RELIGIOUS.                               599

honors the desire to preach by calling the individual to the work of the gospel.
Paul's call was a personal call. In this it resembled the call of Moses,
Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
  It was this personal call which gave Paul boldness to declare the whole
message of truth. It is the personal call which humbles the preacher to
the ardent task of preparation of heart and mind. He seeks, works and
prays for heart and brain power because he appreciates the fact that the
gospel which he is called to preach will tax the full capacity of these powers.
The man who depends mostly upon lung-power will not be a workman that
needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Such a
workmanship comes by study, and prayer and meditation.
                     II. Paul a Providential Man.
  "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb,
and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him."
Gal. 1:15-16. The Lord said unto Ananias, Go thy way for Saul is a chosen
vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the chil-
dren of Israel. Acts 9:15-16. These passages if they have any meaning
whatsoever, imply that God raised up Paul for a special work. Paul's
chief work was to be an apostle to the Gentiles. For I speak to you Gentiles
inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles. Rom. 11:13. When they
saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me as the
gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter, (for he that wrought effectually
in Peter to the apostleship of circumcision, the same is mighty in me toward
the Gentiles.) Gal. 2:7, 8. Whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an
apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ and lie not) a teacher of the Gentiles in
faith and verity. I Tim. 2:7. Whereunto I am appointed a preacher and
an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. 2 Tim. 1:11.
  God cradled Paul in Judaism and afterwards called him by his grace into
the fellowship of his Son and commissioned him to preach the gospel to the
Gentiles. Peter and others were ordered not to go in the way of the Gen-
tiles but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Matt. 10:6. Paul was to
go in the highway of the Greek and Roman world and invite them to come.
He was a debtor both to the Greeks and Barbarians. Paul's natural attain-
ments, his character, education, radical conversion-all strike us as orderly
stages in a providential preparation for his work, the crowning act being
his call as a chosen vessel to bear the name of Christ to the Gentile world-
That world outside of Judaism of which the Psalmist had declared should
be given as an inheritance to the kingdom of Christ. Ps. 2:8. In that
day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the
people; to it shall the Gentiles seek. Isa. 11:10.
  The times of the Gentiles to be fulfilled had come. Luke 21:24, Rom.
11:25. It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken
to you (Jews) but seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy
of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord com-
manded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou




			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 2

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  02
Date:  10/1911