World Missions: Total Spiritual Warfare

Someone has said that the task of the preacher is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. The messages found in this book most definitely fall into the latter category. In these pages the author sounds a bugle call to Christian soldiers—a call “not to a holiday, but to a campaign. Our tent is pitched not in paradise, but on the field of battle…. The primary and only adequate figure of Christian service is that of the military conflict…. World missions under Christ’s captaincy means war, total war, total mobilization for total conflict.”

This book was written and published toward the end of L. E. Maxwell’s long and fruitful ministry, thus preserving for us his seasoned convictions on two of the primary emphases of his life work: his view of the Christian life as a warfare and the supreme importance of world missions. As co-founder and principal of Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta, Canada, Maxwell’s lifelong calling was to train disciplined soldiers for the mission fields of the world—a calling he fulfilled with steadfast faithfulness and astonishing success, thus qualifying him to speak with authority and passion.

“The content of this book is meant to furnish pastors and Christian workers with biblical material to stir God’s people out of their evangelical smugness,” Maxwell wrote. “Do we not all need to be stabbed wide awake?”