By analyzing the record of the people present on that momentous day of the church’s birth, we can see that the Church Age was initiated with witness to all three sons of Noah — Ham of Africa, Shem of Asia, and Japheth of Europe. The areas represented at Pentecost included the Parthians (part of modern Russia near the Caspian Sea), the Medes (from beyond Assyria towards India), the Elamites (part of Persian Empire south of Media), Mesopotamia (east to the Euphrates River), Judea (in the Holy Land), Cappadocia (in present-day Syria), Pontus (part of modern Russia by the Black Sea), Asia (present-day Turkey), Phrygia (central Turkey), Pamphylia (modern Turkey), Egypt (on the African continent), Libya (in central Africa), Cyrene (next to Egypt), Rome (in Italy), Crete (an island in Mediterranean near Greece), and the Arabians (east of the Holy Land.) Church tradition reports that the apostles spread throughout the then-known world with Andrew becoming a missionary to southern Russia around the Black Sea after ministering in Greece and Asia Minor, Simon Peter doing evangelistic and missionary work among the Jews going as far as Babylon (a code name for Rome), John the Beloved being exiled to the penal island of Patmos off Turkey, James the son of Zebedee ministering in Jerusalem and Judea, Philip going to Hieropolis of Phrygia, Matthew being martyred in Ethiopia, Bartholomew serving in Armenia, Thomas laboring in Parthia, Persia, and India and eventually suffering martyrdom in southern India, James the son of Alphaeus preaching in Palestine and Egypt, Jude preaching in Assyria and Persia and dying as a martyr in Persia, Simon the Zealot preaching in Israel, and Nathanael continuing the ministry near Nazareth. Of course, the most famous missionary of all was the Apostle Paul who testified that he had fully preached the gospel from Jerusalem all the way to Illyricum in northwest Greece (Romans 15:19) and intended to carry the message as far as Spain (Romans 15:24). According to his testimony in Romans 15:21-23, Paul had totally evangelized eastern Europe and western Asia. His reports in Colossians 1:23, Romans 1:8, and I Thessalonians 1:8 conclude that the Christian message had penetrated the whole world by the time the New Testament was completed.
The Roman world into which Christianity was born accepted or tolerated the new faith at first. One of the reasons was that this new religion had sprung from Jewish roots. Since Judaism held the status of religio licita, or a favored or accepted religion in the Roman Empire at the time, Christianity was able to “ride the coattail” of its Jewish predecessor temporarily. By the time that the divorce between the two faiths was finalized, Christianity had grown to such numerical strength within the Empire that Christians were considered a “third race” along with the Romans and the Jews. We can see an example of the growth of the church in the city of Antioch which became the headquarters of the church after Paul and Barnabus were commissioned to go out from there on their missionary ventures. At the time of the New Testament, Antioch had a population of about half a million and was one of the three most important cities in the Roman Empire. It was essentially the meeting place of the East and the West and was a center of both Greek culture and Roman administration. It has been estimated that by the end of the fourth century, half of the city’s population was Christian. By the close of the third century, Asia Minor and North Africa were numerical strongholds of Christianity. The legend of Gregory Thaumaturgus, bishop of Pontus (the capitol of the region of Asia Minor on the southern coast of the Black Sea), states that the Christian population of this city grew from seventeen to all but seventeen during his thirty years of leadership. The growth of the church is attributed to the operation of miracles and the fact that he allowed the locals to substitute Christian festivals for the pagan feasts they were accustomed to celebrating. In the city of Rome, the Christian church was supporting one hundred full-time clergy members and fifteen hundred poor people by the year AD 250. Some scholars have estimated that the church could have been as many as fifty thousand strong at the time and that their numbers may have grown to as many as one hundred thousand by AD 300. Pliny, a second century governor of the northwest of Asia Minor province of Bithynia, complained that pagan temples were almost deserted because so much of the population had turned to Christianity. On the other hand, there was no place in the Roman Empire where churches were big enough to hold the congregants. The early church leader Justin Martyr summed up the growth of the church by saying, “There is no people, Greek or Barbarian, or any other race…among whom prayers and thanksgiving are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and creator of all things.”
