“I cannot imagine the kingdom with the King absent.”[1] As he was so able to do, Charles Haddon Spurgeon distilled a refutation of significant doctrinal deviation into a single phrase. Born two years after Hudson Taylor and only one after William Wilberforce’s Clapham Circle succeeded in abolishing slavery and the Empire’s human trade within and without Britain’s borders, the preacher and the missionary both entered England on the cusp of the Victorian Era. Only too popular among British believers at the time was a proud confidence they would redeem the world before Jesus would return to reign over it; yet Spurgeon, Taylor, and a small but significant few of their contemporaries would stand against the tide of human pride and place their trust squarely in the “hope” that has anchored the souls of saints since man and God last exchanged words in Eden—a hope the “Great King” Himself called “this Gospel of the Kingdom,” and His coming.[2]
Children raised in the shadow of William Carey’s legacy pushing the Gospel into the unreached quarters of India, Spurgeon, Taylor, A. T. Pierson, and George Müller supported each other’s pioneering initiatives, Gospel proclamations, and care for the poor (be they in the inner cities of London and Detroit, or deep into China’s interior provinces). They prayed for each other all their lives, and they pushed each other as only brothers can, in ministry, in ethic, in values, and in doctrine. They pushed each other into Jesus—and away from hoping in any hand that was not His. In doing so, they shaped a new era of missionary enterprise, reached unreached nations, and engaged unengaged people. The world is different today, and Jesus’ inheritance richer, for their labor together and love for the Lord and each other.
In many ways, this began with Müller, the eldest of the camaraderie. He arrived in London as a young man three years before Hudson’s birth in Hull, and referred to that season in his life as when he learned to read Scripture for itself, with only the Word and the Spirit to help him:
Another truth, into which, in a measure, I was led, respected the Lord’s coming. My views concerning this point, up to that time, had been completely vague and unscriptural. I had believed what others told me, without trying it by the Word. I thought that things were getting better and better, and that soon the whole world would be converted. But now I found in the Word that we have not the least Scriptural warrant to look for the conversion of the world before the return of our Lord. I found in the Scriptures that that which will usher in the glory of the church, and uninterrupted joy to the saints, is the return of the Lord Jesus, and that, till then, things will be more or less in confusion. I found in the Word, that the return of Jesus, and not death, was the hope of the apostolic Christians; and that it became me, therefore, to look for His appearing. And this truth entered so into my heart that, though I went into Devonshire exceedingly weak, scarcely expecting that I should return again to London, yet I was immediately, on seeing this truth, brought off from looking for death, and was made to look for the return of the Lord. Having seen this truth, the Lord also graciously enabled me to apply it, in some measure at least, to my own heart, and to put the solemn question to myself—What may I do for the Lord, before He returns, as He may soon come?[3]
The Holy Spirit “illuminated the eyes of [Müller’s] understanding,”[4] and the effects of his enlightenment would reach nations and villages he himself would never set foot in. Müller’s biographer, and the youngest of the four men, recalled a conversation between the two of them while Müller visited Pierson’s Detroit church in January, 1879. Both men read and loved Scripture enough to galvanize a commitment to the poor in their midst; Müller ran several orphanages in England (caring for an astonishing total of 10,024 orphans),[5] and Pierson’s church was deeply committed to engaging social struggles and justice issues amongst the urban poor in his city.
