Modern Evangelism Is Missing a Vital Link
A well-known evangelist, Ray
Comfort, estimates that 80-90%, conservatively, of decisions for Christ in
modern evangelism will thereafter lose their witness and he or she will not
even attend church consistently. He cites a detailed study of the 294,000
who “got saved” in a one-year crusade effort by a major denomination, Harvest,
in 1991. They had 11,500 churches keeping close records. (PS: Evangelism
sweeps don't usually do this). Only 14,000 of the 294,000 still attended
church, only a couple years later. That’s a 95% loss rate!
He also studied the works of famous
evangelists of the past—such as Wesley, Whitefield, Moody, Spurgeon, and
Finney. Along with New Testament evangelists, Paul, Peter, Steven, and Timothy.
Their writings and sermon notes suggested a much higher number of people
hanging onto their conversion in those bdays. Why has this loss rate gone
stratospheric, he wondered? One of the things he noticed was that in
those days, the preaching by these great men would frequently begin with how
people have broken God’s Laws. Then, after that was covered thoroughly in
the sermon, the Good News was taught. This principle of sermon order (bad news,
then good news) has faded away, particularly starting in the early 1900s.
Nowadays, preachers--and seminary professors-- consider that the “You Have
Broken the Law" sermon-starter is just too negative, and have shied away
from it. Modern evangelistic theory (taught in Christian colleges)
assumes that most people feel they are not worthy to be with God, so we have to
emphasize God’s grace and love right from the start, to make them feel wanted,
then explaining what Christ did on our behalf. The Prodigal Son (Luke 15) was
the classic example of a good sermon, as they teach how the father accepted his
son, though he wasted the inheritance, and still smelled of pigs.
Mr. Comfort came to his
conclusion: the old ways were better, because they had a lower loss rate.
What's more important, Scriptures
seem to provide proof of his idea. Psalm 19:7 says, in part:
The Law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul
Well, converting the soul is what we
want in evangelism, right? The Bible lays it out plainly. You
present the Law where people can clearly see their own violations. Then you
bring up God as holy, and having expectations that we clearly cannot meet. THEN
you bring up Christ, and what he did.
Mr. Comfort gives us a
parable. Suppose you’re walking around, and someone pops up and says,
“I’ve got good news for you! Someone paid a $2500 fine on your
behalf!” Your reaction might be “What are you talking about? That
doesn’t make sense; I can’t think of what I did wrong for the fine, nor has
anybody told me this.” You are confused, not exactly in a grateful mood,
right? Such a person would be offended, actually--they might even thank you,
but still confused. BUT what if the following event also happened:
This person was clocked doing 55 mph in an area set aside for a blind
children’s school nearby. There were 10 clear warning signs stating that
the speed limit was 15 mph. What he did was extremely dangerous,
negligent, and reckless, whether he knew about it or not, and a $2500 fine was
appropriate and it was the law. So this person was caught, and in court
his ignorance of the law was brushed aside (that would never bring back the
life of a child killed--besides, he had clear warning signs; he just never
slowed down to read them). He was told all the details of his illegality,
and then told to pay the fine, and with agony he wondered whether he would have
the money, how stupid he was to do that, how much his family would sacrifice
their lifestyle—or even how he would tell them—when suddenly someone he didn’t
even know stepped forward and paid it for him. Now his reaction would be
a definition of gratitude, right? He might even want to make friends with
this stranger, to see what motivated him to give so much so graciously.
As you can clearly see by the two
parables, the second example--explaining the bad news, the Law he broke.
And then, with proper acceptance of that news, giving him the Good News of
One who has paid his debt, generates a much more positive response. Well,
that’s the principle they formerly used in preaching. On the other hand,
the first approach is what we have a great deal more of now. Most people,
hearing this more-recent approach, are offended—they don’t think they are bad
sinners. (Which means they haven’t been taught about God, how He is perfect,
and hates sin. Their thinking might be “I’m better than these criminals I see
on TV, so God won’t treat me bad—He’s love, right?”). If I talk the current theme
of "grace-only" with a prospect, I pretty much can’t get away from
insinuating that they need a do-over to gain assurance about their relationship
with God, when they have usually deceived themselves into thinking they don’t
think they need one—and they resent our suggestion—and our indirectness. Or,
they consider the idea that they need salvation foolish. As Scripture
says in I Corinthians 1:18:
…the message of the cross is
foolishness to those who are perishing
Anyone “saved” by this method is
more by emotionalism, since there is confusion about why they need to be saved,
and what the Good News really saves us from. But in the cold light of the days
following, this emotionalism cools off to its final result--rejection (because
of the “sneak attack on my character” more
often than not.) Which is where the 80-90% falling away comes in.