Although charity and chastity characterized the early church, many Romans were suspicious of them and derogatory toward them. At least one Roman document described the Christians as “worthless, contemptible people, idiots, slaves, poor women, and children,” an evaluation which squares fairly closely to Paul’s own confession in I Corinthians 1:26 that the church consisted of “not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.” However, as the church continued to grow, so did its sphere of influence. By the year AD 200, the church father Tertullian was able to pen this evaluation of the church, “Every age, condition and rank is coming to us.” The notable characteristic concerning this explosive growth of the church is that it was accomplished with no organized mission program. Instead, every new convert was an ardent revolutionary, spreading his faith with no formalized agenda. One example can be found in the fact that the gospel was introduced into Ethiopia by two slaves shipwrecked in the Red Sea. When they were captured and brought to serve in the king’s court, their faith proved so contagious that it infected the nation.
The early favor that the church experienced in the Roman environment was relatively short-lived as the fears and ignorance of the Romans brought Christians into the focus of pagan hostilities. The Christians were viewed with extreme suspicion because outsiders greatly misunderstood them and their faith. They were called cannibals because of the reports that they were eating flesh and drinking blood — an apparent rumor begun by eavesdroppers as the church gathered for communion. They were accused of incest, based on the fact that everyone called each other “brother” and “sister.” At first, the persecutions were localized and scattered; however, the day was soon to come when the Empire itself would declare all-out war against this new “heresy,” ushering in the Era of the Martyrs. As laws were passed requiring participation in pagan rituals, the Christians by and large refused to obey them, resulting in public mistrust of these rebels who adamantly resisted taking part in what was otherwise everyday, common-placed life in the society of the time.
The Christians were seen as disloyal citizens when they refused to serve in the army because it required sacrifice to the Roman gods for their protection. There was one legion, however, that was composed entirely of Christians — the Thebam Legion. When Emperor Maximian ordered a pagan sacrifice and required that the legion not only to participate but also to take an oath of allegiance swearing to eradicate Christianity from Gaul, the entire legion refused. Maximian was so enraged that he ordered every tenth man to be killed. When the remaining ninety percent still refused to comply with the order, he again decimated the force. When those still standing refused to recant, the emperor, in a fit of rage, ordered all surviving five thousand four hundred soldiers executed — and the Christians were hacked to pieces. The testimony of these men exemplified the character of the early church who feared man so little because they feared God so much.
In AD 250, Emperor Decius issued an edict forcing all citizens to make yearly sacrifices to the Roman deities and the “divine emperor,” forcing the Christians to take a public stance for their faith and in opposition to the government. The government’s reaction to their tenacious resistance precipitated in an Empire-wide retaliation against the church. In AD 303, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict ordering every citizen to take part in public sacrifice to the pagan gods, the destruction of all church buildings, the imprisonment of church leaders, and the burning of Christian scriptures. February 23, 303, was declared “Terminalia” — the day the pagan world hoped to exterminate all Christianity. Eusebius, the first church historian, left us an eyewitness account of what was to follow.
I myself saw some of these mass executions by decapitation or fire, a slaughter that dulled the murderous axe until it wore out and broke in pieces, while the executioners grew so tired they had to work in shifts. But I also observed a marvelous eagerness and a divine power and enthusiasm in those who placed their faith in Christ; as soon as the first was sentenced, others would jump up on the tribunal in front of the judge and confess themselves Christians. Heedless of torture in its terrifying forms but boldly proclaiming their devotion to the God of the universe, they received the final sentence of death with joy, laughter, and gladness, singing hymns of thanksgiving to God until their last breath.
Contrary to all logical anticipation, the attempt to eradicate the faith only fostered its growth. Tertullian, an early church leader, summed up the effect of this persecution when he reported,. “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.” The pages of history are filled with story after story like this — and these are only the ones which got recorded. It is likely that many times more will be told in heaven than here on earth. Just a couple examples include the account of two Christians who shared their faith with the officer on their way to their execution; when he placed his faith in Christ, he was beheaded along with them. When a jailer’s wife believed in Christ because of the testimony of a family in prison, she was executed along with the family — at the hand of her own husband.
We have often been told, based on the above quote from Tertullian, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It is true that every time the enemy has tried to destroy the church, God has raised up a new army of men and women to follow Him. But the overpowering truth is that the seed of the church is the blood of Christ. The fact of the matter is that the church grows when men and women yield themselves to the anointing of the Holy Spirit, regardless of the conditions around them. In fact, it grows best under peaceful conditions — not persecution. The point that needs to be stressed when studying this period of history is that the church grows in spite of, not because of, persecution. When we read in Acts chapter eight that the persecution in Jerusalem became the impetus for mission work outside the city and region, we sometimes mistakenly see this as part of God’s plan to spread the church. In reality, God’s plan of expansion as set forth in Acts 1:8 was that the message would reach the ends of the earth — not because of persecution, but because of the power of the Holy Spirit. The real impetus of missions is Acts 1:8, not Acts 8:1!
