Ever-member evangelism

Contents

Introduction v

Preface ix

Part I THE DIVINE PROGRAM

The Program Unfolded 5

The Program Illustrated .... 11

The Program Perpetuated .... 18

We Must Go Individually .... 31

We Must Go Systematically ... 36

How Satan Hindered the Divine Program 41 How Satan Keeps the Divine Program

Hindered 48

Every-Member Evangelism in Operation . . 184

Making This Program Permanent . . . 190

Introduction

THE first great passion of the Lord Jesus Christ was, and is, for the souls of men. **The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost." In his intercessory prayer, recorded in John 17, he prays not alone for those who are with him, but for all those who, through their word, should believe on his Name, that they might be sanctified as he was sanctified, in order that the world might know that the Father had sent him into the world.

The Great Commission was not given to the Christian ministry, but to the Christian Church. It seems quite clear that when the Master met his disciples on the mountain in Galilee, ''above five hundred brethren" (1 Cor. 15:6) were together in obedience to his summons. It was to this group, probably containing all the avowed disciples of the Master at the time of his crucifixion — at least all who stood the shock of that crucifixion and maintained the integrity of their faith beyond it — that he gave the Great Commission. The evangelization of men is therefore the task of the whole Church.

Judged in the light of Acts 1 : 8, the duty of the Church in bearing witness to Christ for the purpose of persuading men to believe on Christ was to be continuous and simultaneous ; that is, it was to go on continuously and everywhere at once. The Comr^^ Introduction

mission certainly contemplates a continuous Church activity until the consummation of the Age. The very genius of the Gospel Christ gave his disciples to proclaim necessitates the dominance of the Christian passion for souls. Wherever the Holy Spirit resides in the life of a believer, he is constantly taking the things of Christ and showing them unto men.

The author of this volume will point out the fact that it is not the task of the ministry to do the soul-winning w^ork of the Christian body. The Holy Spirit has given some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ, Surely no right conception of the Christian ministry can degenerate into an itching ear for entertainment. An evangelical ministry without an evangelistic passion is a moral impossibility. To declare a church evangelical and to confess it nonevangelistic is to proclaim a living lie. A loving passion for Christ inevitably eventuates in a living passion for men.

Ih a very vital sense all the problems which attend our organizations within the local church and within the larger grouping of churches easily find their solution in an intense evangelistic activity, and an intense evangelistic atmosphere. Pettiness, selfishness, estrangements, prejudices, bitternesses, seem impossible in the presence of the miracleworking God whose power and presence are fre-

Introduction vii

quently demonstrated in the greatest of all miracles,V the regeneration of souls. There is a melting tenderness of heart, a warm response of spirit, a quickened stimulation of mind, and an irresistible surge of fellowship proceeding from the joy of salvation as it flows constantly, frequently, into the lives of those who are being redeemed. Wherever this atmosphere is guarded and maintained it will happen in the churches now as it happened following Pentecost. The Church will be all together in one place, they will pray with one accord, with singleness of heart they will break bread, great joy will be upon the people, and with mighty power the ministers will give their testimony concerning the resurrection from the dead.

There can be no substitute for this primal passion of the Christian individual and of the Christian Church. Without it the ministry becomes formal, the Church cold, the world indifferent. A passionless ministry can never arouse a cold Church, and a cold Church can never witness convincingly to an indifferent world. The Christian Church to-day needs a revival of praying, preaching, and personal testimony to the intent of reaching and winning the lost to a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This book which Dr. Conant has written should have a wide reading, for it will without doubt encourage just those results. Profound in exposition, sane in Scriptural application, wise in practical suggestion, the book proceeds not alone from the pen, but from the heart of this devoted servant of God viii Introduction

who is giving himself unceasingly to the work of the ministry.

His work as an evangelist and Bible teacher is deepened and enriched by the fact that he has also been a pastor and writes as he labors in the keen appreciation of both pastoral and Church problems.

I bespeak for the book, as I anticipate for it, a wude and thoughtful reading.

J. C. Massee.

Tremont Temple, Boston,

Preface

OF books on evangelism there are many. Nearly every phase of the subject has been so thoroughly, Scripturally, and even exhaustively covered that another book added to the already long and excellent list seems almost out of place. And it would, indeed, be altogether out of place but for an undoubted lack of emphasis in much if not almost all that has been written on two most fundamental and vital aspects of evangelism.

