Why Do Some Of Our Missionaries Return So Very Weakened In Doctrine?
Categories: Church of Christ Bulletin ArticlesWe wish we knew! It is a modern-day phenomenon, but not just confined to our time. Some generations ago, one of the first missionaries to South America turned out to be the best-known and highest-ranking Pentecostal preacher in his land. Not two weeks ago we heard from an American brother in Korea, and his words were, “There may be missionaries for the Lord’s church here, but their lack of fortitude and willingness to stand for the right are known and it is most distressing.”
One would think otherwise, on the face of it. After all, it was concern for the multitudes who are lost that turned that man toward mission work in the first place. The missionary had before him the vision of a lost nation, and their plea was “come over and help us,” and so he went! He has lived among the lost, and seeing their lack of knowledge of the truth has spurred him on in his daily work for the Lord. If ever one has first-hand knowledge of what lack of truth will do, and then first-hand experience at what truth will accomplish, this missionary has it! Why, then, might he become one of the weak ones, doctrinally?
We may never know, but something is foul here. Missionaries in one part of the world, well trained and grounded in the truth, will tear up the saints throughout that nation with false ideas on the marriage law. Another man gives much of his life in foreign missionary work, and then returns to the states to become known as one “loose as can be” in virtually every area. One man devoted years to work in Britain, and returned to be associated with a most liberal paper, and finally to leave the truth entirely. Another in the same part of the world went off after the doctrines of Ketcherside (the latter-day one). Why?
No man leaves truth when at the same time loving it. And no man leaves the Word when he has respect for the authority of the Word (2 John 9). Satan works through men, and the things of men, and somewhere along the line these who were formerly faithful allowed ungodly influences to dominate them, dominate their thinking, change their thinking, and off they go! Surely some of them look at the hordes of lost men, and then begin to doubt that such great numbers are really lost! Others form sectarian associations, allowing themselves to get too close to anti-Scriptural practices, and then find themselves very much weakened. Maybe a dozen reasons, and maybe we didn’t hit on the chief ones, but advantage to Satan when he can convert the very man God has sent to a land to convert it! One thing is certain: God gave His Word to us that we might be nourished by it, and in such study there is growth (1 Peter 2:2). Very clear is the fact that these men ceased to study!
The Southwesterner, July 5, 1989