EVANGELISM-PERSPECTIVES
First, we
must admit that we were silly ever to think that any evangelistic technique,
however skillful, could of itself guarantee conversions; second, we must
recognize that, because man's heart is impervious to the word of God, it is no
cause for surprise if at any time our evangelism fails to result in
conversions; third, we must remember that the terms of our calling are that we
should be faithful, not that we should be successful; fourth, we must learn to
rest all our hopes of fruit in evangelism upon the omnipotent grace of God.
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God,
InterVarsity Press p. 112.
Your
shrinking from this truth about hell is not due to your sympathy with people’s
pain. It is due to your lack of
sympathy with their pain. God is the one who is sympathetic. He is the one who
gave His only begotten Son to rescue us from this misery and to inform us
insistently, dogmatically, and compassionately that we are in for an awful end
if we persist in unbelief. Don’t say that you feel for people when you blunt
the edge of the word of the Spirit. What have you ever done that shows that you
truly feel for sinners’ eternal pain? Denying the truth of God’s Word about it
certainly offers them no help whatsoever.
Mark Minnick
The Doctrine of Eternal Punishment, Preach
the Word Ministries, Inc., p. 29.
Your
top-priority job as a parent, then, is to be an evangelist in your home. You
need to teach your children the law of God; teach them the gospel of divine
grace; show them their need for a Savior; and point them to Jesus Christ as the
only One who can save them. If they grow up without a keen awareness of their
need for salvation, you as a parent will have failed in your primary task as
their spiritual leader.
John MacArthur
Successful Christian Parenting, 1998, p.
42-43.
I would not
tell one lie to save the souls of all the world.
John Wesley
In our
evangelism we must be partners with the Holy Spirit, presenting the Gospel but
relying on the Holy Spirit of God to do the true convicting and convincing and
converting.
Mark Dever
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway,
2000, p. 16.
The
redemption of an eternal soul is one sale that I, in my own strength, cannot
accomplish. I need to know that, not so that I won’t preach the Gospel, but so
that I won’t allow my presentation of the Gospel to be molded by what I think
will finally get a response and close a sale. Instead of using all my powers to
convict and change the sinner, while God stands back as a gentleman quietly
waiting for the spiritual corpse, His declared spiritual enemy, to invite Him
into his heart, I’m going to preach the Gospel like a gentleman, trying to
persuade but knowing that I can’t convict and convert and change the sinner.
Then we’ll see clearly just who can really call the dead to life.
Mark Dever
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway,
2000, p. 127.
If
you don’t believe that the gospel is the good news of God’s action – the Father
electing, the Son dying, the Spirit drawing – that conversion is only our
response to God’s giving us the grace-gifts of repentance and faith, and that
evangelism is our simple, faithful, prayerful telling of this good news, then
you will actually damage the evangelistic mission of the church by making false
converts.
Mark Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 110.
Testimony
is, of course, popular in our postmodern, that’s-good-for-you age. Who would
object to your thinking you’ve gotten something good from Christ? But wait and
see what happens when you try to move the conversation from what Jesus has done
for you to the facts of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and how
that all applies to your nonbelieving friend. That’s when you discover that
testimony is not necessarily evangelism.
Mark
Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 73-74.
Who
can deny that much modern evangelism has become emotionally manipulative,
seeking simply to cause a momentary decision of the sinner’s will, yet
neglecting the biblical idea that conversion is the result of the supernatural,
gracious act of God toward the sinner?
Mark
Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 80.
According
to the Bible, good motives for evangelism are a desire to be obedient, a love
for the lost, and a love for God.
Mark
Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 96.
The
bad fruit of false evangelism:
1. Worldly people
feeling assurance because they made a decision one time.
2. Real revival being
lost amid our own manufactured and scheduled meetings that we euphemistically
call “revivals” (as if we could determine where and when the wind of God’s
Spirit will move).
3. Church memberships
markedly larger than the number of those involved with the church.
4. Inaction in our own
lives, as we ignore the evangelistic mandate – the call to share the good
news.
Mark Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 111.
We
need to know what kind of sales we can close and what kind we can’t. The
redemption of an eternal soul is one sale that we, in our own strength, cannot
accomplish. And we need to know it, not so that we won’t preach the gospel, but
so that we won’t allow the gospel that is preached to be molded by what finally
gets a response!
Mark Dever
The
Gospel and Personal Evangelism, Crossway, 2007, p. 108-109.
Men would sooner believe that the gospel is from heaven,
if they saw more such effects of it upon the hearts and lives of those who
profess it. The world is better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s
life than in the Bible.
Richard Baxter
The Reformed Pastor, Chapter 2, Section 1.
I saw that it
were better to make a mistake in one’s first effort at personal religious
conversation, and correct that mistake afterwards, than not to make any
effort. There can be no mistake so bad, in
working for an individual soul for Christ, as the fatal mistake of not making
an honest endeavor. How many persons
refrain from doing anything lest they possibly should do the wrong thing just
now! Not doing is the worst of doing.
Henry Clay Trumbull
[Jesus Christ’s] victory, of course,
does not mean that we rush off to kill all our enemies. It means instead that
we are to love them. Our love for them must be strong enough, however, to tell
them with both passion and compassion, that their hopes are in vain, that their
gods are mute and dumb, and that there is only one name under heaven by which a
man must be saved. Our love for them does not present the Christian Gospel as
an option. It does not lead us to argue that it’s a good option that has worked
well for us. Our love instead commands all men everywhere to repent and believe
the Gospel, lest they perish. Our love calls on all our enemies to kiss the
Son, lest He be angry and they perish along the way
(Ps. 2:12).
