The WORLD Outlook of the Bible

In surveying with a view to appraising the missionary enterprise, it is right that we begin at the beginning, by considering what the Bible has to say on the subject, for if the missionary idea and purpose are not in the very warp and woof of Divine revelation, it is to little purpose that the Christian Church spends its time, talent, and money in an attempt to evangelize the world. That the missionary idea is to be found in the Bible no reader of its pages can deny, but there are comparatively few who know how dominating a place it occupies there. The warrant for the missionary enterprise is not dependent upon proof-texts, though these are many, but is to be found in the very texture of the Biblical revelation. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that if all that relates to God’s redemptive purpose for the whole world were to be extracted from the pages of the Scriptures, scarcely any-thing would be left.


William Graham Scroggie was born in 1877 at Great Malvern, England, of Scottish parents; his father, an evangelist, being unable to afford for his children the advantages of higher education. He grew up among the Brethren, and later, after a few years in business, entered Spurgeon’s College, London, at the age of nineteen, to train for the Baptist ministry.

Turned out of his first two churches (at Leytonstone, E. London, and Halifax, Yorkshire) through his opposition to modernism in the one and worldliness in the other, he set himself to the study of the Bible; and in the next two difficult years, without income except for occasional gifts, he laid the foundation of all his subsequent work.

His ten years’ pastorate at Bethesda, Sunderland, was followed by seventeen years at Charlotte Baptist Chapel, Edinburgh, during which time the University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, in recognition of his writings and of his work in the Capital.

After two years of ministry in New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, the United States and Canada, he spent almost seven years at Spurgeon’s (Metropolitan) Tabernacle, London, till nearly the end of the Second World War. During this time he was bombed out of three houses and his historic church was burnt down, all within a period of six months of the worst air-raids of 1940-41.

Increasing ill-health forced him to retire in 1944, after which he devoted his available strength to completing his literary work and undertaking occasional preaching and teaching. Between 1914 and 1954 he had the exceptional privilege of giving twelve series of Bible Readings at the Keswick Convention.