Tag Archives: evangelism

Nov 02 2024
Leave a comment
Just One Minute

Ephesus to India: Power, Opposition, and the Unstoppable Gospel

The Book of Acts, written almost 2,000 years ago, serves as a template for God’s workings at any time in the history of Christ’s followers, including our own. It reveals human nature in its response to God. This includes Acts 19 which records Paul’s mission to Ephesus.

In Paul’s day, Ephesus was a vital port city, its impressive buildings constructed of fine marble. The city was dominated by the overpowering presence of the white marble temple to the goddess, Artemis (or Diana), widely worshipped throughout the Mediterranean region. Millions of pilgrims flocked to Ephesus to worship at this temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

This worship of Artemis went back more than 1,000 years. It was a highly entrenched religion that dominated the region, like Hinduism in Varanasi or Islam in Mecca. A myth grew up among Artemis followers that in ancient days, her statue descended from heaven.

Paul came to Ephesus to introduce Jesus Christ and challenge this deeply rooted religious culture. Fearlessly, he proclaimed Jesus as Lord, and he depended upon the Holy Spirit to do what rational argument alone could never do.

Dr. Luke tells us that notable miracles took place. Handkerchiefs and aprons, touched by Paul, become instruments of healing and deliverance from demons. This demonstration of the gospel by power as well as word won people to Christ in droves as they saw Jesus do what Artemis had never done.

Not everyone was happy about this. The silversmiths, who got rich selling silver idols of Artemis to devotees, saw their profits dwindle as Jesus gained influence. They reacted with venom against Paul’s “attack on society”. Others envied what they wrongly perceived was Paul’s magical powers and coveted this power for their own selfish ends.

What took place in Ephesus during Paul’s ministry was truly a power encounter with Satan, who long blinded the people, and the power of Jesus Christ who opens blind eyes. The clash between God and Satan broke out into the visible human realm at Ephesus.

Paul did not flee but stood firm and discipled the new believers. The Ephesian church grew fast. The Ephesians became a bright light for the gospel. Later, Paul wrote his epistle to these former worshippers of Artemis and praised their mature faith in Jesus Christ.

The happenings at Ephesus take place in India today as we see God answer your prayers and the prayers of His people in India. The Word of God is both preached and demonstrated in power with healings, deliverance from demons and other signs and wonders. An entrenched religious system is being challenged by the living and powerful Jesus Christ who is opening eyes once blinded by the devil.

At the same time, opposition has come thick and fierce from those who enrich themselves through the status quo and accuse Christians of “destroying society.” The enemy comes armed with entrenched traditions backed by overwhelming political and financial power.

Despite the opposition, the Holy Spirit enables us to train new disciples and send more harvest workers. Quietly, former believers of old religions enter their workplaces and schools to counteract this influence at the grass roots with the power of Christ in word and deed.

May what happened in Ephesus take place all over India in coming days — and in the place where you live and work!

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 17 2024
Leave a comment
Just One Minute

Bridging Cultures: Paul’s Approach

Paul’s visit to Mars Hill in Acts 17 has some important lessons for us today as we confront a culture that has become almost as pagan as the Athenian culture Paul confronted.

In many ways, the Athenians of Paul’s day resembled our own. Yet Paul made an impact upon these heathens, and some of them had their eyes opened. This should encourage us in our own day.

See if you recognize some of these Athenian traits in our own day: rationalism, materialism, relativism, promiscuity (even in religion), rampant sexual perversion, i.e., homosexuality and pedophilia, human trafficking (in this case, slavery), worship of beautiful people, belief that education is the solution to society’s problems, a two-tiered justice system, just to name a few.

Like many people in our own day, these jaded people had no knowledge or trust in inspired scriptures. Quoting from the Old Testament would have meant nothing to these elites steeped in Epicurean and Stoic philosophy, and worship of many gods and goddesses.

Indeed, when Paul first began to speak to them of Jesus, most of them initially brushed him off as an “idle babbler” and a teacher of “strange deities.”

Yet Paul never assumed the privileged Athenian know-it-alls were too far gone for redemption. These pagans also possessed the image of God. They had eternity in their hearts, and these facts inadvertently revealed themselves in the pagan philosophies of the day. So he approached them through the very words of their own philosophers who possessed some truth–though not all of it. For example…

Sometimes we quote Paul, who said to them of the Creator God, “In Him we live and move and have our being,” not knowing that we are actually quoting a pagan Cretan philosopher named Epimenides (c.a. 600 BC). Through such links with their own thinkers, Paul led them to consider Jesus Christ. We are told that his approach struck a receptive chord. Some of them stopped laughing, listened to what Paul was trying to tell them—and they believed!