R.C. Sproul Jr.
Kiss
the Son, Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 81, Used by Permission.
The nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by the
present-day evangelist. He announces a Savior from hell rather than a Savior
from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are
multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of Fire who have no desire to be
delivered from their carnality and worldliness.
A.W. Pink
The
Scriptures say that God Himself is the chief evangelist. For the Spirit of God
is the Spirit of truth, love, holiness and power, and evangelism is impossible
without Him. It is He who anoints the messenger, confirms the word, prepares
the hearer, convicts the sinful, enlightens the blind, gives life to the dead,
enables us to repent and believe, unites us to the body of Christ, assures us
that we are God’s children, leads us into Christ-like character and service,
and sends us out in our turn to be Christ’s witnesses. In all this the Holy
Spirit’s main preoccupation is to glorify Jesus Christ by showing Him to us and
forming Him in us.
John Stott
Making Christ Known: Historic Mission
Documents for the Lausanne Movement, Eerdmans, 1996, p. 238.
What right do
we have to make God out to be Someone other than He
really is in order to make people like Him more? Honor God by declaring the
truth about Him.
Jim Elliff
Serious Preaching, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
It
is the Holy Spirit who gives assurance of life in Christ, not the evangelist
(Rom. 8:16). We are to relate the basis of assurance but leave the actual
assuring to the Spirit.
Jim Elliff
Closing With Christ, Christian Communicators
Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org
. Used by Permission.
The first
evangelists never assured unconverted people that God loves them. This is not
to say conclusively that He does not love them in any way whatsoever. But the
undeniable fact is, the love of God for man was a
total non-factor in the evangelistic preaching recorded in the New
Testament. In the book of Acts, for example, the greatest manual for evangelism
that exists, the word “love” is never even used. So the first supposedly
essential phrase – “God loves you and wants to save you” – has absolutely no
biblical precedent… Likewise, and contrary to the second common assumption
about the essential content of the gospel message, the words, “Christ died for
you” were never addressed to unconverted people. The only people who are ever
assured in the Bible that Jesus bore their sins on the cross are Christians.
You will search the Bible in vain to find words like, “Jesus died for you,”
presented as a promise or an appeal to the lost.
Daryl Wingerd
Speaking
Biblically About the Death of Christ, Christian Communicators
Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org.
Used by Permission.
We must
preach the gospel of God’s sovereign grace in Christ to everyone. There
should be no restrictions on when, where, or to whom we will preach. We must
never attempt to pry into God’s secret will. We cannot know the objects of
God’s election and redemptive love until they repent and believe. We do not
wait for a “warrant” (the apparent conviction of sin) before proclaiming the
gospel and urging people to repent. We preach (as opposed to “offer”) the
gospel to everyone indiscriminately because we are not God and we do not
know when or where He will pour out His mercy next. Also, we preach to everyone
because we have been commanded to do so (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8).
Daryl Wingerd
Speaking
Biblically About the Death of Christ, Christian
Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
We notice
also that Jesus said that the number of such self-proclaiming believers, who
are not really regenerate, is declared to be “many.” This should elicit caution
in our assumptions of the success of our methods and techniques of evangelism. We
tend to be quite sanguine with our “evangelism statistics” when we assume the
conversion of all who answer an altar call, make a “decision for Christ,” or
recite the “sinner’s prayer.” These tools can help measure outward professions,
but they do not give us a glimpse into the heart. All we can ever see of a
person’s profession is his fruit. And even the fruit can be deceptive. God, and
God alone, can read the human heart. Our
gaze cannot penetrate beyond the outward appearance.
R.C. Sproul
Tabletalk, p. 7, June 2004, Ligonier
Ministries, Used by Permission.
It is this
most obvious aspect of our Lord’s teaching which has been forgotten or ignored
by modern evangelism. Anxious to bring sinners to life, peace and joy in the
Lord, evangelists have failed even to mention that Christ insists upon denial
of self at the outset. Having failed to pass on our Lord’s requirement,
and forgetting it themselves, evangelists have never questioned whether their “converts”
with self-centered lives are true followers of Christ. Assuming that it is
possible for a man to be self-indulgent and yet heaven-bound, Bible teachers
look for some way to bring ego-centric men to a higher spiritual plane. Then
self-denial is taught as the requirement for a second work of grace. But Luke 9:23-24
shows that unless a man lives a life of self-denial, he has not received a
first work of grace.
Walter J. Chantry
The
Shadow of the Cross – Studies in Self-Denial, 1981, p. 21-22, by permission
Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
Soul winning
should lead to soul building.
Author
Unknown
Present
day evangelism commends a Savior from Hell rather than from sin. This eternally
fatal deception seeks an escape from God’s eternal wrath, with no intension of
being delivered from sin, carnality and worldliness.
Author
Unknown
In one of his
sermons, Spurgeon reminded his congregation about the doctrine of God’s
electing some from the foundation of the world. But he noted that our task is
to preach the gospel to every creature, not to find the elect. Spurgeon
reportedly said that if God had painted a yellow strip down the back of each of
the elect, he would run up and down the streets of London, lifting up
shirttails, and preaching the gospel to the elect. But Spurgeon reminds us that
God has not done so. Instead He has commanded us to “preach the gospel to every
creature.” We must urgently appeal to everyone to come to Christ.
Jim Ehrhard
The Dangers of the
Invitation System, Christian Communications Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org, 1999, p. 23.