Thus I need, in my speaking
evangelistally, to take the time to speak insightfully of the Ten Commandments
and even how Jesus took the concept of sin a step further.
To carry the Ten Commandments
further, read the Sermon on the Mount; sin is a violation in thought as
well as deed. Thinking about a woman lustfully, is as evil as having sex
with her; or hating someone makes you guilty, wanting to wish them dead. And
then, if time, you should also cover Jesus’ commandments in the Gospels—for
instance, if you are unforgiving to others, God will be unforgiving to you in
Judgment day (Matthew 18:21-35), all to show the prospect that we have truly
offended a just God—then our prospect hopefully becomes, as James says in 2:9:
Convicted of the law, as a
transgressor.
Then the Good News of Christ’s
paying our debt will not be offensive or foolish…it will be the power of God to
rescue us from a deserved hell unto salvation.
Let’s look at each function of
presenting God’s Law. We’ll start with Romans 3:19:
Now we know that whatever the law
says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped,
and all the world may become guilty before God.
Thus, one function of it is (1) to stop
the mouth from excusing or rationalizing. (A man might say, she
enjoyed sex as much as I did, and nobody was hurt. Therefore it's not
sin. Wrong. It disobeys God's law, therefore it IS sin). We
don’t need to hear much of the prospect’s wisdom, justifying himself and
saying, “there are plenty of people who use everybody worse than me.” (He’s
either deceived or just putting you off, really). We are the ones
bearing the wonderful gift of good news, and need an opportunity to speak.
Secondly, Romans 3:20 says this:
...by the deeds of the law no flesh
will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
The prospect needs to learn about
sin, since self-defense and self-deception are rampant today. We cannot
assume that his sin is in the forefront (or even in the back) of his
memory.
I John 3:4 says: sin is the
transgression of the law. It would seem obvious that a person needs
to know the law intimately in order to know if he has transgressed it, or has
sinned. Romans 7:7 declares this more forcefully: I would
not have known sin except through the law. If you decide that the best
course of action is to be ignorant of the law, that won't help. You still
transgressed it, and will pay the price if unsaved.
Thirdly, in Galatians 3:24, the Law
is not only to build our knowledge of sin, but, very importantly…the law was
our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. What this means, is, the knowledge
of the Law doesn’t really make us reconciled with God…it shows us that we are
helpless. It doesn’t justify us, it just leaves us guilty at the judgment
seat. But with the Law, when we see our sin, as God sees it, we see how we have
offended God, and if hell is even brought up (which it almost never is
nowadays), we can see that we are, deservedly, destined for it. Then we seek
Him for some method of deliverance from such an end. How can I seek
reconciliation with a righteous God? Christ is that key, as a good evangelist
will point the way.
Modern evangelism abandoned the
"old" principle of discussing the Law and how Christ saves us from
wrath. So a new method was sought, considering that it needed a
reason to attract us to Christ. So they invented the term “life
enhancement.” Following Christ will benefit us. We will have peace,
love, joy, fulfillment, and lasting happiness. At this point, Mr. Comfort
provides another useful allegory:
Two men are sitting in a
plane. The first is given a parachute, (the only one receiving the
offer), and told that it will “improve his flight.” He is skeptical and
even thinking the flight attendant is wacko, as he knows that airlines only talk
about "good times are ahead," but he puts it on—just as a
trial. But it weighs his shoulders, and gives him difficulty in sitting
upright. But he perseveres. After a while, though, he notices that
other passengers are laughing at him due to his unusual clothing
accessory. Feeling humiliated, he can’t stand it anymore, and he throws
the parachute to the floor. Disillusionment and bitterness fill his
heart, because as far as he was concerned, he was told an outright lie.
