By the late Arthur T. Pierson.
God is in creation; cosmos would still be chaos with God left out. He is also in events; the whole of mission history is a mystery until read as His story.
We are now to look at the proofs of a Superintending Providence of God in foreign missions. The word “providence” literally means forevision, and hence, foreaction - preparation for what is foreseen - expressing a divine, invisible rule of this world, including care, control, guidance, as exercised over both the animate and inanimate creation. In its largest scope it involves foreknowledge and foreordination, preservation and administration, exercised in all places and at all times.
For our present purpose the word “providence” may be limited to the divine activity in the entire control of persons and events. This sphere of action and administration, or superintendence, embraces three departments: first, the natural or material - creation; second, the spiritual or immaterial - new creation; and third, the intermediate history in which He adapts and adjusts the one to the other, so that even the marred and hostile elements, introduced by sin, are made tributary to the final triumph of redemption. Man’s degeneration is corrected in regeneration; the natural made subservient to the supernatural, and even the wrath of man to the love and grace of God.
MANIFESTATIONS OF GOD
Thus, intermediate between the mystery of creation and the mystery of the new creation lies the mystery of history, linking the other two. We are now briefly to trace the working of the Creator and Ruler of both the matter worlds and time worlds, controlling the blind forces of nature and the intelligent forces of human nature, so as to make all events and agencies serve His ends as Redeemer.
In creation God specially manifests His eternity, power and wisdom; in history, His sovereignty and majesty, justice and righteousness; in redemption, His holiness and benevolence, and, most of all, grace or the voluntary exercise of His love. These positions being granted, we may expect to find, especially in mission history, proofs of God’s Superintending Providence, of His three-fold administration as Lawgiver, King, and Judge; in His legislative capacity, commanding and counseling; in His executive capacity. governing and directing; in His judicial capacity, rewarding and punishing. Space allows only a general glance as of a landscape from a mountain top.
GOD’S ENTERPRISE
The work of missions is pre-eminently God’s enterprise - has on it the seal of His authority. He calls it His own “visiting of the nations to take out of them a people for His name.” Thus the whole course of missions becomes God’s march through the ages. He has His vanguard, the forerunners that prepare His way, making ready for, and heralding, His approach. He has His bodyguard, the immediate attendants that signalize His actual advance, bear His banners, and execute His will; and He has His rearguard the resultant movements consequent upon, and complementary to, the rest.
In other words, God’s Superintending Providence in missions is seen from three points of view:
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In the divine preparations for world-wide evangelization.
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In the divine co-operation in missionary activity.
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In the divine benediction upon all faithful service.
GOD’S PREPARATIONS
Each of these embraces many particulars which demand more than a rapid glance. God’s preparations reached through millenniums. But within the century just closed we see Him moving, opening doors and shaping events, causing the removal of obstacles and the subsidence of barriers, raising up and thrusting forth workers, and furnishing new facilities; and conspicuously in promoting Bible translation and diffusion.
GOD’S CO-OPERATION
His co-operation is seen in the unity and continuity of the work, in the marked fitness between the workers and the work, the new fields and the new facilities. Startling correspondences in mission history reveal His omnipresence and faithfulness, such as synchronisms and successions among His chosen servants, parallel and converging lines of labor, and connecting links of service. All these, and much more, show, behind the lives and deeds of the workmen, a Higher Power that wrought in them both to will and to work.