“[Pierson’s] involvement with social justice issues grew out of his postmillennial convictions that working hand-in-hand with God’s purposes on earth, humanity would effectively solve the problems of modern society.”[6] While when they first met and ministered together, they shared the same conviction as to why they labored: Jesus is God and King. But for a time, they disagreed on what for; Müller had long embraced the “blessed hope” of the apostolic Gospel; “[a]s Arthur Pierson argued for the virtues of postmillennialism, Müller silenced his arguments with the statement, ‘My beloved brother... not one of them is based upon the word of God.’” Then he took Pierson step-by-step through the biblical evidence for a premillennial interpretation of God’s kingdom.[7]
Müller’s gracious and loving rebuke pointed Pierson to declarations of the prophets, refrains of the psalmists, and expositions by the apostle They are too numerous to list here in full, yet they encompass such beautiful, precious, and saint-sustaining promises about a Day when sin, violence, war, and even the need for prophecies end.[8] When our Maker and Sanctifier finishes what He started in us.[9] When the government of the earth is given to Jesus’ hand.[10] When the enemies of God are subdued.[11] When the rewards for seeing and loving Jesus are distributed, when the “restoration of all things,” of “the kingdom to Israel” begins, when the saints are resurrected from the grave, when—after a season of unprecedented global suffering—He rules from Zion, with such shining glory He shames the sun.[12]
And His appearing will be impossible to miss.[13]
Scripture unapologetically promises that David’s Son will bring all created order into alignment and submission to the Father’s will, drawing “all Israel” into saving knowledge of the One they pierced.[14] Paul, ever strict on the Gospel terms he would preach, teach, present, and pastor disciples under, called the Son of David’s glorious appearing the Bride of Christ’s “blessed hope.”[15]
These “irrevocable”[16] commitments drove the apostles before, during, and after they pressed their Lord just before His Ascension: “Lord, will You now restore the kingdom to Israel?” Will You now keep Your word to restore everything, just as You’ve said You would? Every man who survived Judas’ betrayal and Rome’s attempt to crush a Nazarene insurgency flung themselves into the far corners of the known world and died on foreign soil. The coming restoration of the Kingdom to Israel drove them into every other nation they could get into. Any doctrinal deviation, delusion, or eschatological error without fail will re-write their conversation with Jesus in Acts 1:6–8 to suit a new narrative, but Luke was clear from the beginning that Jesus was the answer to all the hanging promises over the people, nation, and Land of Israel.[17] The “restoration of the Kingdom” was the apostolic turn of phrase to capture the jugular message of every prophet, patriarch, and psalmist: the Seed is David’s Son, and He is coming to destroy the serpent.[18] Spurgeon himself observed: “If there is anything promised in Scripture, it is this.”[19]
The premillennial interpretation of Scripture made sense to Arthur Pierson biblically, and also experientially. Not only did the system provide a key that unlocked many aspects of Scripture that had seemed hidden to him, but its view that the kingdom of God would only begin with the supernatural return of Jesus Christ resonated with Pierson’s increasing frustration about the state of the world. The Civil War had not ended evil on earth. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how anxious, exhausted, and discouraged he became from overwork, the kingdom of God seemed no nearer than it had been twenty years before. Labor strikes, urban unrest and anarchy, materialism, increased skepticism and infidelity, the growing strength of Romanism and the decline of biblical Protestantism— all these seemed to indicate a world getting worse and not better. Now in his forties, Pierson was facing also the limitations of his own energy. He was losing the optimism of his youth and taking on the realism of middle age. No matter how well he preached, not everyone was going to become a Christian. The vision of a Christian America was not being fulfilled.[20]
This tormented Pierson. How could he live in the tension between some kind of “here now but not yet” Kingdom? What would bring the Kingdom? He sought the Scriptures and revisited the Gospels. Jesus’ parable of a “certain nobleman”[21] brought this stressed and confused preacher rest, and four words from the nobleman’s mouth gave him distilled clarity for his remaining days: “Occupy till I come.”[22]
This revelation landed in Pierson’s gut like an anchor dropped into the depths of the sea. It completely changed his ministerial approaches, and crafted his voice as he would become the “father of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions,” in which Ivy League graduates packed their diplomas in coffins and sailed for the field by the thousands.[23] Governed by the mandate to “occupy till [He] come[s]” and driven by the obsession to “evangelize the whole earth in [his] generation,” Pierson (with his like-minded comrades Spurgeon and Müller) powerfully and effectively advocated for the Gospel’s proclamation amongst the unreached of their day—with China being the largest nation with the categorically least witness of Jesus—in such a way that he recruited and mobilized droves of able-bodied Kingdom ambassadors to the most difficult and resistant regions of their day.
