Melbourne Cuthbert once said, “Missions is not an option but a command. Reaching an unreached world is the marching order for the Church of Jesus Christ.” Missions must be one of the highest priorities of every Bible believing church. We here at Harvest must broaden our missionary vision, increase our support, and be continually challenged to take the changeless Word to our changing world. We are missionaries; a missionary is a "sent one" who communicates God's message to others. Missions has been defined as "the extensive realization of God's redemptive purpose in Christ Jesus by means of human messengers” (Carver). Jesus said in John 20:21, “ Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”

The distribution of the Gospel is a corporate responsibility as well as an individual one. It is a Biblical mandate or command (Matthew 28:18-20). It has been said that the Church exists by missions as fire exists by burning. Several examples in the Scripture are given to describe the relationship between the church and the missionary:

• Acts 13:1-3 - Paul and Barnabas were sent out from the church at Antioch as the first missionaries.
• Acts 14:27 - Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch and delivered an extensive missionary report to all the members.
• Philippians 4 :15-16- A financial partnership was established between Paul and the local churches.
• Philippians 4:17-19 - God promised to meet the needs of the Philippi church because of their support of missions.
• Colossians 4:3-4- Paul requested prayer support from the churches for his missionary endeavors.

David Livingstone wrote in his journal on one occasion concerning his "selfless" missionary life:

• “People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice that is simply paying back a small part of the great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind and a bright hope of glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.”

Jim Elliot, and four of his missionary partners, perished at the hands of the Auca Indians for whom they came to Ecuador to serve. Their suffering was a challenge and rebuke to many believers. Elliot made famous the statement:

• “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

John Williams, the missionary martyr, illustrates the importance of the missionary enterprise:

• “The work of Christian missions is the greatest, noblest and sublimest to which the human mind can be devoted. No labor that we can bestow, no sacrifice that we can make is too great to be undertaken for the glorious purpose of illuminating the dark world with the light of the glorious gospel.”

A.W. Tozer , author of The Pursuit of God and various other works, gives a modern day warning in using the wrong kind of missionary evangelism:

• “That evangelism which draws friendly parallels between the ways of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible and cruel to the souls of its hearers. The faith of Christ does not parallel the world, it intersects it. In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die.”

• “We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.”

George Grenfell, sharing his burdened heart about the Congo, stated in a letter:

• “I cannot write to you a tithe of woes that have come unto my notice and have made my heart bleed as I have voyaged along. Cruelty, sin and slavery are as millstones around the necks of the people, dragging them down into a sea of sorrows. I pray that God will speedily make manifest to these poor brethren of ours that light which is the light of life, even Jesus Christ, our living Lord.”

God, and His missionary heart, supercedes all others. He is our supreme example in global evangelism. Note the following examples:

• God seeks out Adam (a rebel) - Gen. 3:11.
• God hunts for Cain (a murderer) - Gen. 4:4-7.
• God pursues Noah - Gen. 6:3-7.
• God searches for all people - Gen. 12:1-3:22:18.
• God calls the world on big harvest - Matt. 13:38.
• God commissions believers to take the Word to the World - Matt. 28:18-20, Acts 1:8.
• God gives His view of missions - Rom. 9-11.
• God gives saints His power to reach the world - Rom. 1:16,17.
• God gives men the glorious Gospel (Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away man's sin) - John 1:29; I Cor. 15:4-4.
• God gives the Gospel to the Gentile as well as the Jew - Acts 10: 11:15-18.
• God warns all believers who will not proclaim His Word - I Cor. 9:16