded us, but that he is also shut up to his own redeemed people, those who know salvation’s story, to carry out worldwide evangelization. If it were only for some strange reason, presumably whimsical and arbitrary on God’s part, that he has chosen us to do such holy work, then I would at once begin to feel that I need not become too much concerned, much less “beside myself,” to get souls saved or to reach the heathen with the gospel, if God has always had other ways of accomplishing this task.

Does the writer not know a score of missionary-minded men who would not conceal one least means of winning others? With such frightful and everlasting issues at stake, would these men permit either whim or fancy to determine their choice of instruments to rescue the lost? Would not they seek by the best means, yes, “by all means,” to save some? Can such men possibly be more concerned than is God? Beloved reader, we must come to this conclusion: God is shut up to men to win men. The master has no other plan. We must accept the responsibility.

(5) If we accept no responsibility for the salvation of others, we may attempt to throw the problem back on a kind of election that foreordained some souls to be saved and, by the same token, others (those we deny the gospel) to be lost. In which case (as expanded elsewhere in this book) we might agree with the deacon who rebuked William Carey in his appeal for the spread of the gospel among the heathen: “When God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your help or mine.” Evidently the deacon’s extreme predestination killed all feeling of missionary obligation. Fortunately Carey’s heart of compassion constrained him, in spite of the deacon, to obey Christ’s last command to go and seek the lost in India. How dare we, any of us, follow the doctrinal twist (or, better, the downright disobedience) of that deacon and attempt to fall back on the kind of election that would arbitrarily exclude all those unreached souls.

Consider a case in point. A number of our graduates have gone to a field where about 50,000 souls have been converted during the past few years. Are we to conclude that none of those souls would have been finally lost had these young people remained at home in their self-centred lives? Surely these missionaries were God’s means to this blessed end. I hear someone reason: God not only elected those thousands to be saved, but he also decreed the means as well as the end. Yes, it is true that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

What an assurance to us that we may have a God-planned life! It is also true concerning “the lifework which God has planned for us from all eternity” that, as James H. McConkey pointedly tells us, “you may miss it. You may fall short of God’s perfect plan for your life.” If, my reader, you miss the plan which was to have been God’s means of winning those thousands, then you should feel to some degree Paul’s “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel.” If the means fail, what of the end? Then at whose door shall be laid the failure?

O church of Christ, what wilt thou say
When in that awful judgment day
He charge thee with their doom?

                                          —A. B. Simpson

Shame on the church of Christ that she is forever seeking for an excuse for her disobedience. We readily admit that the unnecessary lostness of many of earth’s millions is so paralyzing that only those who intend to be utterly obedient can sympathetically face and embrace the awful responsibility which has been laid at our door. It can scarcely be denied that the chief cause of disobedience to Christ’s last command is our utter unwillingness to accept this responsibility and to seek to discharge the debt.

(6) An intimate missionary friend was doing his best to interest a thrifty businessman in the claims of Christ for Africa. After listening to my friend for some time, the businessman bluntly retorted, “Don’t you know that after the church has been translated the Jewish remnant will do a much better job of preaching ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ than we ever have done?”

This man had followed to its logical conclusion the teaching that Matthew (including the Great Commission) is for the Jews and that the “Jewish remnant” will do in a few months what we as a church have failed to do in two thousand years. He was unconcerned about the multitudes perishing here and now. He had found an excuse that seemed to relieve him of present missionary responsibility. His lack of conviction regarding Christ’s last command arose from an ultra-dispensational handling of the Scriptures, which can furnish Christians with an excuse to nullify the obligations of obedience.

It was the writer’s rare privilege to have as one of his personal friends the late Dr. Robert H. Glover, one of the world’s great missionary statesmen. In order to confirm the above conclusions regarding the detrimental effect of these teachings of an extreme dispensationalism, we quote from his valuable book, The Bible Basis of Missions, a book which should be in the hands of every Christian worker:

Another view which sadly militates against a united and whole-hearted effort by the true church of Christ to carry out to a finish in this day the evangelization of the world is that advanced by certain gifted teachers of prophecy for whom we have high regard, but with whom we must frankly disagree upon one important point. While holding firmly the truth of the Lord’s premillennial coming, they yet relegate to a future company of Jews, subsequent to the rapture of the church, the task of proclaiming the gospel to the whole world, and, accordingly, they relieve the church today of this responsibility….

While some who thus teach are missionary-minded because of their love for the Lord, the natural result upon those who accept this teaching and apply it consistently is to cut the nerve of missionary concern and effort. What the church fails to do in its day will be done by the “Jewish remnant” after the church has been taken away….

