Southern Baptist missionaries are out of China, and like the early Christians who were scattered by persecution, they have opened up new frontiers for Christian witnessing. The Bible says: “Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled. . . . And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.”

Dr. Baker James Cauthen, secretary for the Orient for the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, says today: “God often uses difficulties in one area as an occasion for sending his message into other lands where witness is needed. This is taking place today as a result of the impossibility of projecting mission service into China.”

Most of the missionaries of the China staff have now gone into Formosa, Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, Malaya, the Philippine Islands, Korea, Japan, Hawaii, Nigeria, and Indonesia. Most of these are new Southern Baptist fields.

The general strategy being followed in the relocation of missionaries is that work is being projected among the Chinese populations. But this beginning is only a spearhead for a general mission development in the national life of the new areas.

Excerpted from “’Therefore they that were scattered abroad . . .’” by Fon H. Scofield, Jr., The Commission, March 1952, p. 16-17.