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M U LT I P LY ! PRAY FOR THE HARVEST One Man’s Hope for the Unreached Bishop Joseph Hillary King served as General Superintendent of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church from 1917 until 1946, longer than any other person in the movement’s 108-year history. Throughout his ministry, King was firmly convinced about the supreme importance of world evangelism. In fact, before he became executive head, he oversaw the foreign missions work of the young denomination (1911-1913). He always viewed the Great Commission mandate to “make disciples of all nations” as the church’s number-one ministry priority. 10 IPHC Experience | February 2007 Dr. Tony G. Moon But Bishop King realized that people die every day in this world without being humanly exposed to the New Testament gospel. This fact grieved his heart. As a deep thinker and serious Bible student, he sometimes reflected on the afterlife destiny of those who “have never heard.” His musings on this subject are among the most interesting and moving in his writings. In late 1913, Bishop King wrote his most substantial theological work, From Passover to Pentecost. In the book he expressed the hope that “heathen” lost in the “mist” of superstition and non-Christian religion would, through a sincere and earnest pursuit of the true God, find salvation in the Lord Jesus. He hoped that even though they had never heard the gospel message about the “historic Christ,” God somehow would get through to them in this life: Millions know nothing of [the atonement]…. There may be those who have the essential Christ that know nothing of the historic Christ. They may have pressed, in heart, up through the mist of heathenism, and prayed to … God…, and in this way touched the Christ and found Illustration © iStockphoto.com/Nicholas Monu
peace. We do not know this to be true, but we infer the same from … the Word. 1 King was not dogmatic about this consideration. He based this hope on implications he drew from specific passages of Scripture (John 1:9; Romans 1:20; 2:14, 15). My impression is that he was not just hopeful, but even prayerful, about it. In a 1936 Pentecostal Holiness Advocate editorial, Bishop King again seems to have been grasping for hope for the unevangelized. He wrote that the Ninevites were spared God’s judgment, not because they participated in the Jewish sacrificial system (which, of course, they did not), but because they sincerely prayed and repented in response to Jonah’s preaching. “…God can save people today in a manner contrary to the way we prescribe or point out.” This was an instance, King wrote, of “God’s departure from His own way of accepting souls…. The Lord … taught Jonah a lesson to enlarge his view of His mercy….” 2 Although not dealing directly with the problem of the unevangelized, King put it this way in 1916 and 1932: “Prayer forged in the furnace of suffering, forced from a heart of agony, and bursting from a soul pressed with unutterable pain, is sure to find the ear of God.” 3 Undoubtedly, one way Bishop King believed God’s Spirit sometimes breaks through to the unevangelized is through visions and dreams. In his autobiography, he relates a story about the grandfather of “the modern apostle of Ceylon” who was converted when angels appeared and preached the gospel to him in a vision. He had never seen or heard a Christian missionary in his life. 4 The history of Christian missions is filled with accounts of people being saved without the human agency of evangelists or missionaries. What about those who have never heard the gospel? Our Lord’s command to evangelize the nations has not been revoked. It should still be the church’s number-one global ministry priority. Currently, there are some 6,573 unreached people groups in the world, comprising some 2.61 billion persons, most of whom are in the 10/40 Window. 5 We must continue to invest maximum finances and human resources in the all-important cause of winning the lost worldwide, and we must continue to pray passionately for the success of that endeavor. What about those who will never humanly hear the gospel? Nearly 58 million people die each year globally, 6 multitudes of whom have never heard the name of Jesus from human lips. Perhaps Bishop King’s hopeful reflections should inspire us to pray more about world evangelization from another perspective. Maybe our intercession should focus as well on imploring God’s Spirit to work in the lives of the unevangelized in such a way that they will pursue the living God, pray, repent, and “touch Christ,” even without the agency of human witnesses. This article is based partially on an academic paper Dr. Tony Moon is scheduled to read at the 2007 Society for Pentecostal Studies conference. Dr. Moon is professor of Christian Ministries at Emmanuel College. He has also served as a pastor, Georgia Conference CEM director, and church planter. ENDNOTES 1. Rev. J. H. King, From Passover to Pentecost (Senath, Mo., F. E. Short, 1914), p. 78. 2. J. H. K., “Jonah’s Gourd, No. 2,” Pentecostal Holiness Advocate 20 (November 19, 1936), pp. 1, 2. 3. Rev. Joseph H. King, Select Sermons (Falcon, NC: The Falcon Publishing Co., 1916), p. 32; J. H. King, “Jabez and His Prayer,” Pentecostal Holiness Advocate 16 (August 25, 1932), p. 4. 4. Bishop Joseph H. King and Mrs. Blanche L. King, Yet Speaketh: Memoirs of the Late Bishop Joseph H. King (Franklin Springs, GA: The Publishing House of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1949), p. 223. 5. http://www.joshuaproject.net/ globalstatistics.php. 6. http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/ greatc.html. Bishop King On an around-the-world trip, Bishop King meets with Pastor Barrett (R) of Norway and his assistant (L). Bishop King as a young man. February 2007 | www.iphcExperience.com 11
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