- [Ryan Kelly] Well, gentlemen, I think a lot of people think of the
Reformation as a theological endeavor.
How did it lead to evangelism?
How did it affect evangelism, Danny?
- [Danny Akin] Well, I often say to my students at the school
where I teach at Southeastern, you can't be a good theologian
without being a good missionary and evangelist.
And you can't be a good missionary and evangelist without being
a good theologian.
They are naturally wedded to each other and when you look back at the Reformation,
you discover that the natural outgrowth of recapturing the gospel and the great
solas of the faith had to inevitably lead to evangelism and missions and you see
that launched out of that then eventually, it reaches kind of a hotbed with Brainerd
and the later with Carey, and all of that you can trace back
historically to the roots of the Reformation.
- [Ryan Kelly] Yeah, and a recovery of the gospel is by nature
an effort toward evangelizing, right?
There is no gospeilizing apart from discovery or rediscovery of the gospel.
- [Colin Smith] Yeah, that's right.
Danny, a lot of folks have the idea that Calvin and others didn't really have a
view of missions.
You're the historian among us, tell us how to respond to that.
- [Danny Akin] Just go read Calvin's commentaries, and you'll discover that he
naturally saw the recovery of the gospel as leading to world missions and
world evangelization, and Calvin himself sent out missionaries
to places where he knew the gospel needed to spread and needed to go.
So it's a myth, a bad one, to say that Reformed theology
did not lead to missions and evangelism.
In fact, the modern missions movement was birthed out of the Reformation tradition
and when you look at the lives again of Brainerd and Carey in America and
Adoniram Judson and so on, all of these were steeped and rooted
in faithful Reformed theology.
- [Colin Smith] See, I love that.
Whenever the gospel is recovered, you get a new momentum in relation
to missions and evangelism.
I remember studying, I grew up in Edinburgh,
and I became fascinated by this vast conference on missions.
Edinburgh 1910.
It was really a precursor to what became the ecumenical movement and the biggest
event that I think, that had taken place in the history of the church of its kind.
And I discovered a sermon by James Denny a year later, and he's preaching at the
annual conference of Baptist Missionary Society in 1911, and he begins,
his sermon's called, Propitiation, 1John 2:2.
That Christ died not only for our sins, but for the sins of the world.
And he says, you know, "In the last year, there's been more talk about missions
than at any other time in my life.
What's come of it?
Virtually nothing.
What we need is people who are captivated by the gospel, then we're going to see
an advance in missions."
And you're saying that's bascially what happened in the Reformation.
- [Danny Akin] What Ryan's saying is if the gospel is recovered,
there's such joy and delight in it, you cannot help but spread it and share.
If you're not wanting to share it, not wanting to spread it,
then I have to question whether or not you've recovered the gospel?
- [Ryan Kelly] Yeah, and Calvin was such a great model of that.
- [Danny Akin] Yes.
- [Ryan Kelly] I was recently reading his sermons on Deuteronomy,
and each one of them ends with a prayer that immediately goes to the nations and
God's glory spreading among the nations.
- [Danny Akin] It's funny, I've been doing a series
on Daniel and I've been using as I could, Calvin's massive work on Daniel.
And again, at various points, you see opportunities to see the gospel
emphasized as going to the...and he doesn't miss a beat.
He drives it home very, very powerfully.
This is a mandate, an obligation, in fact, one day he said, "This is an obligation we
have to take this."
And, of course, one of the great things about the Book of Daniel,
you find this every tribe, every tongue, every nation language which is later
picked up in Revelation, well, it's right there in Daniel,
and Calvin says, "This is a mandate that you find an obligation you find right here
in these texts."
- [Ryan Kelly] I think it's really important for people to know that Geneva
was really a mission launching city and endeavor of John Calvin's work there.
I came across these numbers not too long ago that in 1555, there were 5 Reformed
or Protestant churches in France.
In 1559, there were about 200.
And then in 1562, there were 2,000.
And those were all from Geneva men leaving Geneva, maybe they had come to Geneva
for training or to hear the gospel, but then they were sent back into hostile
France to preach the gospel, to plant churches.
It had all the marks of front line missions.
- [Colin Smith] The same was true, of course, with my native Scotland.
John Knox goes over to study under Calvin, "The greatest school of Christ on the face
of the earth," he said, and came back fired up from that,
and all of the Reformation in Scotland, really, happened as a result of
the influence of Calvin on Knox.
- [Danny Akin] I sure would love to see us recover a church planning movement
like that in our own day.
It would be something marvelous to see.
- [Ryan Kelly] Yeah, indeed, it would. All right, thanks, guys.
- [Danny Akin] Thanks, guys.