One of those fundamentals has to do with the question as to just what, precisely, the New Testament program of evangelism is. The author does not know of a single discussion of the subject that puts the responsibility for evangelism altogether where the New Testament places it — on every individual Christian, Much has been written on individual work for the lost, it is true, and many who have read have been stirred up to undertake the work, but there has been little if any systematic exposition of those Scriptures which set forth the divine program of evangelism which is summed up in the Great Commission.

It is popularly supposed that "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature" is an appeal to enter the ministry, and especially to go as a missionary. The vast majority of Christians have never dreamed that it is a per^

ix

Preface sonal, individual command to every child of God to go into his own personal world and do soul-winning witnessing to every creature. And it is out of this misconception that the popular but utterly unscriptural phrase, *lf we cannot go, we can send some one in our place/' has been coined. But the truth is, we are never told to "either go or send." It is God's prerogative to send ; not ours. We are commanded to do one thing only, and that is to GO. And that is a command that cannot be obeyed by proxy; it can be obeyed only in person. And so it is a command to every Christian to go with the Gospel testimony to every lost one in his own personal world, as well as a command for those who are providentially separated unto that work to go out into every corner of the geographical world.

But this is not the popular conception of evangelism. It is generally understood to consist principally of formal, public Gospel discourses, delivered in some meeting-place into which the lost have been invited in the hope that the preacher's message will result in their salvation. The New Testament, however, as illustrated by the events of Pentecost, the Church's pattern day for the whole Age, makes public and formal witnessing the climax and culmination of that private and informal witnessing which the Great Commission commands each Christian to do in his own immediate personal world. This alone is the New Testament program of evangelism. And the Church will never reach the lost in any significant numbers until this pro-

Preface xi'

gram is followed, in the power of the Spirit, with fidelity and exactness.

The other fundamental of the evangeHstic program which the author feels has had much less emphasis than it needs is the fact that while the Great Commission is sufficient authority for every-member evangelism, it is not and cannot become sufficient motive. We may be authorized, and urged, and commanded to take the Gospel in person to the lost, but the power to go does not lie in a command ; it lies in a Person.

It is true that all who write on this theme lay more or less emphasis on the need of the Holy Spirit's power, but the author has never met with any discussion of evangelism that emphasizes the divine dynamics quite as the attempt is made to emphasize them in these pages. It is not we who win the lost by the help of Christ, it is Christ himself who does the soul-winning through the lives and lips of yielded disciples. And so it is not so much a question either of equipment or lack of it, as it is a question of his absolute possession and control, by the Holy Spirit, of whatever equipment we may have. When the Holy Spirit controls a Christian, he will be constrained, impelled, borne along, to go after the lost, command or no command. The great essential, therefore, in soul-winning is to be completely possessed, through the fulness of the Spirit, by him whose life on earth it was to seek and to save the lost.

Much is being said these days about the life of xii Preface

victory in Christ. The real evidence of victorious living Hes not in an experience of joy, no matter how wonderful and continuous, but in what the indwelling life of the Victor does in and through us. 'To me to live is Christ'' (Phil. 1:21)— that is the life of victory, because the Victor himself lives it within us. And when the life of him whose passion for the lost led him to the death of the cross is lived in us, the same passion will become the normal attitude of our lives toward the lost, for we shall have become a continuous ''living sacrifice" that they might live. This is at once both the test and the evidence that the crucified and risen life of the victorious One is being lived in us to the point of personal victory. There can be no victorious living apart from a spontaneous and all-consuming passion for continuous personal evangelism.

These, then, are the two main emphases of the following pages. It is not the mechanics but the dynamics of individual work for the lost that we are to study. We are to discover that every Christian, without exception, is to do this work; then we are to learn that no Christian, no matter what his capacity and training, can possibly do it; then we are to find that he whose commands are always his enablings is the only one who can do it, and that he will and does do it through every yielded disciple; and we are also to see the vital relationship between this work and all public evangelism.

The whole Church is in a most serious condition. Not only have we not been increasing as fast as the

Preface xiii

population, but some of the larger denominations have been reporting actual net losses in some late years. Public evangelism seems to be occupying an increasingly small and less vital place in the life of the Church, while worldliness and apostasy are taking such a hold on the very vitals of Church life that private evangelism is fast disappearing. If present history is to be reversed and the victorious history of other days repeated, the Church must return to a literal obedience to the divine Program, and surrender to utter dependence on the divine power. To this end these pages have been written. This book goes forth with the prayer that through its reading a great company of the Lord's people may allow the Holy Spirit to thrust them forth into a ripened harvest.

