Study of World Evangelisation by David Jenks

The title explains sufficiently the scope of his book. It does not attempt to be a history of evangelisation, still less to be a history of modern missions. It is a study of evangelisation in relation to general history, a study in the way in which God speaks through history.

From the Preface

My thanks to the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide for making a copy of this public domain title available for digitisation.

David Jenks [1866-1935], A Study of World Evangelisation. London: Student Christian Movement, 1926. Hbk. pp.168.

Contents

• Preface

1. The First Three Centuries
2. The Decay of the Roman Empire
3. Christian Monasticism
4. Eangelisation mainly outside the Roman Empire (fourth to seventh century)
5. The Conversion of the British Isles
6. The Rise of Mohammedanism
7. The Conversion of Central Europe
8. The Crusades
9. Evangelisation from the Ninth Century
10. The New World
11. The early Jesuit Missions
12. The Struggle for the New World (first phase)
13. North America and the French Missions
14. The Struggle for the New World (second phase)
15. The Beginning of Protestant Missions
16. The Present Time
17. The Modern Evangelisation of India
18. Africa
19. The Far East
20. The Islands of the Pacific
21. The Mohammedan World
22. The Measure of the Task
    

• Notes
• A Short List of Dates
• Bibliography
• Index

Chapter 1: The First Three Centuries

1. “The Acts of the Apostles” is the earliest Church History, the forerunner of Eusebius and Bede and Burnet and others who have written of their own times. St Paul’s letters form the first missionary correspondence. One cannot point to a date when the New Testament times ended and ordinary Church history began; miracles did not cease on the death of the last Apostle, nor was St Paul supernaturally aided by a gift of foreign languages. A study of the evangelisation of the world passes imperceptibly from the days of the Apostles, through the extension of the Church in the Roman Empire and beyond, until one comes down to the modern societies with their staffs of expert workers. In one continuous enterprise from the Day of Pentecost until to-day the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ on earth has manifested His power.