Hungarian Church Press, 1957 (9. évfolyam, 14-15. szám)

1957-12-31 / 15. szám

HCHP XII , 31,1957, Vol, .'IV'15-16

7

185

Bearing witness and mission

•« It is inportant , first of all, to note that the Bible does not speak only, or primarily, of Christian.men. and women as witnesses. Several quotations of the Bible should be sufficient to tell us that God is His own witness,, Human beings are witnesses in a secondary and derivative sense8 If darkness is to serve the light, it can do so in one way only, and it is the way of withdrawing itself,

If the Christian is truly constrained by tne lave of Christ to witness to Him, he shall realize that his contribution to the cause of witnessing is first of all that of not casting a shadow,.

~ In the last 150 years many Church members in the West have supported the cause of evangelization in China with very good intent ion o Cf the large number who wait to China as missionaries, not a small minority had volunteered to do so in their youth with an honest conscience and desire to serve Clirist* And to the extent they could truly identify themselves with the fears and hopes of the Chinese people in their struggle for independence and human rights, their good work in evangelism and service remains and is not to be lightly dismissed. There were ones who by what they did brought about their own dismissal by their mission authorities. Par all the good intentions, wishes and prayers and works of the common Christian men and women abroad we are always grateful*- The modem missionary movement has been started and carried on in a period when the colonialists have been doing all they could to conquer, acquire, enlarge and consolidate ’their colonies abroad:. The simple, personal "good intentions" and "good deeds" of individual Christians cannot alter the basic fact that colonialism aid imperialism have had no qualms in absorbing even The service of mission, with or without the latter*s connivance, for the realization of its dreams of aggression» We just need to ask: If the commercial, political .and military authorities of the colonial empires hid refrained from supporting the missionary cause, could missionary organizations have existed ox: their present scale? Of course not. Then, why have they supported the cause? Por the sake of the gospel? Hardly* They have supported it for the sake cf wealth, of expansion, of aggression;

~ An American diplomat, Hon, Chester Holcombe, gave the following reason for supporting foreign missions; "... an overwhelming array of facts and figures could be set forth to prove the inestimable, though unrecognised, value of the missionary an an agent for the development of American commerce in every part of the globe«. The manufacturing and commercial interests in the United States could well afford to bear the entire cost of all American, missionary effort in China for the sake of the large increase in trade which results from such effort."- Sir William Hunter, in a speaoh at the Centenary Missionary Conference held in London in 1888, said; "Poreign missions is the spiritual complement of England* s instinct for colonial expansion red. imperial rule"c- General Sir Charles Warren, formerly Governor cf Natal, Bald: "Par the preservation of peace between the colonialists and natives, one missionary is worth a battalion of soldiers,"- Even John Poster Dulles is a supporter cf missions ! He said in 1949: "If our spiritual effort is to supplement adequately cur material effort , our Christian people roust see the • supreme value cf Christian missions and rally to their support". To Dulles, missionary work is, thus, a "spiritual supplement" to the current American world policy !- It is in this context that even intelligence services have been regarded as worthy of missionaries. Thus, in September, 1955, the Christian Century of Chicago, in .an editorial, admitted: "Accusations cf espionage cannot, unfer-