The Back Rows

Do you remember when the Lord Jesus Christ fed the 5ooo? Do you recall how He had them sit down, row upon row, on the green grass? Then do you remember how He took the loaves and fishes and blessed them and then broke them and gave them to His disciples? And do you remember how the disciples started at one end of the front row and went right along that front row giving everyone a helping? Then do you recall how they turned right around and started back along that front row again, asking everyone to take a second helping? Do you remember?

No!-a thousand times-no! Had they done that, those in the back rows would have been rising up and protesting most vigorously. "Here", they would have been saying, "come back here. Give us a helping. We have not had any yet. We are starving; it isn't right, it isn't fair. Why should those people in the front rows have a second helping before we have had a first?"

And they would have been right. We talk about the second blessing. They haven't had the first blessing yet. We talk about the second coming of Christ. They haven't heard about the first coming yet. It just isn't fair. "Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?" You know as well as I do, that not one individual in that entire company of 5ooo men, besides women and children, got a second helping until everyone had had a first helping.

There was an absolutely equal distribution of the food. With but few exceptions there has never been an equal distribution since. Some churches do not even go 50-50. They do not send as much to the foreign field as they spend on themselves.

I have never known a minister to have any trouble with the back rows. All his trouble comes from the front rows. Those in the front rows are over-fed and they develop spiritual indigestion.They tell him how much to feed them; when to feed them; when to stop feeding them; how long to feed them; what kind of food to give them, etc etc, and if he doesn't do it, they complain and find fault. If a minister had any sense, he would leave the front rows for a while and let them get hungry for once in their lives and go to the back rows, and then when he returned they would be ready to accept his ministry and there would be no murmuring or complaining.

My friends, I have been with the back rows. I have seen the countless millions in those back rows famishing for the Bread of Life. Is it right? Should we be concentrating on the front rows? Ought we not rather to be training the front rows to share what they have with the back rows, and thus reach them with the Gospel, those for whom nothing has been prepared?

Do you know that the greatest thing a church can do for itself is to send its Pastor to one of the foreign mission fields of earth? There is no vacation like it. He will come back a new man; for no one can see the need with his own eyes and ever be the same again. It will do something to him. He will have something to talk about. He will be worth infinitely more to the Church than he ever was before.

-Taken from "The Challenge of Missions" by Oswald J. Smith