J. E. CONANT.

Chicago, III., January, 1^22.

Part I THE DIVINE PROGRAM

MANY an earnest and consecrated pastor is heartbroken over the failure of his people to reach the lost for Christ in any significant numbers.

More than once has such a pastor gone from his knees to his pulpit with a heart surcharged with his own passion for a lost humanity, and a divinely given yearning that his people might be possessed by the same passion.

More than once has he set before them the call to the work of soul-winning until it has seemed as though no one could fail to respond.

More than once has he risen to such an intensity of appeal that it has seemed as though the Son of God himself was pouring out his own yearning for a lost world through human heart and lips.

And as he has pleaded with his people, he has seen them rise to heights of inspired and enthusiastic resolve. He has seen the evidence, in their earnest faces, of a determination to give their lives as never before to the work of soul-winning. Indeed, he has seen many of them give solemn public pledge before God that seeking to win the lost to Christ should be the main purpose of their lives from that day forward. And then as he has watched them leave the service and scatter into the field, he has anticipated such results from that hour as the church had never before seen.

But he was doomed to sad and bitter disappointment. The enthusiastic resolutions of that holy hour seemed to vanish ere the next Sunday, like a mist before the rising sun.

Perhaps he could detect a little increased activity on the part of a pitiably small handful of his most earnest people, but he was compelled to acknowledge that little, if anything, of increased results in soul-winning ever came from that service which had seemed to promise so much.

The pastor had failed!

Perhaps this was another failure!

Why had he failed ?

He was certain there was nothing consciously wrong between himself and his Lord. He was surq of the Holy Spirit's leading and enabling in selecting his theme and making his appeal. He was convinced that in his longing for a church enthusiastically seeking after the lost he was never more honestly desirous of the glory of God.

And as for his people, he was certain they were God's children. He felt sure their response to his appeal was out of a genuine love for Christ and a lost world. And he was convinced that they went out of that service with a purpose to win the lost as honest as any company of Christians ever had. And yet little or nothing had resulted from it!

Why had that pastor failed? What had he left undone? What more could he do? There certainly was a reason for that failure, but what was it?

Was not the trouble something like this? The appeal of that consecrated pastor was completely successful in securing the honest purpose from his people to win the lost to Christ, and his people were thoroughly sincere in their determination to give themselves to that work; but as they turned from the church door and faced their task, they were confronted by a great field — perhaps one that spread out over a large city, and the very bigness of their task bewildered them. They were not only willing to go after the lost, but were enthusiastic in their anticipation of results, but where, in all that great field, were they to begin?

Perhaps some of them did try to begin — somewhere, but the indefinite anywhereness of their task, the lack of responsibility for any definite section of the field, and the sense of being unharnessed and alone in the open, first produced discouragement because the task seemed too big for them, then led to delay because it was all so indefinite, and finally brought defeat.

It was not lack of a purpose so much as lack of a program that accomplished that defeat.

A purpose may start us toward a task, and may even get us at work on it, but we can never be kept at work very long without a program.

When men undertake to run a business of their own, they carry it on according to a system, a method, a program, even to the last detail ; and the Great Commission absolutely demands that the soul-winning work of the Church be organized and carried on according to a program. And when we make even a cursory study of the Commission and all the related passages we find not only what the divine Program for the work of soul-winning is, but what the divine Purpose was in giving the Church that program, and also what is the source and nature of the divine Power by which the program is to be carried out. We shall therefore relate our study to these three thoughts.

Chapter I Scripture Exposition

AS we study the Lord's Program for his Church, we shall want to know two or three very definite things about it.

We shall need, first of all, to know what the Program is.

We shall then be glad to know if there is a New Testament illustration of the way the Lord expects it to be worked out.

We shall also need to know what provision the Lord has made to keep it in operation throughout the Church Age.

The New Testament furnishes abundant information on all these points, and we therefore turn to what it says.

/. The Program Unfolded

As to what the Program is, we turn naturally to the words of Christ, and especially to what he said to his disciples just before his crucifixion, and also between his resurrection and ascension; for here, if anywhere, we are likely to find the sum of all his previous instruction and the outline of his purposes concerning the future of his Church. And as we turn to the passages that contain Christ's last words, we are not disappointed.