In AD 312, Constantine was pitted against Maxentius in the Battle of Milvian Bridge for control of the Empire. Just before entering the fray, he reportedly witnessed the sign of a cross in the heavens accompanied by the command, “In this sign conquer.” This vision led him to declare himself a Christian and to make it his aim as the new emperor to Christianize the empire. In AD 313 he issued the Edict of Milan which granted freedom of religion to all faiths and in AD 325 he called together the Council of Nicea which unified the church in doctrine and function within empire. In his attempt to make the empire Christian, Constantine confiscated pagan temples and turned them into Christian churches, placed the clergy on the national payroll, and marched the army through the river as a mass baptism. Unfortunately, when Constantine removed the persecution he replaced it with government sanctions which led the church to depend upon the system rather than God, causing them to lose the one real impetus for genuine mission — the power of the Spirit. When asked how this new-found favor had affected the church, one bishop responded, “We can no longer say as did Peter, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’” Then, after a reluctant pause, he added, “However, no longer can we say, ‘In the name of Jesus rise up and walk.’”
Over the next few centuries, Christianity continued to spread by a combination of organized attempts and private witness. The Goths were converted by Christian prisoners who were taken in raids as the Germanic tribes invaded Rome. Ulfilas, who lived from AD 311 to AD 380, became one of the first to undertake a Bible translation work as he labored to make the scriptures available in the language of Goths. The individual we know of today as St. Patrick was born in Britain in the year AD 389, but as a young boy was taken to Ireland as a slave. He worked as a shepherd for many years, then escaped to France where he took refuge for six years serving as a monk in the Abbey of Lerins. Eventually, he retuned to Britain to be reunited with his family, but a vision commanded him to go back to Ireland where his ministry so impacted the nation that he became recognized as their patron saint. The Irish Christians became known as especially evangelistic, with an extensive knowledge of scripture and personal experiences of the power of the Holy Spirit. It has also been said that had it not been for the monastic schools which sprang up in Ireland, learning would have almost certainly perished from western Europe during the coming Dark Ages.
In AD 596, Augustine and forty Benedictine monks were commissioned to go to England as missionaries. Due to diseases and hostilities along the way, only seven of the monks actually reached the English Channel and the British Isles; however, their mission met with even more opposition when they attempted to witness to King Ethelbert. Fortunately, his wife was a Christian, and she eventually persuaded him to be converted. Upon the king’s profession of faith, Christianity became the official religion of the country and ten thousand new converts were baptized in one day.
AD 723 was a “red letter” year for the history of Christian advancement. Boniface, who had been commissioned to bring the gospel to Germany, decided to challenge the Germans to accept Christ by proving to them that Jesus — not their pagan deity Thor — was the true god. The missionary took an ax and began to chop away at a mighty oak tree which the local people believed to be the dwelling place of their god of thunder and lightning. As the crowd cowered back, expecting Thor to retaliate with a deadly bolt to defend his honor, Boniface continued to strike the tree until it came crashing to the ground. After this obvious validation of the Christian faith, the entire population converted and took the wood from the monstrous tree to build a Christian chapel.
Emperor Charlemagne, determined to advance the faith by force, declared that conversion be included in the terms of peace for each German tribe which was conquered. In his zeal to punish those tribes which were not willing to accept the rule of the Catholic Church, Charlemagne resorted to extreme measures. Historical records bear out that he wiped out whole communities, burned their villages, destroyed their crops, and killed as many as forty-five hundred men, women, and children in one day. As barbaric as this may seem, we must realize that the same technique was used on American Indians as the early conquistadores tried to introduce them to the Catholic faith. In New Mexico, those who would not accept baptism were punished by cutting off a foot, making it almost impossible for them to climb from their homes high on the mesas to the fields and water sources of the plains below. Although not as blatant as in the days of Charlemagne, the feeling that a subjected nation should capitulate to its conqueror by accepting its religion can still be seen in modern society. As part of the terms of peace after World War II, the Japanese emperor was required to confess that he was not a deity as he had previously claimed. Finding themselves without a god, the Japanese people wanted to make Christianity their state religion. Only General MacArthur’s insistence that the people convert individually rather than as a national policy held them back from making Christianity official. The unfortunate turn of events at this point was that when MacArthur asked the American churches to send one thousand missionaries to bring the people to Christ, only about fifty responded!
