Continuing in the study of missions….
“For his invisible attributes…have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans 1:20
“Yet he did not leave himself without a witness, for he did good…” Acts 14:17
“And he made from one man every nation(ethnos) of man to live on the face of the earth…that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us.” Acts 17:26-27
“When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord…” Jeremiah 29:13
From these verses we get a sense that the spread of the saving grace of Christ goes beyond the means of what man does or better, how man is used. No man has any excuse.
“Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God and there is no other.” Isaiah 45:22
The Hope has always been there for the taking. That Hope manifested in the person of Jesus who paid the price for all who have hoped, currently hope, and will hope in God. He is the consummation of this hope. And the only one. For one unique example one can see how for many years Christ has called Muslims to himself directly without the presence of Christians.
But this inevitably raises the question, “If a Christian does not have to be present for a man to be saved, why then bother going to the unreached?” In a statement preached by Paris Reidhead, when he served in Sudan as a missionary and yet felt as if the work was failing and complained to God, he said he had heard a rebuke from the Lord: “I did not send you there for them, I sent you there for ME!” We must always remember that God is the end of all things and all good. The gospel is not about man, but about God. We live to magnify Him in ourselves, and serving men is one of the prime, (if not the prime) means by which we do this, for the entire Law is summed up in “Love your neighbor.” This is the tip of the iceberg for this subject however, and there is a deep amount of knowledge to be found if you search this out and meditate on it.