To continue the allegory; A second
man was given a parachute, BUT he was told a different reason, in alarming
detail: at any moment, without warning, a faulty flight could mean he
would be jumping 25,000 feet off the plane. He takes it to heart: He doesn’t
notice the discomfort of the parachute, because his mind is consumed with the
thought of what would happen to him if he had to jump without it. He
develops a deep-rooted peace in his heart knowing that he shall escape a sure
death no matter what happens. He can deal with other passengers’
mockery—he knows that they need to do what he did. He might even engage
them in intense conversation about their need for this safety device.
You can see what we’re saying.
Under modern evangelism, the man-centered “improvement” approach we started
with is a guaranteed failure. People will take on Christ as an experiment
to see whether their life does improve. But they eventually get what the
Scripture promises to the saved--temptation, tribulation, and
persecution. They are humiliated by others, disillusioned about not
seeing a rosy path develop for them. They take off the Lord Jesus, and are
rightly embittered. They are now inoculated against evangelism in the future, so
their latter end is worse than the first. Modern evangelism has promised them
what God has not promised. The opposite of their expectation
occurs. After all, God has every right to test us to see if we can really
endure. Modern evangelism does not ask a crucial question: Are we
able to drink of the cup that Jesus drank of?
We should take the second parachute approach, boldly telling every man, as
Hebrews 9:27 says:
it is appointed for men to die once,
but after this the judgment
He must understand the horrific
consequences of the judgment--hell. He must be educated on what breaking the
Law means. He must be told to escape the wrath which is to come, when God
judges the earth in righteousness. The issue is not one of happiness, but of
righteousness. Then he will flee to Christ, and experience true peace and
joy—the fruits of salvation. But don’t speak of peace and joy as a “draw
card” for salvation, or sinners will respond with impure motives, lacking
repentance. The man correctly taught will have much more motivation to
endure the slings and arrows of the unsaved. When bad times come, he
doesn’t throw off Christ—because his reason for taking on Christ is not for
rosy paths, but to save him from future wrath. He has been re-taught to
ignore man’s reasoning. If anything, trials will drive the true believer
closer to the Savior—life will be that much better in heaven, and he will be
looking more for heaven when life on earth gets miserable.
Mr. Comfort then told of an
evangelistic crusade he preached in Australia. He preached of the Law,
Hell, and wrath. He told of disappointment: few people came forward, and
how the atmosphere felt tense. He felt the usual disappointment in people’s
deafness. Well, he thought of Noah, “a just man, perfect in his
generations...who walked with God” (Gen. 6:9), who despite being “a
preacher of righteousness” (II Peter 2:5), never was able to save a
single soul outside his family. The Spirit lifted Mr. Comfort up,
told him to simply carry on. Mr. Comfort confessed that this lack of results,
over time in a cynical world, wears him down, and had pulled him, at one time
period, unwittingly to preaching a man-centered Gospel—to get happier results.
For that time he got lots of results—that was nice. The original numbers
of people “saved” are higher that way, and there is less tension. People
are happy to have Jesus take a turn at getting them out of the mess they’ve
made of their lives. But--they are not clean from the wrath to come because we
don’t tell them of the wrath to come. That was a glaring omission in his
message. In the end, people should be asking what David, what the Prodigal Son,
and Joseph asked: How could they sin against God? After all, He is also a
God of wrath, and we can’t just ignore that—it’s one of His personality
traits. Real repentance is understanding that the great offense here
is against God, not just “horizontal” repentance against your fellow man. Mr.
Comfort calls this “horizontal only” approach “superficial and
experimental.” The prospect should be seeking something called “godly
sorrow” to obtain true repentance, an important element in salvation. As
II Corinthians 7:10 says: …godly sorrow produces repentance. In
evangelism nowadays, we are missing discussing sin against God. We have
preached the cure without telling them of the disease.
