OUR risen Lord made known His program for world evangelization clearly enough before His ascension, when He instructed His disciples to go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit, beginning at Jerusalem, then throughout Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. But there seemed to be a strange reluctance to carry out the commission as given. It took persecution to move the disciples out into the adjacent lands, then to farther countries, and even then they appeared to shrink from going to the Gentiles. Peter had to be specially called and instructed in order to prepare him to go to the house of Cornelius, a Roman, who may also have been a proselyte of the gate (as the Jews designated a Gentile who had accepted the Old Testament revelation of one true and living God), but whose house the Apostle would not have entered had it not been for the vision of the sheet let down from heaven—so slowly did the most devoted of Christ’s followers enter into the great concern of the heart of God for the evangelization of a lost world.
“Three things the Master hath us do,
And we who serve Him here below
And long to see His kingdom come,
Must pray, then give, or go.
He needs them all: the open hand,
The willing feet, the asking heart,
To work together and to weave
The threefold creed that shall not part.
Not all can go, but all can give
To arm the others for the fray;
And young or old, or rich or poor,
Or strong or weak—we all can prey.”