EVANGELISM-NEED FOR
The average
person in the world today, without faith and without God and without hope, is
engaged in a desperate personal search throughout his lifetime. He does not
really know where he has been. He does
not really know what he is doing here and now. He does not know where he is
going. The sad commentary is that he is doing it all on borrowed time and
borrowed money and borrowed strength; and he already knows that in the end he
will surely die! Man, made more like God than any other creature, has become
less like God than any other creature. Created to reflect the glory of God, he
has retreated sullenly into his cave; reflecting only his own sinfulness.
Certainly it is a tragedy above all tragedies in this world that man, made with
a soul to worship and praise and sing to God's glory, now sulks silently in his
cave.
The fall of
man has created a perpetual crisis. It
will last until sin has been put down and Christ reigns over a redeemed and
restored world. Until that time the earth remains a disaster area and its
inhabitants live in a state of extraordinary emergency. To me it has always
been difficult to understand those evangelical Christians who insist upon
living in the crisis as if no crisis existed. They say they serve the Lord, but
they divide their days so as to leave plenty of time to play and loaf and enjoy
the pleasures of the world as well. They are at ease while the world burns.
A.W. Tozer
Answering a
student's question, “Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?”
thus (answered Spurgeon), “It is more a question with me whether we, who have
the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.”
C.H. Spurgeon
Too many
Christians are stuffing themselves with gospel blessings while millions have
never had a taste.
Vance Havner
Quoted by Curtis C. Thomas, Practical
Wisdom for Pastors, Crossway Books, 2001, p. 182.
Reform is no answer for a culture like ours.
Redemption is what is needed, and that occurs at the individual, not
societal level. The church needs to get back to the real task to which we are
called: evangelizing the lost. Only when multitudes of individuals in our
society turn to Christ will society itself experience any significant
transformation.
John MacArthur
Successful Christian Parenting, 1998, p. 10.
I remember no
one sin that my conscience doth so much accuse and judge me for as for doing so
little for the saving of souls, and not for dealing with the lost soul ones
more fervently and earnestly for their conversion.
Richard Baxter
Will it not awaken us to compassion, to look on a languishing man,
and to think that within a few days his soul will be in heaven or in hell?
Surely it will try the faith and seriousness of ministers, to be much about
dying men! They will thus have opportunity to discern whether they themselves
are in good earnest about the matters of the life to come.
Richard Baxter
To win men to
acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord is the only reason Christians
are left in this world.
R.A. Torrey
Evangelism
can never be finished, but missions can be finished. The reason is this: missions has the unique task of crossing language and
culture barriers to penetrate a people group and establish a church movement;
but evangelism is the ongoing task of sharing the gospel among people within
the same culture.
John Piper
Desiring God, 1996, p. 194, Used by
Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
God has
removed the sting of death for each believer. I should save my sorrow for those
without Christ and seek to win them.
Larry Clark
The God who
is worthy to be known and served for who He is, is
Himself the answer to this world’s longings. And those who know Him best are
best equipped to serve Him. He is their message. If we have discovered the
glory of God in the face of Christ, we must not hold back. The God of glory
must be made known.
Tom Wells
A Vision for Missions, Permission by The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA. p. 152.
It is ironic
when one stops to think about it. In an age when facilities for rapid
communication of the gospel are available to the church as never before, there
are actually more unevangelized people on the earth
today than before the invention of the horseless carriage.
Robert E. Coleman
The Master Plan of Evangelism, Fleming H.
Revell Company, p. 37-38.
“Not called!”
did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to
the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put
your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its
pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned
entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters
and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face –
whose mercy you have professed to obey – and tell Him whether you will join
heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to
the world.
William Booth
We face a
humanity that is too precious to neglect. We know a remedy for the ills of the
world too wonderful to withhold. We have a Christ too glorious to hide. We have
an adventure that is too thrilling to miss.
Theodore Williams
It is not
only in the world today that evangelism is needed. It is needed in the church.
Ernest C. Reisinger
What
Should We Think of the Carnal Christian? 1978, p. 23. By permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
God is great,
and worship is our response to His greatness! The church’s primary purpose is
to insure that God receives the glory He desires and deserves. That is why the
saints gather together to corporately rehearse the
greatness of God through worship. The focus of the church should be the worth-ship
of God. Evangelism’s main goal is first and foremost to recruit worshippers for
God. When Christ is embraced as offered in the Gospel, the believer is brought
into a personal worshipping relationship with God the Father.
Mike Chastain
The Goal of Redemption, Tabletalk,
Feb. 2004, p. 55, Used by Permission.
Evangelism…far
from being rendered superfluous by God’s predestination, is indispensable,
because it is the very means God has ordained by which His call comes to His
people and awakens their faith.
John
Stott
Romans – God’s Good News for the World, 1994, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.
Used with permission of InterVarsity Press UK, p. 252.
Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a
doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let
men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around
you damned?
Leonard Ravenhill
Universalism,
fashionable as it is today, is incompatible with the teaching of Christ and His
apostles, and is a deadly enemy of evangelism. The true universalism of the
Bible is the call to universal evangelism in obedience to Christ’s universal
commission. It is the conviction that not all men will be saved in the end, but
that all men must hear the gospel of salvation before the end.
John Stott
Quoted in: Who Will Be Saved? Edited by: House, Paul and Thornbury, Gregory, Crossway, 2000, p. 104.