The Radio and the Great Commission - Glenn Conjurske

The Radio and the Great Commission

by Glenn Conjurske

Ever since the invention of the radio many evangelicals have hailed it as the greatest God-given tool for the fulfillment of the great commission. For my part, I will neither deny that the radio can be used of God, or that it has been, while I yet insist that the great commission cannot be fulfilled by means of radio. If God at times uses the radio to accomplish his work, this proves no more than that he is sometimes pleased to condescend to our weakness and our ignorance, and to bless our sincere endeavors to do good, though those endeavors are not altogether according to his will. Yet I am certain that the great commission cannot be fulfilled by means of the radio. The very terms of the commission forbid it.

In the first place, the first requirement of the great commission is that we go. “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” (Matt. 28:19). “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mk. 16:15). I, of course, am well aware that this does not require every saint to pack his bags and go into all the world. Some are particularly called to go. “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” (Acts 13:2). They were not all to go, but to separate out the two whom the Lord had called to it. And the great commission itself was addressed to the apostles, and not to all the saints. I am not disposed to deny any of that. Yet the fact remains that for those who are called and separated unto this work, the Lord’s first word to them is, “Go.”

It will avail nothing to contend that times have changed, and that it was not possible for them to “go” by means of radio waves, or other modern inventions which we have at our disposal. That may be technically true, but it is also true that the apostles had a practically equivalent avenue open before them, had they been disposed to walk in it. They might have written tracts and letters, and sent them “into all the world” by travellers and merchant ships, and claimed that these missives were the God-given means of fulfilling the great commission—-that by this means a man might greatly multiply his sphere of influence, going into a hundred places instead of one. And the apostles did indeed send missives, but they never dreamed of substituting this for going themselves. Picture the great apostle Paul sitting for a few hours a day in a plush studio, dictating tracts and letters, and then going out to the churches to raise money to defray the expense of producing and sending them, and praising God for this wonderful means of preaching the gospel to the world.

No. Surely when the Lord said, “Go ye into all the world,” he did not mean this—-and it is vain to talk of fulfilling the great commission without obeying it. “Go” and “preach” are the terms of that commission. Now supposing we have found a means by which we might preach without going, what then? This is not obeying the commission. But we are told that the doors are closed, and we cannot now literally go into all the world, but we can nevertheless go, “in a very real way,” by means of the radio. But what doors were open to Peter, James, and John? James was imprisoned and slain early, Peter imprisoned for the same end, and though given a respite by a miracle, yet still slain in the end, and John languished out his last days in banishment on the Isle of Patmos—-and all this for obeying the simple terms of the great commission: “go” and “preach.” And what doors were open to Paul? Much of his evangelistic work he did in prison, and when he was free, he was “as it were appointed to death” (I Cor. 4:9)—-the threat of it hanging always over his head.

But who would not rather speak into a microphone in a plush studio in town, than to forsake home and friends, and the comforts and ease of civilization, and live a life of self-denial braving the wrath of hostile governments, crossing stormy seas and scorching deserts, trudging dusty mountain trails, penetrating thick jungles, and matching wits with fierce beasts and fiercer men? The real fact is, all of this talk of closed doors, and of fulfilling the great commission by radio, suits the soft and self-indulgent spirit of the modern church altogether too well. The apostles of Christ were of a different mind. “Endure hardness,” says Paul, “as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” (II Tim. 2:3). The original Christianity of the New Testament required something of men. It could not so much as exist except on the foundation of rigorous self-denial, whole-hearted devotedness, and unwavering commitment. There was divine wisdom in this. Those soldiers who must enter the ranks through hardship and self-sacrifice are worth something on the field of battle. Those who think to win the battle without seeing the battlefield are not fit to be soldiers. They are not made of the right stuff. And neither are those who wish to take the danger, hardship, and self-denial out of the work of the Lord. Self-denial is the first principle of Christianity—-“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself,” the Savior says—-and they are but little fit to preach Christianity who have but little experience of it. Men of God and apostles of Christ are those who have the divine religion molten into the very fiber of their being, and this takes place in the crucible, not in the armchair. There is divine wisdom in the very terms of the great commission, and those who think to fulfill it while they by-pass the first term actually secure their own unfitness for the task.

But there is yet more. If men will persuade themselves that they may fulfill the second term of the commission without troubling themselves about the first, yet they must utterly fail when they come to the third. “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, BAPTIZING THEM in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” And again, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth AND IS BAPTIZED shall be saved.” Supposing you may preach to men without going to them, yet you cannot baptize them. How do you baptize a man by radio? The fact is, there is no substitute for personal contact in the work of the gospel. A bond must be established between the preacher and the converts, a fellowship established among them, and authority and order established. Paul’s way of preaching the gospel was “we were gentle AMONG YOU, even as a nurse cherisheth her children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls.” (I Thes. 2:7-8). Thus he won them to himself as well as to his Lord. He did not manufacture proselytes, but begot children, and gave himself to them as a mother does. This is of God’s ordination, and it cannot be accomplished without personal contact. Those who impart “the gospel of God only,” and not their own souls also, do not impart the gospel effectually. The preachers of the gospel are physicians of souls, and in most cases it is simply out of the question to think of healing those souls without the personal presence of the physician. The Ethiopian Eunuch already had the word of God in his hands, yet he must have a man to effectually expound it to him. Nor did God send an angel to preach to Cornelius, but a man, though he must send an angel to tell him where to send for the man. The personal presence of the preacher was essential to the work. And the Lord was wise enough to commission us in such a way as to absolutely necessitate and secure that personal presence, in order to the fulfillment of the commission.

Those who are wiser than God may inform us that baptism is not essential to the work of the gospel, or even that it has nothing to do with the work of the gospel—-even that it is detrimental to the work of the gospel. We will not stay to argue the point with them. We only insist that baptism is an absolute necessity to fulfill the explicit terms of the great commission, as it is given by both Matthew and Mark. This in turn absolutely necessitates the personal presence of the preacher, and that in turn eliminates the radio as a means of fulfilling the great commission.

Glenn Conjurske