In Scandinavia, we see a different pattern emerging between the church and the state. Although he bitterly opposed the faith, the king of Denmark was convinced to allow the building of two churches and the introduction of the faith to the populace of his nation. From there, the fortune of the church varied from reign to reign as subsequent kings either embraced or rejected the church. The Christian faith came to Norway because of political advantages rather than due to genuine religious conviction. The lesson to be learned from the history of the church in these Nordic regions is that when political freedom precedes religious freedom, the church can flourish and grow unhindered.
In AD 431, Nestorius the Patriarch of Constantinople was condemned as a heretic and evicted from the formalized church. Not dissuaded by his ostracism, he founded the Nestorian Church which spread throughout the East, especially in China, India, and Persia. This church, even with its misconceptions about the Trinity and other doctrines, actually became the greatest missionary agency of all time. Their impact in China was especially significant. At that time, China was the most civilized empire on earth and contained the most prosperous city in the world. It was into this environment that the Nestorians introduced a religion which thrived from the seventh to the ninth centuries and was imperially sanctioned as a “religion of light.” They translated the Bible into Chinese, spread their faith into ten provinces, and built monasteries in at least a hundred cities. Nestorians held high offices in the empire and were poised in a position of possibly converting the Emperor and eventually the whole country. Recent archeology has discovered that a Nestorian church sat squarely in the middle of what was an imperial compound for the study of Taoism, the official religion of the ruling dynasty. The influence of the Christian faith can also be seen in the way that the existing religions adapted to the religious ideas that had been introduced through the new faith. China’s most popular Chinese deity, the goddess of mercy Guanyi, was depicted as a male for centuries; however, in the eighth century when Christianity was at its heigth, she began appearing as a female. She was depicted as wearing a robe and carrying a child, an apparent influence of the popularity of the Virgin Mary. Anti-Christian forces eventually drove out the Nestorian influence, and China was to remain without Christianity until the Catholic missionaries would arrive centuries later. With the arrival of John of Monte Corvine in 1294, the Catholic church grew to over one hundred thousand strong; however, the tide turned by 1368 when all Christians were expelled and Christianity died out again. In 1601, Matteo Ricci was able to re-introduce the faith by adopting the culture and using the guise of a Confucian scholar to gain acceptance into the hearts of the people. He also won the favor of the emperor by bringing gifts of exquisite clocks from Europe. Under his leadership the church grew to almost half a million; unfortunately, Christianity was again expelled from the Middle Kingdom in the 1700s.
Back in AD 330, Constantine had shifted the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in order to protect the administration from the invasions of the Huns. The ultimate outcome of this move was the establishment of a second division of the empire headquartered in the East. The eventual outgrowth of this division was the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church. While the Roman church insisted upon the use of Latin, the Orthodox church encouraged the use of the local vernacular in worship — a major advantage because the people were no longer held in ignorance which bred superstition and magic. With the rise and aggressive growth of the Islamic faith in the Middle East, Asia Minor, and North Africa in the sixth century, the presence of this eastern church and government was a bulwark against Muslim inroads into eastern Europe. Before long, Islam had taken over many of the major Christian centers on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and was headed toward western Europe across the Straits of Gibraltar. In the Battle of Tours in France in AD 732, Charles Martel stopped their advance and preserved Europe as a Christian continent. During the Middle Ages, education and culture waned and was almost eclipsed in Christian Europe while flourishing in Islamic lands. It is said that just one library of an Islamic prince might contain more books than in all of Europe. Yet during these same periods, the Christian West launched an all-out war on the Muslim East. Between 1095 and 1272, European Christians staged seven crusades into the East in an attempt to free the Holy Land from Islamic rule. These campaigns did little to change the situation in the biblical lands, but they did leave wounds which remain unhealed even until today. Because these invasions culminated in the murder of Muslims and Jews, Christianity has suffered inestimable reproach for centuries.
