Spurgeon on World Evangelism

I've was recently by the doctor that I have osteoporosis in my left knee and shouldn't walk over a half hour. Plus my right foot has fallen arches. So this evening I did just 30 minutes of evangelism then sat down under a light and read some of 12 Missionary Sermons by Charles Spurgeon.

He had such a burning burden for reaching the world for Christ, I thought I'd give some quotes from this book and maybe others of his. Of course anyone else is welcome to give quotes as well. Be blessed and challenged.

 

"I charge you, young men, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, be not slow to spend and be spent for him. All is too little, shall we give him less than all? Fervent services are too poor, shall we be lukewarm? Descend, O heavenly fire, and now inflame us, for less than thy flames cannot enable us to live as live we should" (12 M. S., p. 26).

 

"If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervour at a white heat, it is concerning missions to the heathens" (12 M. S., p. 24).

 

Amen! Thanks, brother.

 

"I have prayed to God, and it is a prayer I shall repeat till I die--I have prayed that out of this church there may go many missionaries. I will never be content with a congregation, or with a Church, or even with ministers, many of whom have already gone out of our midst. We must have missionaries from this Church" (12 M. S., p. 19).

 

"He hath still a right to you, and therefore hath the missionary still a right to come whithersoever he will, preaching the unseearchable richeds of Christ. Once or twice in my life I have met with some miserable little ministers, who, when I have gone into a village to preach, have questioned my right to preach in the village, because I ought to have asked them first, or to have consulted them. And can Christian men look on a district as their own dominion, and reckon God's servant as a poacher on their estatest, or a brigand in their territories! Is there any place on this earth that belongs to any man so that he can shut out God's ministers! We once for all put our foot upon any claim so ridiculous. Wherever there is found a man, there is the minister free to preach. The whole world is our parish; we know of no fetter upon our feet, and no gag upon our lips" (12 M. S., p. 18).

 

Yes you may, and thank you for the post and your burden for us missionaries.

 

"My dream is this: I have seen in vision missionary spirit in England, now so given to slumber, marvellously quickened, awakened, and revived. I have seen--wish was father to the sight--I have seen the ardour of our first missionary days return to us; I have seen young men eager for the mission field, and old men and fathers sitting in united council to correct mistakes, to devise new methods, or to strengthen the old ones, so that by any means the great chariot of Christ might roll onwards, and that his victories might be more rapid" (12 M. S., p. 23).

 

Spurgeon on the "tent-making" approach to missions:

"I wonder whether we shall see fifty or a hundred missionaries within the next year or two leaving our shores, whose passage has been paid, and who will land in some foreign country with just enough about them to keep them till the language has been learned, and who will then, in confidence in God, set about working to support themselves? I set Paul before you, young men. When he preached the gospel at the first, he was a tent-maker, and he earned his own living. Are there no occupations in these days by which a man may earn his living, and yet preach the Gospel? It is not the best thing to do--the best thing is for a man to give all his time to his ministry; but if you cannot have the best, you must have the second best" (12 M. S., p. 28).

 

"It is the absolute duty as well as the eminent privilege of the Church to proclaim the Gospel to the World. We do not conceive that God will do his own work without instruments, but that, as he has always employed means in the work of the regeneration of this world, he will still continue to do the same, and that it becomes the church to do its utmost to spread the truth wherever it can reach the ear of man" (12 M. S., p. 5).

 

"I have made it a solemn question whether I might not testify in China or India the grace of Jesus, and in the sight of God I have answered it. I solemnly feel that my position in England will not permit my leaving the sphere in which I now am, or else tomorrow I would offer myself as a missionary" (12 M. S., p. 14).

 

"If there be any who are willing to give all for Christ, let us who are compelled to stay at home do our best to help them. Let us see to it that they lack nothing; for we cannot send them out without purse or scrip. Let us fill the purse of the men whose hearts God has filled, and take care of them temporally, leaving it to God to preserve them spiritually" (12 M. S., p. 20).

 

"If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervour at a white heat, it is concerning missions to the heathens" (12 M. S. p. 24).

"I am hopeful that, in answer to earnest prayer, God will speedily send amongst us a general intensity of desire for the glory of Christ, accompanied by breaking of heart and weeping of eye, for the perishing heathen, and a solemn resolve that, in Jehovah's strength we will spare no pains, and neglect no efforts, by which we may make the gospel known unto the ends of the earth" (ibid, 25).

 

"Here am I, Lord, send me, for whithersoever thou wouldst have me go, there will I go, to proclaim the name and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ" (12 M. S., p. 29).

 

Oh! to get such a fire for God's cause into the heart of the Christian church, till she began to heave and throb with unquenchable emotion, and then a mighty sheet of the fire-prayer shopuld go up towards heaven, and afterwards the burning lava of her all-conquering zeal should flow over all lands" (12 M. S. p. 30).