May 01, 2003 by

After many startling and unusual accomplishments in America, Scotland and Eng­land, D.L. Moody consented to host­ing the annual Northfield Confer­ences, held right in the little town of his birth in Western Massachusetts. Thousands attended. The third year this conference was held, in 1885, the theme of missions came up and A. T. Pierson was asked to speak on that subject at the evening meeting.

As he poured out his soul, citing reasonable statistics to base his chal­lenge that “believers everywhere” get busy and try to complete the Great Commission by the Year 1900, his words were apparently so impelling that Moody, a huge, fidgety man jumped up at the precise moment when Pierson said it ought to be done by the year 1900, and waved for approval from the crowd. The roar of response was so great he appointed a committee of six which worked for three days to produce a remarkable document, “An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere.”

One of the signers, J. E. K. Studd, the older brother of the famous cricketeer and missionary C. T. Studd, and later to become Mayor of London, went from this conference to stump U.S. colleges for missions, snaring John R. Mott at Cornell for the 1886 student conference again under Moody and Pierson which formulated the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions.

And, a year later, in 1886, this document was published as part of a widely read book by Pierson. The next year, 1887, it turned up in a ponderous volume published in England by the China Inland Mis­sion (today the Overseas Missionary Fellowship). The very next year what this document calls for actually trans­pired—the largest mission confer­ence ever held up to that time, in London, where the whole world was in the picture.

But, “believers everywhere” did not respond. The reasonable chal­lenge (note Pierson’s calculations) was only partially met. Lavish parties often run by Evangelicals character­ized the U.S. in the following “gay nineties” and while some made great effort, others satisfied themselves with a new slogan which had no date attached: “the evangelization of the world in this generation.”

Even so, the largest single surge forward to the ends of the earth did in fact take place in the years follow­ing this remarkable “heavenly vision,” due in great part to a different type of meeting.

Yes, the surge was paralleled by American expansionist political sen­timents. Sure, Americans had already consolidated their hold on gold-rich California, and would in a few months thrust their way to the North Pacific to keep Canada out of what is now Washington and Oregon, moving clear out into the Pacific to grab Guam, Western Samoa and the Philippines.

But a careful reading of the record shows that the key student leaders, like John R. Mott, did not build on that wave. On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Cuba he announced to a Student Volunteer Movement convention that “the war WE fight cuts through every nation and family and individual heart...”

However, as described in the “Granddaddy Meeting” article on p. 13, that same former student mission leader, Mott, witnessed the strategic value of field meetings of mission leaders in China and then in India. He suddenly became convinced that a similar world level meeting strictly of mission agency leaders was needed, and within 24 months, with his wide following, set it up for 1910 in Edinburgh.

We will let words from Lato­urette describe that event. That we are calling “The First Call.”

-Editor

An Appeal To Disciples Everywhere

Issued by the Northfield Convention (August 14, 1885)

To Fellow believers of every name, scattered throughout the world, Greeting:

Assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, with one accord, in one place, we have continued for ten days in prayer and supplication, communing with one another about the common salvation, the blessed hope, and the duty of witnessing to a lost world.

It was near to our place of meet­ing that, in 1747, at Northampton, Jonathan Edwards sent forth his trumpet-peal, calling upon disciples everywhere to unite the whole habitable globe.  That summons to prayer marks a new era and epoch in the history of the church of God.  Praying bands began to gather in this and other lands; mighty revivals of religion followed; immorality and infidelity were wonderfully checked; and, after more than fifteen hundred years of apathy and lethargy, the spirit of missions was reawakened.  In 1784, the monthly concert was begun, and in 1792, the first mis­sionary society formed in England; in 1793, William Carey, the pioneer missionary, sailed for India.  Since then, one hundred missionary boards have been organized, and probably not less than one hundred thousand missionaries, including women, have gone forth into the harvest-field.  The Pillar has moved before these humble laborers, and the two-leaved gates have opened before them, until the whole world is now accessible.  The ports and portals of Pagan, Moslem, and even Papal lands are now unsealed, and the last of the hermit nations welcomes the missionary.  Results of missionary labor in the Hawaiian and Fiji Islands, in Madagascar, in Japan, probably have no parallel even in apostolic days; while even Pentecost is surpassed by the in­gathering of ten thousand converts in one mission station in India within six­ty days, in the year 1878.  The missionary bands had scarce compassed the walls and sounded the gospel trumpet, when those walls fell and we have but to march straight on and take possession of Satan’s strongholds.

(God has thus, in answer to prayer, opened the door of access to the nations.)  Out of the Pillar there comes once more a voice, “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.”  And yet the church of God is slow to move in response to the providence of God.  Nearly a thou­sand millions of the human race are yet without the Gospel; vast districts are wholly unoccupied.  So few are the laborers, that, if equally dividing responsibility, each must care for at least one hundred thousand souls.  And yet there is abundance of both men and means in the church to give the Gospel to every living soul before this century closes.  If but ten mil­lions, out of four hundred millions of nominal Christians, would undertake such systematic labor as that each one of that number should, in the course of the next fifteen years, reach one hundred other souls with the Gospel message, the whole present popula­tion of the globe would have heard the good tidings by the year 1900!

Our Lord’s own words are, “Go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations;” and, “This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”  Peter exhorts us both to “look for and hasten the coming of the day of God;” and what if our inactivity delays His coming?  Christ is waiting to “see of the travail of His soul;” and we are impressed that two things are just now of great importance:  first, the immediate oc­cupation and evangelization of every destitute district of the earth’s population; and, secondly, a new effusion of the Spirit in answer to united prayer.

If at some great centre like Lon­don or New York, a great council of evangelical believers could meet, to consider the wonder-working of God’s providence and grace in mission fields, and how fields  now unoccupied may be insured from further neglect, and to arrange and adjust the work so as to prevent needless waste and friction among workmen, it might greatly further the glorious object of a world’s evangelization; and we earnestly com­mend the suggestion to the prayerful consideration of the various bodies of organizations.  What a spectacle it would present both to angels and men, could believers of every name, forgetting all things in which they dif­fer, meet, by chosen representatives, to enter systematically and harmoniously upon the work of sending forth labor­ers into every part of the world-field!

But, above all else, our immediate and imperative need is a new spirit of earnest and prevailing prayer.  The first Pentecost crowned ten days of united, continued supplication.  Every subsequent advance may be directly traced to believing prayer, and upon this must depend a new Pentecost.  We therefore earnestly appeal to all fellow-disciples to join us and each other in importunate daily supplica­tion for a new and mighty effusion of the Holy Spirit upon all ministers, missionaries, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and Christian workers, and upon the whole earth; that God would impart to all Christ’s witnesses the tongues of fire, and melt hard hearts before the burning mes­sage.  It is not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord, that all true success must be secured.  Let us call upon God till He answereth by fire!  What we are to do for the salvation of the lost must be done quickly; for the generation is pass­ing away, and we with it.  Obedient to our march­ing orders, let us “go into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” while from our very hearts we pray, “Thy kingdom come.”

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you all. Done in convention at Northfield, Mass., August 14, 1885, D. L. Moody presiding. Committee: Arthur T. Pierson, Philadelphia, Presbyterian, Chairman. A. J. Gordon, Boston, Baptist. L. W. Munhall, Indianapolis, Methodist. Geo. F. Pentecost, Brooklyn, N. Y., Congregationalist. William Ashmore, Missionary to Swatow, China, Baptist. J. E. Studd, London, England, Church of England. Miss E. Dryer, Chicago Avenue Church.