A second tide of Islam swept into Europe some five hundred years after the initial wave with the Ottoman Turks and Mongols of Central Asia. This Islamic influence was finally broken in 1492 when they relinquished Alhambra, their last stronghold in Spain. In their attempt to secure their rule in Spain, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand not only evicted the Muslim powers which had dominated the nation’s political life, they also expelled all Jews, many of whom had held high positions in the academic and social circles. Possibly to cater favor from the Pope or possibly out of a genuine heart for the lost, they declared their ultimate goal for endorsing the ventures of Christopher Columbus by proclaiming, “Nothing do we desire more than the publication and amplification of the Evangelic Law, and the conversion of Indians to our Holy Catholic Faith.”
With Columbus’ journey across the ocean blue came the birth of the Age of Exploration as the maritime nations of Europe battled for claims in distant lands. As each nation sought the Holy See’s blessing, permission, and funding, they all declared that their missions were motivated by a desire to spread the Catholic faith to the heathen at the ends of the earth. In 1493, the Pope enacted the Demarcation Bull which divided the world through the Atlantic Ocean, giving Spain the right to colonize and evangelize west of the line and Portugal all the lands east of the line. With this authorization, the race was on to plant the flags of the respective nations and cross of the church in the soil of lands around the globe. Because the Catholic church maintained orders of celibate clergy who had given themselves totally to the service of God and the church, there was a ready pool of men who could be repositioned at a moment’s notice with “no strings attached.” Tapping into this vast human resource, the Roman church was able to rapidly plant their representatives and faith on numerous distant shores. By 1628, the church had spread into so many mission lands that they felt it necessary to establish a seminary in Rome to train the clergy which was rising up in these nations.
A quick survey of the successes and failures of the Roman missionary movement should suffice to depict this period of exploration, colonization, and evangelism. Francis Xavier began his mission in 1542 in Goa, India, and continued to Japan in 1549. In both nations, he turned entire communities to the Christian faith when he miraculously began to preach in their native tongues without ever having studied these languages. By 1600 there were approximately half a million Christians in Japan. Unfortunately, the government took an official stance against the alien religion and determined to eradicate it. As thirty-seven thousand believers died making their last desperate stand in 1638, Christianity disappeared from the Land of the Rising Sun — or so it seemed. When missionaries again arrived on the shores of the Japanese islands some two hundred thirty years later, they discovered a tiny community of believers who had secretly survived for over two centuries. In the Philippines, the Catholic Church had an almost total impact on the nation, infusing the faith so pervasively into the society that it remains basically a Catholic country today. It seems that the success can be tied to a number of factors including the establishment of a strong educational system for the nationals, the policy of allowing them to retain their customary or traditional practices, eliminating a color bar through intermarrying with the locals, and maintaining unbroken political control for four centuries. The work in India faced some significant difficulties due to the fact that the Portuguese who colonized major portions of the subcontinent were only interested in establishing seaport colonies, thus eliminating the possibility of reaching the masses of people. Immorality among the Westerners invalidated the testimony of their faith, their acceptance of the caste system disqualified the gospel message of acceptance, and the fact that they would not allow non-Portuguese missionaries limited the potential of the mission thrust. One notable ambassador of the faith who did have an impact in India was Robert De Nobili, an Italian who adopted the lifestyle of a Brahmin by such cultural practices as not eating meat. His work resulted in the conversion of one hundred fifty thousand Hindus.
In the Americas, the invasion of the white man resulted in the almost total loss of the indigenous population due to the introduction of diseases to which they had no immunities and due to the slaughter of natives who were viewed as hostile. Many areas, especially in the Caribbean, were totally repopulated with slaves imported from Africa. Many of the slaves did not survive the trans-Atlantic voyage, and those who did often arrived deathly sick. The Jesuits ministered to the debilitated subjects and baptized many of them into the faith. In the early years of the seventeenth century, Peter Claver taught and baptized over three hundred thousand black brothers into the faith. The Catholic padres also worked among the Indian population, attempting to protect them from the cruelties of the Spanish colonizers. Redactions (special facilities where the natives could be cared for, educated, and taught the faith) and even entire Christian communities were established to help advance these goals. However, by the 1750s, the conquerors were so at odds with the Jesuits who were hindering their conquests that three thousand of the priests were expelled. Unfortunately, there were no indigenous leaders trained and ready to take over the ministry and all the work that had been done and accomplishments that had been achieved disappeared.
In Africa, the work experienced many failures, mostly because of the death of so many missionaries due to climate and disease, the association of Westerners with the slave trade, the fact that few educational programs were set up for the nationals, the ever-pervasive instability in local politics, and the church’s practice of hasty conversions and mass baptisms which resulted in superficial converts and those who simply bore Christ’s name without a real spiritual regeneration.