We must say that we believe the prodigious achievement attributed to this “Jewish remnant” rests largely upon mere inference, rather than upon any clear and explicit Bible statement, and that by this line of teaching the responsibility which Christ laid upon his church for this age is shifted to others, wrongly and with most unfortunate results.

The Second Coming—and Missions

Before leaving the consideration of how an overdone dispensationalism militates against a whole-hearted enthusiasm for missions, we should observe that the Great Commission is recorded not only in all four Gospels, but also in the first chapter of Acts. Let us briefly observe the first few verses of Acts, in their missionary outlook and dispensational connection. The risen Christ was about to be taken up into heaven, but before his departure he would give his disciples their marching orders. Two angelic beings were nearby, about to announce the return of “this same Jesus,” the inference being that while he is away the church will be completing the one and only task left her to accomplish.

Thus missions and the second coming are properly and practically linked the one to the other. Concerning this instance, Dr. Glover says:

The risen Lord comes upon his apostles engaged in what would today be termed a dispensational discussion. They ask him, “Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”—a very natural question for them, as Jews, to ask. But his reply is, “It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within his own authority. But ….” But what? “But ye shall be my witnesses … unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

Can anyone fail to see the point? The Lord brushes aside their discussion about “times and seasons” as irrelevant for the time being, and presses home the thing that was relevant and of vital importance, namely, that they give themselves unreservedly to the one great business and prime objective of the church for the present age, the evangelization of the entire world.

Is this not a word in season to the Lord’s people today, and to certain of their leaders in particular, bidding them give less attention to “times and seasons,” or, in other words, to profound but largely academic discussions and controversies over various fine points of prophetic interpretation, about which there have always been differences of opinion and always will be, and to devote their time and talents more to the practical aspect of the subject, the carrying out to completion of their risen Lord’s last expressed wish and command?

These are wise words from a discerning and Spirit-taught man of God. Yet I have before me as I write a whole volume of sermons delivered at a great congress on prophecy, thirty-three sermons in all, each by some well-known and esteemed prophetic teacher; yet in not one of the many allusions to “end-time” things is there reference to the speeding up of Christ’s own missionary program before his return. Concerning such amazing omissions in the thinking of great evangelicals, Dr. Glover most graciously expressed only this much of his personal grief:

We well remember one particular instance when we listened to a masterful address on The Signs of the Second Coming of Christ, in which, however, no mention of the missionary sign was made. When we afterward called the speaker’s attention to this, sincerely thinking that the omission was purely from lack of time (for the hour was late), he expressed surprise and very frankly said he did not believe missions had anything whatever to do with the return of Christ.

We are by no means disposed to overlook such signs as the steady increase of lawlessness, the rise of political dictatorships, the persecution of the Jews, the growing religious apostasy, and so on. But we would call attention to the fact that these are matters about which, despite our feeling of deep concern, we can do little or nothing, whereas promoting the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth is something in which all Christians can have an active and effective part.

What Shall We Answer?

Disobedient Christians will be overtaken with awful shame and loss at the judgment of believers when they find themselves excuseless for their past disobedience. Even in this life there comes to the missionary that inevitable and embarrassing moment, that moment of shame and pain, when native Christians begin to question the missionary after the manner of an old Muslim woman in Bengal: “How long is it since Jesus died for sinful people? Look at me; I am old; I have prayed, given alms, gone to the holy shrines, become as dust from fasting, and all this is useless. Where have you been all this time?”

The same cry was echoed from the icy shores of the farthest Northwest Territory. An old Eskimo said to the Bishop of Selkirk, “You have been many moons in this land. Did you know this Good News then? Since you were a boy? and your father knew? Then why did you not come sooner?”

Again, in the snowy heights of the Andes, a Peruvian asked, “How is it that during all the years of my life I have never before heard that Jesus Christ spoke those precious words?”

It was repeated in the white streets of Casablanca, North Africa. Said a Moor to a Bible seller, “Why have you not run everywhere with this Book? Why do so many of my people not know of the Jesus whom it proclaims? Why have you hoarded it to yourselves? Shame on you!”

A missionary in Egypt was telling a woman the story of the love of Jesus, and at the close the woman said, “It is a wonderful story. Do the women in your country believe it?”

“Yes!” said the missionary.

After a moment’s reflection came the reply, “I don’t think they can believe it, or they would not have been so long in coming to tell us.”

A noble pioneer, L. L. Legters, was once preaching the gospel to a group of Latin-American Indians from one of the many totally unevangelized tribes. As he told how the Son of God died on a cross of his own free will that they and all others might escape eternal punishment, one man, who had listened with intense interest, interrupted him, “Señor, when did this one die for us of whom we have never heard? Was it as long as twenty-five years ago?” He stepped back in blank amazement when the answer came, “It was two thousand years ago.”

