Movement Pioneers Go First
Next time they tell you it’s never been done before, remember someone has to go first. And that someone is not alone.
Centuries ago an unrecorded step was taken by some unknown "Follower of the Way” across the national boundaries of Israel into the vast Gentile world. No one recorded the step. No one knows what border was crossed. But there came a moment, a place in redemptive history in which God's universal covenant with mankind started its immeasurable march through the nations of the world.
An unknown disciple on a distant and remote frontier made a beginning by challenging a fellow man to join him as a member of the disciple fellowship of Christ.
Only God knows where this happened, by whom that step was taken, with what fruit the witness was crowned. Its full consequence will not be measured until the sovereignty of the world has passed to our Lord and his Christ, when men purchased for God of every tribe and language, people and nation are made a royal house, to serve our God as, priests and shall reign upon the earth, when the vast strong, which no one could count, from every nation, of all tribes, peoples, and languages will shout together, Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb! ... Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor, power and might, be to our God for ever and ever! Amen! (Rev. 11:15; 5:10; 7:9-12).
That day will live in eternity as a day among countless others in which through the power of the blood of Christ a man was set free from his bondage to death and made a new creature in Christ. Who brought the message of liberation? Who was liberated? We do not know. We know only the Liberator.
The campaign for world-wide proclamation of liberation was commanded by the Liberator, who himself is and remains the great missionary.
Richard De Ridder