The Protestants were late in getting into the mission venture due to a number of problems. One major drawback was the fact that most of the Protestant nations were inland. Without access to the sea, the major international highway system of the day, they were essentially isolated from the mission lands. Of equal significance was the lack of funds. Most of the Protestant nations, financially devastated due to the Reformation and other lingering conflicts, did not have resources available for projects beyond their own borders. The lack of religious orders also factored into the lack of impetus to engage in international evangelism simply because they lacked the personnel to field the missions. However, it is likely that the most debilitating of all obstacles was the theology of the Reformers. Most considered that the Great Commission was directed solely to the apostles and that the close of the New Testament era concluded the mission mandate. There was a feeling that the heathen deserved whatever state they were presently in and whatever eternal destiny they would eventually receive because they had rejected their original invitation to believe. Predestination and the eschatological view that the end was coming soon overshadowed any sense of missions. Additionally, great church leaders such as Martin Luther proclaimed, “There is no need to send missionaries. The world will end before they can do any good.”
The one shining exception to Protestant sluggishness can be found among a group known as the Moravians. Birthed out of the Pietistic Movement in which individuals began to seek a more personal experience with the Lord through cottage prayer meetings and home Bible study sessions, the Moravians exemplified a genuine conversion experience which led to personal piety and engendered evangelistic zeal, resulting in a true missionary vision — much like the Great Awakening of the 1740s or the Charismatic Movement which ignited the Christian world in the 1970s. Known as the “Father of Piety,” Philip Spener in 1689 established Halle, a school to train men and women in this religion of the heart. In 1705, August Franke, a professor at the school, was commissioned by the king of Denmark to recruit chaplains to serve the spiritual needs of Danes who were working in India. Failing to find qualified candidates in Denmark, he turned to the school for recruits. The result was the birth of history’s first cooperative mission work, the Danish-Halle Mission. The missionaries met many challenges because they didn’t fit the traditional mold. The result was that they went outside the compound of the Europeans and began to minister to the locals. The first missionaries who had been sent to this area served only as chaplains to the European traders, and it was almost one hundred years before people like the Danish-Halle recruits reached out to the nationals. The same pattern has proven true in modern history with military chaplains in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq who have little or no contact with the locals. Not only did these Danish-Halle missionaries have an impact on the field, they came back to Europe and began to ignite an interest there concerning the needs abroad. One who was greatly influenced by their reports was Nicolaus Zinzendorf who was to eventually leave an indelible mark on missions history. Zinzendorf was Spener’s godson and Franke’s student, and he took the spirit of both these influences in his life to a new level when he established Herrnhut, a colony were the Moravians sought deep relationships with God and daring ways to live out those relationships in this world.
In 1792, when the residents at the colony heard of the plight of the slaves on St. Thomas, two young men determined to bring the gospel to them even though the only way to get onto the island was to sell themselves into slavery. Fortunately Count Zinzendorf had enough political connections to arrange for them to enter the island as free men, and they established a viable inroad into the slave colonies. One missionary, responding to the needs presented him, replied, “I would go if only I had shoes.” As soon as the other members of the colony provided the necessary footwear, he was on his way to meet the challenge. The Moravian Brethren subsequently sent missionaries to Greenland (1733), Lapland (1734), the British colonies in North America (1737), Surinam (1735), the Arctic Ocean rim and Guinea (1737), Ceylon (1738), Algiers (1740), Persia (1747), Egypt (1752), Jamaica (1754), Antigua (1756), the East Indies (1759), the Kalmuck territory (1768), and Labrador (1771). The mission zeal of the Moravians reverberated far beyond their own ranks as it infected others who became influential in the Protestant world. John Wesley was moved by encounters he had with the Moravians he met on the boat to America and in Georgia while ministering there. Upon his return to Europe, he traveled to Herrnhut where he spent several days conferring with Zinzendorf, certainly a catalyst to the Evangelical Awakening that soon spread across England and America. It was also because of a book recording the mission exploits of the Moravians that a simple cobbler who kept a map of the world above his workbench so he could pray for the nations was inspired to become the “Father of Modern Protestant Missions.” William Carey, so burdened for the souls of the unreached heathen around the world challenged the leaders of the British Baptist movement to mount an effort to propagate the gospel among them. He was met with an adamant retort from John C. Ryland, a prominent leader of the church, “Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.” Undeterred, Carey went on to challenge the men to “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” Eventually, he was commissioned to serve as an official missionary; and, on June 13, 1793, he set sail for India as the first missionary sent out by a Protestant denominational body.