On another occasion, as Mr. Legters was talking to an old Indian chief in South America, the latter asked, “White man, how long since you knew this Jesus way?”

“Chief, it has been a long time.”

“How long since your father knew this way?”

“Oh, it was a long time.”

“How long since his father knew this way?”

Mr. Legters could only reply, “Oh, it was long ago.”

Finally, the old chief, folding his blanket about him, doubtingly concluded, “White man, you wait too long, you wait too long.”

The old Indian’s reasoning was good. “How do you expect us to believe this news, so good beyond all reckoning, when you have waited ‘too long’?”

“So you have come at last,” said a Taoist priest as the missionary entered the Chinese temple. The latter had seen the priest listening attentively in the open-air service. The man had long been hungry to know the truth. In some kind of vision he had been impressed that “some day messengers would come from faraway lands.” Was it necessary for him to have waited about eighteen long years?

Finally, in The Growth of a Soul (published by the China Inland Mission) occurs this reproaching witness against the church: In talking with Hudson Taylor, Mr. Nyi, a Chinese Christian, unexpectedly raised a question, the pain of which was not easily forgotten. “How long have you had the glad tidings in England?” he asked all unsuspectingly.

The young missionary was ashamed to tell him, and vaguely replied that it was several hundred years.

“What,” exclaimed Mr. Nyi in astonishment, “several hundreds of years! Is it possible that you have known about Jesus so long, and only now have come to tell us? My father sought the truth for more than twenty years,” he continued sadly, “and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner?”

What shall I more say? Time after time from our own conference platform missionaries confess their experiences of pain as their national Christians put the questions: “What about my father? My grandfather? You say God is ‘not willing that any should perish, ’ but somebody was. Where were your Christians during all that time?”

The thrust goes home. The missionary cannot make excuses. No doctrinal hideout will help him. He hangs his head; his heart bleeds; his mouth is closed. He can only bear his share of the criminal neglect and bloodguiltiness of those Christians who denied the gospel to the past generations.

Jonah—Runaway Missionary

We cannot close without considering Jonah, that runaway missionary of Old Testament times. Nineveh’s judgment lay just ahead of a forty-day silence. By this time the disobedient prophet had experienced such mingled miseries and mercies that he had become willing to be recommissioned. Arriving at Nineveh, he cried up and down her streets. By thus warning men of their impending doom, he brought a million souls to repentance.

Then we find this pouting prophet in his little booth outside the city, sitting out those forty days, wondering whether or not God would turn that whole city to a cinder. He was far more concerned over his own comfort, and over the end time of Nineveh, and the fulfilment of prophecy—“yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”—than he was over Nineveh’s escape from doom. How we abominate the mean, narrow, and bigoted attitude of this man! Yet how he is a photograph of the church today!

True Christians everywhere profess to believe with Jonah that judgment awaits all men outside Christ, that there are cities whose days are numbered, sinners whose cup of iniquity is fast filling, souls whose destiny will soon be sealed. Yet we sit in our little religious booths intensely interested in sermons on prophecy and the ten toes of Daniel’s image, whereas a message on missionary endeavor to spare doomed myriads from judgment is monotonous. We do next to nothing to send earth’s millions the message that would bring them eternal salvation. We seem unconcerned even to deliver our own souls from bloodguiltiness.

Yet all the while we say we believe that our silence will seal their fate—so subtle and hidden can heart unbelief be. We stand rebuked by the words of a gifted and noted unbeliever who said:

Were I a religionist, did I truly, firmly, consistently believe as millions say they do, that the knowledge and the practice of religion in this life influence destiny in another, the spirit of truth be my witness, religion should be to me everything. I would cast aside earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly cares as follies, and earthly thoughts and feelings as less than vanity.

Religion should be my first waking thought, and my last image when sleep sinks me into unconsciousness. I would labor in her cause alone. I would not labor for the meat that perisheth, nor for the treasure on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; but only for a crown of glory in heavenly regions, where treasure and happiness are alike beyond the reach of time or chance.

I would take thought for the morrow of eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained to heaven worth a life of suffering. There should be neither worldly prudence nor calculating circumspection in my engrossing zeal. Earthly consequences should never stay my hand nor seal my lips. I would speak to the imagination, awaken the feelings, stir up the passions, arouse the fancy. Earth, its joys and its griefs, should occupy no moments of my thoughts; for these are but the affairs of a portion of eternity so small that no language can express its comparatively infinite littleness.

