Ezra 8:22-28 For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way… A century ago William Carey entered Nottingham with the thought in his heart, from which he preached the following day in a sermon which really originated the Baptist Missionary Society: "Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God." It was a very simple thing. It was very memorable. It was one of those inspirations that illumine as by a single flash the whole realm of thought. "Expect great things from God." Looking back over a hundred years, it was interesting to note upon what Carey based his expectations. Not on human resources, not on wealth, not on eloquence. Those few men who gathered together at Kettering had no worldly backing. They were obscure men in the extreme. With scarcely an exception they were quite unknown outside their own immediate neighbourhood. The wise and prudent in the Christian world doomed the enterprise to ignominious failure. With one exception, there was not a man of any mark in London who would have anything to do with it, and when a meeting was held to consider the advisability of forming an auxiliary, the idea was negatived by an overwhelming majority. But Carey believed in God. Doubts, unlikelihoods, impossibilities, vanished from his mind. And what has been the result of this faith? During the last hundred years, wherever the missionary had gone God had given testimony to the word of His grace by signs and wonders as marvellous as miracle. As in no former age the world lay open, aye, and opened-minded to the Gospel. (J. Culross.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. |
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