William Carey’s life lit the fuse for the dramatic explosion of nineteenth century world evangelism known as the “Great Century.” His vision captured Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, Isobel Kuhn, John and Betty Stam, and thousands of others. Of the many great missionaries who followed in the trail blazed by Carey, one of the most notable would be Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission. Taylor spent over fifty years in China, making return trips to England to recruit other young men and women to follow him into the field. At least eight hundred did follow, establishing more than three hundred stations in all eighteen provinces of the country. Not only did he impact China and the lives of the recruits who came to assist him, Taylor left an indelible imprint on mission work as a whole and is known as the “Father of Faith Missions” because he introduced the principle of independent mission work not reliant upon denominational support. Historian Ruth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life, “No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor.”
The United States of America, with nineteen percent of the world’s Protestants and twenty-one percent of the world’s evangelicals, would eventually rise to the preeminent position of missions leadership by producing seventy percent of the present missions force and eighty percent of missions funding, but the movement in this country emerged from some of the most humble of beginnings. In 1806, a group of students at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, were in a field praying when a sudden thunderstorm forced them to take refuge under a haystack. During this time of intercession for the heathen of the world, they made a pledge to themselves and God, “We can do it if we will.” Because of the unusual circumstances under which this group and their pledge were birthed, they have gone down in missions history as the “Haystack Group.” From this group of young men did indeed arise those who would go out to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. In 1810 the first USA missions board was established to sponsor some of these young missionaries. Included among them was Adoniram Judson, who in 1812 became the first missionary sent out from American soil. However, on the boat to his assignment in India, Judson became convinced that baptism should be by total emersion and resigned from the Congregationalist board which was to support his work to become a Baptist and was sent to Burma to establish a work there.
The advancement of the gospel around the world was often associated with other Western influences encroaching into the non-Western world. It was often said that first came the diplomat, then the merchant, and finally the missionary. Although it was often the case that the cross followed the flag; in many places, this pattern was reversed. In fact, many areas resisted the missionaries simply because they feared that if the cross was planted in their soil, it would be followed by the flag and a cannon. Diseases and violence certainly characterized the missionary enterprise of the nineteenth century; however, the work went on undaunted. Using their caskets as shipping crates, volunteer after volunteer set out for the “white man’s grave.” One brave young man sailed away with this departing farewell, “Within six months, you will hear that one of us is dead. When the news comes, do not be cast down; but send someone else immediately to take the vacant place.” Another brave soul echoed the call with, “Let a thousand fall before Africa be given up.”
Missiologist Herbert Kane describes the challenges and dogged determination of the missionaries of this era:
In the conduct of their work they encountered indifference, suspicion, hostility, persecution, and imprisonment. Times without number their homes were looted, their buildings burned, their churches desecrated, and their lives threatened. Thousands returned home broken in health. Other thousands died prematurely of tropical diseases. Hundreds became martyrs. And all of this they endured without reserve and without regret. Their compassion knew no bounds. They literally fulfilled the words of Christ: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matt. 5:44 KJV). They were neither saints nor angels, but they were unusually fine Christians. They were the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
The hardest thing of all to bear was the reaction to their message. As a rule the missionaries were not wanted, not liked, and not trusted; consequently their message was rejected. It is a mistake to think that the “heathen in his blindness” is just waiting for the missionary to bring him the light. He is blind all right, but he doesn’t know it; consequently he is in no hurry to embrace the light. In country after country the missionaries had to wait many years for the seed to take root in good ground. It required endless patience and stamina to win the day. (A Concise History of the Christian World Mission, p. 97)
He then follows up with a powerful evaluation of the impact of their undeterred perseverance:
By all odds the missionaries of the nineteenth century were a special breed of men and women. Single-handedly and with great courage they attacked the social evils of their time: child marriage, the immolation of widows, temple prostitution, and untouchability in India; foot binding, opium addiction, and the abandonment of babies in China; polygamy, the slaver trade, and the destruction of twins in Africa. In all parts of the world they opened schools, hospitals, clinics, medical colleges, orphanages, and leprosaria. They gave succor and sustenance to the dregs of society cast off by their own communities. At great risk to themselves and their families they fought famines, floods, pestilences, and plagues. They were the first to rescue unwanted babies, educate girls, and liberate women. Above all, they gave to the non-Christian world the most liberating of all messages — the gospel of Christ. They converted savages to saints; and out of this raw material they built the Christian church, which is today the most universal of all institutions. By the end of the century the gospel had literally been taken to the ends of the earth. “Never before in a period of equal length had Christianity or any other religion penetrated for the first time as large an area as it had in the nineteenth century.” (Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Great Century in the Americas, Australasia and Africa, p. 469)
The emissaries of the cross were to be found in all habitable parts of the globe, from the frozen wasteland of Greenland to the steaming jungles of Africa. Churches, chapels, schools, and hospitals were scattered with great profusion from Turkey to Tokyo, from Cairo to Cape Town, from Monterrey to Montevideo, from Polynesia to Indonesia. There were, to be sure, a few areas of the world where there were no resident missionaries, but that was because of government restrictions, not because the church lacked either the will or the power to press forward with the task of world evangelism. Included in the Christian church, for the very first time, were representatives of “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9, RSV). Latourette was right when he called the nineteenth century “The Great Century.” (A Concise History of the Christian World Mission, p. 100)
As the world entered into the twentieth century, a whole new spirit was afoot. The Pentecostal movement was birthed in the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906. Just as the Day of Pentecost proved to be a fulfillment of Jesus’ mandate that the original disciples should not attempt to fulfill the Great Commission until they had been touched by the power of the Holy Spirit, this new wind of the Holy Spirit was to fan the flames of missions around the world. Pentecostals wasted little time in implementing mission work. The Assemblies of God ministry was began in Egypt in 1908. The Pentecostal message reached Iran in 1909. In 1910, Gunner and Daniel Berg, two Swedish brothers from South Bend, Indiana, sailed for Brazil in obedience to a directive from the Lord to go to a place called “Belem.” Until they arrived, they were not even aware that there was a city in Brazil by that name. By 1910, an official Church of God missionary had landed in the Bahamas. Lillian Thrasher, who became known as the “Nile Mother” because of more than fifty years of caring for the orphans of Egypt, began her ministry in 1911. Chile received the Pentecostal message in 1910, Tunisia in 1912, Liberia in 1915, and Kenya in 1921. By 1936, there was enough Pentecostal activity around the world for the officials of the Church of God to undertake an around-the-world tour, stopping in Hawaii, Philippines, China, and India.
One phenomenal story of the power of Pentecost in missionary endeavors comes from the year 1956 when Tommy Hicks, a little-know evangelist was invited to Argentina. On the flight down, he was directed by the Holy Spirit to pray for a gentleman named “Peron.” It turned out that the Peron he was to find and minister to was the president of the country. When the evangelist showed up at the presidential palace to ask for permission to see the president, he was questioned as to what business he had trying to meet with President. Peron. When Hicks explained that he was there as a messenger from God with a gift of healing, the guard asked for prayer. Upon being instantly healed, the guard made arrangements for the evangelist to meet with the president, who was also miraculously healed as onlookers watched the healing manifest. Argentina was rocked under the seismic impact of the Hicks’ healing crusade. Any time a critic would speak against the revival, ten people would stand up and testify to what they had personally experienced.
Pentecostals now have adherents in all parts of the world. The largest denomination is the Assemblies of God, with almost a million members in the USA and five times that number overseas. It is the fastest growing denomination in the world. In Latin America, Pentecostals have achieved their greatest gains. In 1900 there were approximately fifty thousand Protestants in Latin America. By 1950 the number had climbed to the ten million mark. Twenty years later the figure had doubled to twenty million. Today the estimates run from twenty-five to thirty million, over two thirds of whom are Pentecostals. Pentecostals are the largest group of evangelicals in ten of the twenty republics of Latin America. In Chile they outnumber all others by nine to one. Similar to the early church, the humble social origins of the Pentecostals and the development of preachers from among the common people of the poorer class have greatly characterized the growth within the Pentecostal movement. Pentecostals emphasize that all in the Body of Christ are ministers and everyone should be a preacher in some sense of the word. Especially in non-Western settings, aggressive lay ministry has been a key factor in Pentecostal growth. Another large part of the dynamic worldwide growth of the Pentecostal movement is its ability to mobilize and effectively deploy women into missionary service. It should not be a surprise that there is a higher percentage of women ministers and missionaries per capita in Pentecostal groups than in any other evangelical group since the very message of Pentecost is that handmaidens, as well as servants, are to receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and that daughters, as well as sons, are to prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18)