I would strive to look but on eternity, and on the immortal souls around me, soon to be everlastingly miserable or everlastingly happy. I would deem all who thought only of this world, merely seeking to increase temporal happiness, and laboring to obtain temporal goods, pure madmen. I would go forth to the world, and preach to it, in season and out of season; and my text should be, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (A. S. Ormsby, Alone with God).

Letting the World Go By

The mystery is how we can read such words and still sit like Jonah in our little booths, comfortable and content to let earth’s Ninevehs—millions without Christ in every land—sink into a lost eternity, yes, sink and be forever lost, not because God did not choose to save them, but because we denied them deliverance. Oh, the crime of it all, this criminal silence! Face it, my reader. What sin can compare with the sin of omission—the criminal silence, the shameful evasion of responsibility, the wicked contentment to let men be swept down into the abyss as though they were only so many autumn leaves!

At the conclusion of a message on Jonah wherein we likened him to the present-day believer, one of our students (now a foreign missionary) wrote the following appropriate lines:

Jonah built a little booth,
A shelter from the heat.
A gourd-vine grew, protection from
The wind that on him beat.

Jonah rejoiced, exceeding glad
For this convenient gourd
Espec’lly since this comfort was
Provided by the Lord!

“I thank thee, Lord; thou hast been good
To my dear wife and me;
We’re glad we’re in a peaceful land
Of great prosperity.

“It makes us feel so good—
This little bungalow—
The kitchenette, the living room,
The rug, so soft you know.

“We love our children, ev’ry one;
We keep them home for God.
The homeland needs them just as much
As mission fields abroad.

“And fundamentalists are we,
My children, wife, and I—
So thankful that we’re saved by grace,
Secure until we die!

“What didst thou say? Oh—Nineveh?
Well, that’s another thing.
Right now we want to praise our God
We’re sheltered ’neath his wing!”

Thus fundamental Jonahs to
The Lord their praises tell.
They’ll sing, “We’re saved and satisfied,”
While Nineveh goes to hell!

                                                 —T. Laskowski

The word of warning to ancient Israel rings again in our ears: “Ye have sinned against the Lord; and be sure your sin will find you out.”

Turning from all the carnal contentments and excuse-making of this carefree generation of Christians, it is a great relief to bow the shoulder and bear the burden of the Word of the Lord. It is indeed better to be obedient than disobedient. Obedience at its worst, cost what it may, is worlds ahead of an easy-going believism at its best. It is better, yea, very much better, to be burdened and borne down with a great and crushing sense of responsibility for the blood of others than to seek to escape the obligations of an obedient faith. His commandments are not grievous.

Like the dew of the morning, like a drink of cold water, like sunshine after rain, come the words of Hudson Taylor as he battled through and embraced the burden of the Lord on Brighton Beach in 1865:

Unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing in their own security while millions were perishing for lack of knowledge, I wandered out on the sands alone, in great spiritual agony. There the Lord conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself for this service.

Let me plead with you, my reader, to let no worldliness, no selfishness, no manner of excuse or lie of the Devil stand between you and the complete obedience to the Savior’s last command. God warns: “If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain (those slipping to the slaughter—Young); if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?” (Prov. 24:11-12).

Let every reader go, or let go, or help go. As much as in us lies, let us rise up and pay our just debt to the last man on earth. Else—how shall we escape sin finding us out?

“Who Will Go For Us?”

Are none of us bound to go? Does the divine voice appeal to our thousands of preachers and find no response, so that again it cries, “Whom shall I send?” Here and there a young man, perhaps with little qualification and no experience, offers himself, and he may or may not be welcomed. But can it be true that the majority of educated, intelligent, Christian young men are more willing to let the heathen be damned than to let the treasures of the world go into other hands?

We shall not always throw the emphasis on the last word, “me,” but read it also thus, “Here am I, send me.” He is willing to go, but he does not want to go without being sent, and so the prayer is, “Lord, send me. I beseech thee of thine infinite grace qualify me, open the door for me, and direct my way. I do not need to be forced, but I would be commissioned. I do not ask for compulsion, but I do ask for guidance. I would not run of my own head, under the notion that I am doing God service. Send me, then, O Lord, if I may go; guide me, instruct me, prepare me, and strengthen me.”

I feel certain that some of you are eager to go for my Lord and Master wherever he appoints. Keep not back, I pray you. Brother, make no terms with God. Put it, “Here am I; send me—where thou wilt, to the wildest region, or even to the jaws of death: I am thy soldier; put me in the front of the battle if thou wilt, or bid me lie in the trenches; give me gallantly to charge at the head of my regiment, or give me silently to sap and mine the foundations of the enemy’s fortresses. Use me as thou wilt; send me, and I will go. I leave all else to thee; only here I am, thy willing servant, wholly consecrated to thee.” — Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon