Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

3 March, 2008   comments: (0) Church History   A Missionary Who Sailed Past 'Seeker Sensitive' In my last post I mentioned reading about Henry Martyn in the book Five Pioneer Missionaries. Before the mission field he was an understudy to Charles Simeon who was himself an incredible testimony of God-given endurance. Martyn though, was called by God to be a missionary to British-controlled India, and although being from England, it was no easy thing to just go there and evangelize. To get around the British laws prohibiting missionary work, he took on the title of Chaplain, being assigned to the English military in India. In the following section of the book, Martyn's fleet had just set sail for India leaving behind for a lifetime the English woman who, had it not been for the call of God to India, Martyn might have otherwise pursued to be his wife. What struck me about this excerpt was the environment that he (as Chaplain) was asked to minister in, for the duration of the journey across the sea. When you read this, imagine how much 'easier' it would have been for this great missionary to adjust his methods and message to be more 'relevant' and "seeker sensitive". Instead, he stayed true to the message that he knew God wanted him to deliver, and never lost sight of the Holy Spirit's role in regeneration. He didn't put stock in human efforts aimed at adapting his own behavior and language to better "fit-in" with the men in the fleet. As you will see, it was not how much like the world he was that gave him a platform to preach to the world, instead, it was something quite the opposite. Here's a short excerpt from the book: Whenever Martyn worked among the Europeans he found the same response, a scornful rejection of his message by the vast majority, but a handful of men who, often in secret, came to hear more. There was the corporal who slipped into his hand a letter begging for spiritual help, a request he dared not make in the open; there was the chief mate who, though unable to understand much of Martyn's theology, stopped swearing, and became the chaplain's loyal supporter; there were the faithful five who joined him in his cabin for daily worship; above all, there was Mackenzie, an officer of the cadets, who throughout the voyage was a constant visitor to the chaplain's cabin, and incurred ridicule by attending the hymn-singing which Martyn introduced among the lower ranks. A few did indeed find a true faith in Christ on that voyage; but the majority grew steadily more obstinate in their opposition. Much as they disliked his message, however, they could not deny the sincere love of [his fellow man]. It was love for the blaspheming sailors which kept him busy trying to awaken their consciences. Such love is not easily recognized by men of the world, but they could not disregard his unselfish care for the sick and dying, who were always to be found in plenty on the troop-ships of those days. From the captain, who died on the way to the Cape, to the merest ship's boy, all claimed his unceasing care, and only when dysentery attacked Martyn himself was he forced to stop. Imagine it: the sweat and the dirt, the foul smell and the unbearable heat of the lower decks, and the Cambridge don in his meticulously neat black clothes moving from hammock to hammock, from sick boy to dying man, with food and medicine, and always with the Word of God. The men had never seen anything like it; nor had the officers, and they wrote him off as a mad enthusiast. Just as was talked about in a post we linked to a few weeks ago, we see that it was the love for the lost, sick, and dying that made people take notice, not how 'cool' he seemed, or how acceptable he was by the world's standards. You get the sense that those kinds of things were not even a part of his thinking. Unlike some variants of postmodernism's Missional emphasis on good works, Henry Martyn's loving works towards his fellow man were never simply just good works alone. Instead, they were good works accompanied by good words, noting in the excerpt above which says he ministered "with food and medicine, and always with the Word of God". That's an emphasis which is lost on many in the Emerging Church movement today who champion AIDS causes with or without an accompanying Gospel message. Lastly, just in this short missionary excerpt, we see an example of what Charles Spurgeon spoke of in his sermon The Two Effects of the Gospel. If preached in a way that is true to the biblical text, the Gospel will either draw people to Christ, or it will harden them. And therein is one more clue that something is wrong with the popular modern church-growth system of today that rarely encounters the rejection that Henry Martyn did. Their gospel only has one effect (worldly acceptance), not two. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.962   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism