Why Not Sooner

One of my favorite Hudson Taylor antidotes recorded in the biography which is a current read tells about a man named Mr. Ni, a long time resident of Ningpo.  Mr Ni was a Buddhist who had never come in contact with the gospel until he met Hudson Taylor.  When he heard about Christ, he was converted and became a student of the Bible.  A conversation is recorded between Mr. Ni and Taylor.  Unexpectedly he asked the missionary, "How long have you had the Glad Tidings in your country?  Taylor reluctantly replied, "Some hundreds of years."  The ex-Buddhist said in surprise, "What!  Hundreds of years? My father sought the Truth and died without finding it.  Oh, why did you not come sooner?"  

The church of our day has lost the urgency of the gospel.  We live in a culture where believing in something or anything is an acceptable alternative to believing in Christ. This position of accommodation has taken away the uniqueness of the Christ of the gospel.  Such a compromise may be embraced to keep from offending anyone, but it also refutes the reality of the Incarnation, the saving and forgiving power of the blood shed on the cross, and the victory accomplished through the resurrection.  

Jesus was not just a man who preached a message that merged with human created systems of theism. Neither did He come to become as a choice on the buffet table of religious thought. Instead, Jesus came as a presence who enables us to know the truth of God with us.  To truly be faithful to its calling, the church cannot speak of Jesus as being less the only One sent from God to show us the way to eternal life. So many people around us have not heard this message.  So many have not encountered Jesus. To paraphrase the convert from Buddhism, "Why are we waiting?  Why is the church not proclaiming Christ crucified and raised from the dead now instead of later?