Chapter 16: The Continuing Possibility (1890-1892)
Over and over Pierson pressed his point home. "There is no lack of money nor means to compass the evangelization of the world within the present century," he said, "if there were but the spirit of enterprise to dare and undertake for our Redeemer" (Missionary Review, August 1890:587). And yet, how difficult it seemed to arouse the church.
With profound and solemn conviction we record once more our testimony, after more than a quarter of a century of the study of missionary history and biography, that only from a divine point of view can the mystery of missions be interpreted or the significance of missions be appreciated. Higher up than the level of the most self-denying heroism must we get to command this true horizon; and our constant effort with tongue and pen is to awaken and arouse sluggish believers to behold this march of God and fall into line under His leadership and take up the march with Him (Missionary Review, September 1890:656).
Speaking to the annual meeting of the China Inland Mission, Pierson said, "It is time that the Church of God should awake to her responsibility. We have been acting as though we had an eternity in which to do the work, and the people whom we seek to reach had an eternity on earth in which to be reached; whereas the fact is that our term of service and their term of life must both very soon expire" (Regions Beyond, September & October 1890:353). He went on to say,
There never was such an opportunity. We are living in days that are more augustly awful than any in previous human history. I say, deliberately, that I would rather live in the year 1890 than have lived in the time of Christ Himself, not because it would not have been a transcendent privilege to see the Lord in the flesh, and to be among the number of those who were closely associated with His life, but because this is a grander day of opportunity and a more magnificent day of privilege (Regions Beyond, September & October 1890:354).
A Presbyterian missionary from Thailand, D. McGilvary, wrote to the Review in October 1890, "You might be interested to hear another voice from the field in response to the standard raised pre-eminently by your Review for a crusade to evangelize the whole world during the present century. The idea is a grand one. Possibly, the faith of but few has reached the standard of Christianizing the whole world during the next decade. We all know it is not beyond the divine power to effect it" (Missionary Review, May 1891:325) [Italics his].
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century American politicians spoke of the "manifest destiny" of America. It was not surprising, then, that a pastor in Washington D. C., Rev. A. W. Pitzer wrote,
The providential mission of this nation is to give the blessed Gospel of the Son of God to all peoples of the earth...We hold the Gospel, not merely for ourselves but in trust for a lost world. We have the men and the money, the missionaries and the agencies, methods of transit and transportation, in more than abundance, to give the Gospel in ten years, as God’s witness, to every nation under heaven. The supreme duty of this nation is to realize her sublime providential mission, and bear the blessed light of the Gospel to all the dark places of the earth, to the habitations of men now filled with cruelty. There is no second Columbus to be born, nor any new continent to be discovered. This is the "last days," and this "ends of the earth," the light that shines across the Pacific from San Francisco and Portland reaches to the very lands where that first light was kindled. "Now or never," is the world to be evangelized by us (Missionary Review, November 1890:825-826) [Italics his].
The Regions Beyond
But the strongest voice was still that of A. T. Pierson. In February 1891, in his editorial titled "The Regions Beyond", he repeated, "The motto of the great apostle of the Gentiles was, THE REGIONS BEYOND... The motto of Paul is the true watchword of the Church in this new age of missions. After all the work of a century, we have only just begun. We are not even at the midway pillar; and God says, ‘Speed ye! Make haste! Forget the things behind and push for the Regions Beyond.’ And this we will do by the grace of God!" (Missionary Review, February 1891:81-82).
His constant harping on this same theme irritated some. The Rev. Canon D. D. Stewart, in an article entitled "The Greatness of God Shown in the Slow Christianizing of the Earth," wrote, "A thousand years are with the Lord as one day...All nations will, in due time, come and worship before God, and, in God’s estimation, that time is rapidly approaching, though, according to man’s arithmetic, there is a protracted delay" (Church Missionary Intelligencer, July 1891:473-474). Pierson concurred but also observed that "‘one day is with the Lord as a thousand years,’ and there have been single historic ‘days’ in this period, in which He has wrought the work that ordinarily would have taken a millennium" (Missionary Review, February 1891:84).
Pierson defended the need for speedy evangelization in his new book, The Divine Enterprise of Missions. Reviewing this book in The Church Missionary Intelligencer, Eugene Stock commented, "Dr. Pierson, notwithstanding his principle of diffusion rather than concentration, has no sympathy with the scampering notion of a ‘witness’ just telling the tidings of salvation once, and then boasting that Matthew 24:14 is fulfilled" (May 1892:381). Pierson wrote, "Is ‘witnessing’ then, so superficial, artificial a process, that we are to picture to ourselves some flying courier, galloping on horseback through village after village, announcing the good news, and then hastening away elsewhere_ To bear testimony unto all nations is no such short, hasty, inadequate proclamation of the Gospel message" (Pierson, The Divine Enterprise,1891:69).