AB Earle, who had 150,000 converts
to his ministry in the mid-1800s, made the following quote:
I have found by long experience that the severest threatenings of the Law of
God have a prominent place in leading men to Christ. They must see
themselves lost before they will cry for mercy; they will not escape danger
until they see it.
Mr. Comfort has noticed that there
are many people who have been “saved” several times, yet their lives don’t show
change. They’re still fornicating, still blaspheming, and so on. What they’re
likely doing is: Using the grace of God for an occasion of the flesh.
They sin, they might ask God to forgive them, they move on same as before. They
don’t esteem the sacrifice and don’t understand how great the sin. It
means nothing to them to trample the blood of Christ underfoot. The problem is:
They’ve never been convinced of the disease—so that they might appropriate the
cure.
When you study the Word, you find
that Biblical evangelism is always interpreted as restrictive to people that
are proud, but grace to the humble. Never do you see Jesus giving the
gospel to proud, arrogant, self-righteous people. With the Law, He
breaks the heart and with the Gospel, He heals the broken heart. The proud and
highly esteemed are an abomination to God (Luke 16:15). Note who gets the
good tidings in Isaiah 61:1. The poor, the brokenhearted and the captives
are those who are there spiritually:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good
tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim
liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those
who are bound
Only the sick want to appropriate a
cure. In Luke 10:25-37, after being plainly asked "what shall I do to
inherit eternal life?", Jesus gave the lawyer Law. Why?
Because the man was proud. Note v. 29 for that in part of the story
below:
And behold, a certain lawyer stood
up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He
said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?” 27 So
he answered and said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and ‘your
neighbor as yourself.’” 28 And He said to him, “You have
answered rightly; do this and you will live.” 29 But he,
wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Then
Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho, and fell among thieves…(the
rest of the story is of the Good Samaritan, who helps a person in trouble when
no one else would).
Jesus knew this Jewish lawyer didn’t
like Samaritans. Then the Master Debater came to the climaxing point:
36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who
fell among the thieves?” 37 And he said, “He who showed
mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
The lawyer had no response—he could
see his own lack of love, compared to this generous Samaritan. He could
see that he was a Commandment-breaker. The Law has done its job
again—stopped his mouth, maybe convinced him of sin.
Note that a similar event happens
when the rich young ruler visits Jesus. We read of it in Luke 18:18-23,
where again, Jesus shies away from an easy response:
Now a certain ruler asked Him,
saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 So
Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that
is, God.20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit
adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor
your father and your mother.’ ” 21 And he said, “All these
things I have kept from my youth.” 22 So when Jesus heard
these things, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have
and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come,
follow Me.”23 But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful,
for he was very rich.
Again, Jesus did not begin with the
Gospel to this person. (Today’s preacher, as soon as he asks, “what shall I do
to inherit eternal life?” would engage him in a salvation prayer). But
Jesus sees a proud person underneath (Note v. 21), who was not ready for the
Gospel. So in verse 20 the young ruler gets the Law—the “horizontal”
part-- and is still convinced that he has never sinned (an advantage that only
Jesus can claim, really). Then Jesus slyly points out his lack of the
first commandment (Thou shall have no other gods before me) by showing him that
his real god is his money. Once again, no argument. His mouth was
stopped.
In contrast, we see Nicodemus, in
John 3. While a leader of the Jews, he was humble of heart, acknowledging
the deity of Jesus (verse 2). He receives the Gospel, and perhaps the
greatest verse in His Word, John 3:16.
Consider also Nathanael, in John
1:47-51. In him was no deceit. That trait is a tool of the proud, but
he does not have that negative quality. Plus, he acknowledged the deity
of Christ (v.49). Jesus gives him the honor of prophesying about Himself
and His future coming. Part of His glorious good news. This kinder
approach goes for the Jews who gathered on the day of Pentecost, in Acts
2. These were devout men, v. 5 (“devout” denotes humility). What did Peter preach to them? Not the
Law, but the Gospel. (But he doesn’t hesitate to lay blame on them for
His crucifixion, v. 36).
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Think of two verses to the great hymn, “At Calvary:” |
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By God’s Word at last my sin I learned; then I trembled at
the law I’d spurned Till my guilty soul imploring turned To
Calvary. |
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