Years before Müller gently and firmly pressed Pierson on his eschatological errors, a young Hudson Taylor had a similar experience during his short years between committing to go to China and actually stepping on a boat. This would shape, guide, and inform his decisions and declarations as a young messenger of the Gospel, and turn over in his heart and head as he observed the failures and limitations of existing missionary agencies along China’s coastline. The convictions this revelation grounded in him sustained him through sickness, grief, loss, and every imaginable and unfathomable degree of suffering on the frontier. It had every effect and bearing on how he would found, launch, and lead the China Inland Mission just over a decade later. He reflected on this occasion later in his life:
About this time, a friend drew my attention to the question of the personal and premillennial coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave me a list of passages referring to it, without note or comment, and advised me to ponder the subject. For a while, I gave much time to studying the Scriptures about it, with the result that I was led to see that this same Jesus who left our earth in His resurrection body was to come again. His feet were to stand on the Mount of Olives, and He was to take possession of the temporal throne of His father David, which was promised before His birth. I saw, further, that all through the New Testament the coming of the Lord was the great hope of His people. This was always appealed to as the strongest motive for consecration and service and the greatest comfort in trial and affliction. I learned, too, that the period of His return for His people was not revealed. It was their privilege, from day-to-day and from hour-to-hour, to live as men who wait for the Lord. Thus living, it was immaterial whether He should or should not come at any particular hour. The important thing was to be so ready for Him as to be able, whenever He might appear, to give an account of one’s stewardship with joy and not with grief. The effect of this blessed hope was a thoroughly practical one.[24]
This “thoroughly practical” “blessed hope” anchored Taylor’s God-glorifying ambitions in those of Jesus, mirrored those of Paul, and sets an example for us as we finish the great and holy task commissioned to all disciples of the Nazarene on the hill called Olivet so long ago. That which enabled Paul to be “content in all things”[25] sustained Taylor by means the same; through heartache, profound loss, grief, and the bloody scourge of the Boxer Rebellion, no trial in this finite age could outweigh the tangible glory Taylor knew was coming. And it revolutionized China. More than 150 years after Hudson Taylor laid himself on the altar along the shoreline of Brighton, the Gospel seeds carried and sown in China’s deepest enclaves took root and bore incredible and almost unprecedented fruit. Until it was recently outpaced by the growing body of believers in the Global South, the community of Chinese disciples of the Man from Galilee was the fastest-growing in the world. It has also withstood incredible pressure and persecution. Hudson Taylor brought the good seeds of “this Gospel of the Kingdom” to China, where it found good soil, and where the Vinedresser pruned something beautiful. It will be a precious sight to see China give Jesus His inheritance when He comes, and the Lord is not unjust[26] to overlook the contributions made by these four men who, though all imperfectly, resisted the sway of weak doctrine in an insufficient hope.
The youngest of these men, Pierson, naturally outlived them all. Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers,” left his gout-laden frame after deteriorating health took his life in 1892 (Pierson would cover his pulpit at that Metropolitan Tabernacle for two years, before and after Spurgeon died). Müller passed into glory in 1898. Hudson Taylor was laid to rest in Chinese soil in 1905. By the time Pierson met his golden years with grey hair, the Student Volunteer Movement they’d all done so much to mobilize, strengthen, and support was splintering in its foundations as second-generation recruits entered with the same “vague and unscriptural” postmillennial convictions Müller had emphatically abandoned and condemned so long ago. The doctrinal deviation of the sons, despite the testimony and legacy of their fathers, led to a rapid deterioration in the Gospel-proclaiming and Christ-exalting work built by men like Hudson Taylor. What once was committed to serving all tribes, tongues, and peoples with a witness of “this Gospel of the Kingdom”[27] morphed into humanitarian outfits more committed to providing a cup of water than the Name we are meant to provide them with.[28]