But Pierson was not locked into looking to the end of the century. He suggested that another international meeting like that in London be held in 1892. There Christian leaders could review results of missions and take stock of what was left to be done. What would need to be done in the second century of modern missions_ He asked, "Is it too much to hope that this next century of missions may not have passed until the whole world shall have been acquainted with the Gospel_" (Missionary Review, February 1891:142).
Once again he stressed the strategic need to divide up the world for evangelistic purposes. Rev. J. Murray Mitchell, also writing in the Missionary Review, admitted, "It might, perhaps, be possible to form an international committee, representing all Protestant missions, to map out the great battle-field and suggest a plan of campaign; at present, each mission, each regiment chooses its own field and fights its own battle, with little or no reference to others" (Missionary Review, March 1891:173-174). But this kind of strategizing could only be done at a world-level conference. And when Pierson asked for opinions on whether a London-type conference should be held in 1892-93, most of the responses from mission agency directors were negative. The comments of Dr. M. H. Houston of the PCA (Southern Presbyterian) Foreign Missions Board were representative:
My opinion is that the London Conference is so recent that it would not be well to attempt another World’s Missionary Convention in 1892, at least for the discussion of those general subjects which were before the London meeting. I would be glad, though, to attend a World’s Convention at any time to consider the urgent practical question, "What can be done more than we are now doing to evangelize the present generation of men_" (Missionary Review, July 1891:527).
The First SVM Conference
That same year Pierson was asked to speak at the first Student Volunteer Movement Convention in Cleveland. No one was surprised when his subject was "The Evangelization of the World in This Generation." Pierson began,
The supreme question of the hour is the immediate preaching of the Gospel to every creature...I am afraid that the seeds of a great apostasy are in the Church of God today, that in the midst of this century and its closing decade it should even be questioned whether we could evangelize the world in our generation, when the luxuries alone that crowd our homes, that cover our persons, that are hung upon our walls and stuffed into our library cases, the gold and silver, the jewelry and the ornamentation, the costly furniture in our homes, would of themselves suffice to make the Gospel speed its way around the earth inside of a decade of years. It is a pretty solemn question whether we ourselves are saved if we allow this state of things to go on much longer (Report, 1891:82).
Later in the same address he said,
I want to say to you, that with the 40,000,000 Protestant church members in the Church of God, with the $12,000,000,000 in her treasury, with all the capacity for carrying on the work in business methods, according to the very best and wisest and most sagacious suggestion, I have not the slightest idea that we shall see the world evangelized in this generation, nor that it will be evangelized in ten, twenty, or a hundred generations to come unless the supernatural element enters into it as it has never entered into it since apostolic days (Report, 1891:85).
Pierson let the students know how deeply his convictions ran:
For I solemnly believe, and I say it with the emphasis of a dying man, that if the Church today should resolve that the year 1891 should not go by until she had sent at least one representative of Christ and His Gospel into every destitute district on the surface of the earth, so that there should be no district a hundred miles square that should not be represented by one witness for Christ, before the year 1891 passed by, there would be an outpouring of the Holy Ghost to which even Pentecost would be simply the first drops of a coming latter rain (Report, 1891:88).
By July of 1891 Pierson was able to report,
This conviction of the duty and feasibility of giving the whole world the Gospel in the present generation has taken possession of countless men and women in all parts of the globe. Hence the simultaneous calls for increased laborers, enlarged means, and higher consecration. Let us keep this cry echoing, and let us press the Lord’s enterprise until not a lethargic church or apathetic disciple remains--until not a child of Adam remains without the knowledge of the Second Adam, who is able to repair the ruin wrought by the first. No believer can tell how much depends upon his activity joining in this crusade of the ages. Every voice and pen, every heart and hand and purse, should be enlisted constantly and unreservedly to secure the immediate proclamation of the Gospel to every soul. To this end the pages of this Review are pre-eminently and prayerfully devoted (Missionary Review, July 1891:540).
In spite of all that had happened in the previous ten years, there was still formidable opposition to the cause of missions. Rev. A. A. Pfanstiehl, a defender of missions, wrote, "It has been figured out by those who look upon this work from a political-economy point of view that it costs about $1000 to make a single convert in heathendom, and that at the present rate of progress it will take two hundred thousand years to convert the world!" (Missionary Review, September 1891:683). Because others had already dealt with the inaccuracy of these statistics, Pfanstiehl went on to show the value of these "expensive" converts both from an historical and biblical viewpoint. Pierson also added a comment to this article: "The only real discouragement in the work of missions is the slowness and sluggishness of the church to fall in line with the command and the leadership of our Royal Captain. The church has numerical force and financial resource sufficient without a doubt to bear the Gospel message to every soul before the century ends" (Missionary Review, September 1891:685).