THE church's mission

If we set the pre-crucifixion and pre-ascension words of Christ all down by themselves and give them careful study, we cannot fail to notice that the word '"witness" is the key to all of them.

And if we analyze them we shall find that witnessing is to be the main work of the whole Church in the whole world throughout the whole Age.^

Notice how this is all summed up in the Great Commission as Mark^ gives it to us, with one phrase from Matthew added.^

**Go ye'' is a command to every Christian; that is, to the whole Church.

"Into all the world" certainly includes every Christian's personal world, for it takes all the personal worlds of all Christians scattered abroad over the earth added together to cover the geographical world. That is, the whole Church is to go into the whole world.

'*And preach the Gospel," if it means anythfng, must certainly mean to witness, or to tell the Good News of salvation through Christ, and this defines the central activity of the Church. That is, witnessing is the main work of the whole Church throughout the whole world; while ''to every creature" makes it the individual work of every Christian to every unsaved one.

And then Matthew adds Christ's promise, "Lo,

iDr. Arthur T. Pierson says that witnessing is the "whole work of the whole Church for the whole Age." 2Mark 6:15. SMatt. 28:20.

Scripture Exposition "N^

I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age/'^ which clearly indicates that this work is to be continued throughout the whole Age.

The Commission according to Mark, therefore, with one phrase from Matthew, tells us that witnessing is the main work of the whole Church in the whole world throughout the whole Age.

Christ also said just before he ascended that this witnessing was to be done ''both'' in Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, and to *'the uttermost part of the earth,''^ which means, according to Dr. Henry C. Mabie, that the Lord's people are to witness, not consecutively from one place to another, but simultaneously in every part of earth at once.

THE church's message

When we turn to that phase of the Commission set forth by Luke, we have the content of our testimony given to us.

You recall that at the close of the day of Christ's resurrection, after he had appeared to the two Emmaus disciples, he suddenly appeared in the midst of the disciples who were gathered together in Jerusalem discussing the news of the resurrection.

After showing his startled disciples his hands and his feet, and eating a piece of broiled fish to convince them that it was really himself, he reminded them of how he had told them of all these things before his crucifixion, and of how he had simply been fulfilling what the Scriptures had fore-

<o Every -Member Evangelism

told, and then he gave them the content of their message — ^and ours — to a lost world.^

*'Ye are witnesses of these things/' said Christ, which refers back to what he had just been saying. And as we analyze what he said, we find that our witnessing has to do with three distinct themes:

First, WQ are to set forth the testimony of Scripture to Christ, and show how all the things to which Scripture witnesses concerning him either have been or will yet be fulfilled.

Again, we are to bear witness to his unique sufferings, his atoning death, and his triumphant resurrection.

Still further, we are to tell everywhere the Good News of the remission of sins for all who repent and believe.

Then in the last words he spoke before he ascended, Christ summed up the message of the Church in a single sentence, when he said: **Ye shall be witnesses unto Me/' Not simply to a lot of information about him, however useful in its place, but to Christ himself.

THE church's motives

In immediate connection with the content of our testimony is set down Christ's promise of the Holy Spirit,^ who is to be our enablement in our testimony, and his explicit command to the disciples to wait till the Holy Spirit had come to begin his ministry in them before they should start out on their ministry of witnessing.

This instruction of Christ's to wait for the Holy Spirit is of the utmost significance, for it indicates' beyond all question that we not only will not, buteven cannot obey the Great Commission apart fronn the power of the Spirit.

This is set forth in symbol in a most significant way in the details that John tells us of what happened on the evening of the resurrection day.^

As Christ suddenly appeared in the midst of the assembled disciples without a door being opened, the first thing he did was to show them his wounded hands and side — the visible evidences of his atoning work. This was to be the heart of their testimony to him.

Then he commanded them to go, even as his Father had sent him. This was his command to go with their testimony.

But he does not stop there. The content of their testimony had been indicated, and they had been commanded to go with it, but Christ knew they would never go simply under the impulse of a command. So he breathed on them and said: "Receive ye the Holy Spirit" — a symbolic action looking forward to Pentecost. And so imperative was his instruction just before he ascended to wait for the empowering of the Spirit that we know, beyond peradventure, that successful witnessing apart from that empowering is an utter impossibility.