We must observe the fruit of these convictions, from Peter, James, Thomas, and Paul’s generation through till the impact a premillennial eschatology had on the “second wave”[29] of frontier missions during the mid-nineteenth century—and we must warn ourselves and others of the toxicity born from deviations from and delusions about such. Too often, even now, the best-selling voices within the Body of Messiah re-write or write-off the prophetic promises, actions serving only to castrate the faith of the man who “looked for” a city built by the One who raises His people out of graves.[30] The Great Commission has only ever suffered as a consequence, as when mishandling of Scripture and the message diluted the well of the Student Volunteer Movement. Jesus Himself specified which Gospel must reach the interior of every home and nation;[31] Paul commanded his “sheep”[32] to curse him if he ever cycled back with another message, another Gospel.[33]
Hudson Taylor didn’t care about numbers or the quantitative success of the China Inland Mission. He cared about Jesus, wanted to be with Him, and believed the Word when it said the Davidic King would be crowned once everyone had heard about Him. Scripture’s unflinching eschatological hope in the Son of Man’s appearance in the sky made every difference to Taylor’s scope of eternity, and “compelled”[34] him to give even the “degrad[ed]”[35] Chinese the dignity of hearing the Name and coming reign of the Great King. Taylor’s “thoroughly practical” “blessed hope” in Jesus’ return and unwavering commitment to His word, even in such tangible means, gave Taylor something to hang his own hopes, dreams, and days on: Jesus would once again stand on our soil, ascend His immutable throne, restore everything, and receive the nations as they “stream to Jerusalem.”[36] And he did everything he could to ensure China will be there for it.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Romans 15:19–21
[2] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons on Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006, 385.
[3] Matthew 5:35; 24:14; Titus 2:13
[4] A.T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God (Kindle Locations 4522-4531). Kindle Edition.
[5] Ephesians 1:18
[6] A.T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God, 1899, 301.
[7] Dana L. Robert, Occupy Until I Come: A.T Pierson and the Evangelization of the World (Kindle Location 1400). Kindle Edition, 2003.
[8] ibid., 1400–1402
[9] Daniel 9:24
[10] 1 Corinthians 1:8; Philippians 1:6
[11] See Psalm 2; 72; 110; Isaiah 2:2–4; 9:6–7; Micah 4:1–5; Revelation 5:1–10
[12] 1 Corinthians 15:25–26
[13] Isaiah 24:1–23; Matthew 24:3–44; Acts 1:6; 3:21
[14] Daniel 7:13; Matthew 24:30; 26:64; Mark 13:26; 14:62
[15] Isaiah 45:17; Zechariah 12:10; John 19:37; Romans 11:26; Revelation 1:7
[16] Titus 2:13
[17] Romans 11:29
[18] Luke 1:72–73
[19] Genesis 3:15; Matthew 1:1
[20] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Church of Christ,” NPSP 1:213–14
[21] Dana L. Robert, Occupy Until I Come: A.T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World (Kindle Locations 1421-1428). Kindle Edition, 2003.
[22] Luke 19:12
[23] Luke 19:13
[24] John Harrigan, “History of the World Christian Movement.” 2013. Accessed from http://danieltrainingnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Class09-JohnHHWCM-The-Age-Of-Colonialism-1800-1900-AD.pdf, 15 November 2018.
[25] J. Hudson Taylor, A Retrospect (Updated Edition): The Story Behind My Zeal for Missions (Kindle Locations 152-161). Aneko Press. Kindle Edition.
[26] Philippians 4:11
[27] Hebrews 6:10
[28] Matthew 24:14
[29] Matthew 10:42
[30] This term conventionally refers to the era of missions incited by William Carey’s push into India and carried by Hudson Taylor into China’s interior, following the “first wave” thrust of the Gospel beyond Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. The “second wave” was marked by zeal to find the remaining unreached and unengaged people groups and push past the coastlines into the deepest corners of every region. We are currently facing what is referred to as the “bloody third”—the final frontier.
[31] John 11:25; Hebrews 11:10, 19
[32] Matthew 24:14
[33] John 10:27
[34] Galatians 1:6–9
[35] 2 Corinthians 5:14
[36] A.J. Broomhall, The Shaping of Modern China: Hudson Taylor’s Legacy (Kindle Locations 36660-36667). Piquant. Kindle Edition.
[37] Isaiah 2:2–3; Micah 4:2