Id Every -Member Evangelism

PRAYER AND POWER

There is one other thing that lies behind all this. While it does not appear in the Great Commission in so many words, yet it saturates the whole ministry of Christ, and he also urges his disciples to it by example, exhortation, and command. That fundamental thing is prayer. The mechanics of the most perfect program possible, even of a program that God himself lays out, are utterly worthless apart from the divine dynamics. And prayer alone makes it possible for us to be taken hold upon by the divine dynamics. "Men ought always to pray and not to faint," said Christ.^ Only so will they always be living channels of that message of an atoning Saviour from sin, thereby living in constant obedience to the Great Commission.

THE COMPLETE CHURCH PROGRAM

The Great Commission, therefore, when we sum it up, is a personal command to every Christian to go into every nook and corner of his personal world, and seek, by witnessing in the power of the Holy Spirit to the Good News of God's saving grace through the shed blood of Christ, to win every lost soul in his personal world to salvation. We are also so to scatter over the inhabited earth, as the providence of God leads and opens the way, that the whole world will be continuously and simultaneously evangelized. With this agrees every pasiLuke 18:1.

Scripture Exposition tr sage that has any bearing on the mission of the Church. This defines with the utmost clearness what the Lord's Program for his Church is.

//. The Program Illustrated

The next thing we want to know is whether the Lord has given us a historical illustration of this Program actually at work, and we do not need to look far to find one. For the Holy Spirit gave us the pattern of the manner in which this Program is to be carried out in the events immediately surrounding the Day of Pentecost. These events were the divinely executed pattern of what the Lord purposed to keep doing through the Church during the whole Church Age. To find the divine significance of these events, therefore, will be to have set before us what the Church is expected to be doing to-day. And as added details unfold before us as we watch how the Holy Spirit led and empowered the disciples to carry out Christ's command exactly as he gave it, no doubt can be left in our minds as to precisely what that Program is.

THE PLACE OF PRAYER

As the foundation and preparation for all the Holy Spirit was to do in the disciples and for the lost when he began his official ministry on earth, a period of time was given over entirely to prayer. This period was ten days in this instance, but the number of days means nothing except that it was that long before the Holy Spirit came to begin his official mission. The whole emphasis must be on uthe praying. This alone could prepare their hearts for what God was to do in them and through them, and it surely could not have been altogether without some bearing on the lost to whom they were to witness, even though the Holy Spirit had not yet come. At any rate, it is certain that prayer, since the Holy Spirit has come, opens the pathway both for the divine preparation of the Christian's heart and the divine operation in the sinner's heart.

POWER FOR WITNESSING

Then came the events of Pentecost.^ The Lord had already indicated that he intended the disciples to do their witnessing in a systematic fashion when he divided the field into the broad districts of Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, and **the uttermost part of the earth,'' and directed them to witness simultaneously in all of them. And so it could not have been without this in view that he commanded them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to start them on this work, for at Jerusalem were living "men out of every nation under heaven,"^ making it possible to witness simultaneously to representatives of every district he had named, from Jerusalem to *'the uttermost part of the earth." This providence is very striking.

Then when the Holy Spirit came, took possession of the yielded disciples, and began working out through them the divine Program!, they were all so possessed by the Spirit as to be empowered to speak in the languages of **every nation under heaven."

*Acts 2. "Acts 2:5.

The direct connection between this miracle and the Great Commission cannot be missed. It lies on the surface. The disciples were enabled by it to begin witnessing at once and simultaneously to every nation representatively, from Jerusalem to those farthest away. By it the Holy Spirit indicated what he intended should actually be done in all the nations themselves, as soon as the way was providentially opened for the disciples to reach them, and what he intended should continue to be done throughout the Age.

INFORMAL WITNESSING BY ALL

The next step was to go to the lost with their testimony. They were therefore impelled by the Holy Spirit to go where the lost were. Note this well. They did not go to some public meeting-place and invite the people to come and hear their testimony, they took their testimony to the people.

As soon as the marvel of their miraculous speech was noised abroad, great crowds from everywhere came together and listened with amazement, as the entire one hundred and twenty disciples, both men and women, praised God and witnessed to Lis mighty works in at least fifteen different languages.

Notice that they were not preaching, for there were many among them — the women, for instance, as well as others — who were not called of God to public preaching and teaching. They were ztntnessing, and they were all witnessing in the midst of a great company of the lost