Paul demonstrated that before we can effectively communicate the gospel to anyone, we must first understand where they are coming from. Only then can we link them to Jesus. We must love them even as God loves them, knowing that Christ died for them as He died for us. The Good News resonates with people of every background—if we take the time to know them and present the truth in a manner they best understand.

Some teachers at IGO training centers and many graduates come out of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or Buddhist backgrounds—religions regarded by many westerners as “unreachable.” But today, they communicate Jesus Christ to their own people. In many ways, evangelists and church planters from non-Christian backgrounds are the best gospel communicators of all.

Dr. Mahendra Singhal, a former Hindu who knows Hindus and leads an outreach to Hindus, has said, “Hindus believe in going to the extremes in showing love to someone… I have discovered in my witnessing to Hindus that they are generally moved by the depiction of Jesus on the cross to validate His love for us.”

Paul’s approach still works. May his approach become our own as we stand for Christ where we live, work and learn!

Tagged , , , , , , ,
May 03 2024
Leave a comment
Just One Minute

Resistance Against Truth

“These men have upset the world!”

These charges were leveled at Paul and Silas after they preached the Good News in Thessalonica. They must have done a great job in making the gospel clear to all who heard them. Acts 17 tells us that many people came to Christ, both Jews and Gentiles. For these people, the gospel was a welcome fragrance.

To others, it was the stench of death. Some Jews hated the message, and wanted to make Paul and Silas pay for ruining their day. They accused Paul and Silas of promoting another ruler besides Caesar. These Jews hated the rule of Caesar, but they hated Jesus even more.

This episode illustrates a truth about the Good News. Even when clearly presented, it will win some and infuriate others, even to the point of violence. In one person, the Holy Spirit brings new life; in another, the gospel reveals spiritual death.

Why do people reject the gospel? Such people love their sin above all else and resent having it exposed by the light of Christ and told that it is evil. They want to call evil good, to run their own lives without accountability to anyone, including God who made them.

No doubt some people who opposed Paul and Silas were religious, but they were dead to the true God. They wanted to turn the truth of God into something that sounded moral and sounded comfortable. As such, it was something less than truth. They preferred a god that helped them feel good about themselves, not repent. When Paul and Silas reminded them of their sin and God’s holiness, they recoiled.

Paul and Silas did not follow the seeker-friendly approach popular in many churches today. The seeker-friendly approach may lead people to adopt certain ideas from the Bible that appeal to them, but fail to reveal sin leading to repentance. They become devoted to their own ideas of God more than to God Himself.

A spiritually dead person can have spiritual longings, but they are always less than God. They still hate the true God even when they speak in moral and spiritual ways. In real life, they operate according to natural thinking.

The seeker-friendly approach operates on the false premise that one can share the gospel and lead a person to God without upsetting anyone. The seeker-friendly approach is a sign of how much the culture has impacted the church more than the church has impacted the culture.

George Barna reports that in his research, he has found that only 6% of today’s adults have a biblical worldview. The average American church person’s dominant worldview, he says, is syncretism, a collection of contradictory beliefs pasted together to suit themselves. A growing number of people in churches believe in reincarnation and that people are basically good. Fewer pastors preach the gospel with the clarity of Paul and Silas.

Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. He has already defeated Satan at the cross and invites us to join Him in enforcing His victory. He also warns us that Satan will go down swinging hard.

Let us move forward like Paul and Silas, assured of victory but also steeled for resistance from those who refuse to bow the knee to the King of kings. Let us remember that Jesus has already won.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jul 01 2023
Leave a comment
Just One Minute

Unexpected Jesus Follower

The miraculous conversion of Saul of Tarsus gives us hope for our own day.

Saul of Tarsus was the last person anyone expected to follow Jesus Christ. That he would later become the missionary to the Gentiles, willing to face beatings, stonings, prisons, shipwreck, and to lose his life for the sake of Christ was beyond unthinkable to anyone who knew his murderous reputation.

Already, he was implicated in the death of Jesus’ first martyr, Stephen. He possessed a fanatical hatred and fury against Jesus’ followers that rivaled or surpassed that of today’s radical terrorists. When Jesus’ followers fled Jerusalem to escape him, he chased after them, determined to destroy this affront to his beloved traditions. Who knows how many more believers died at his hands or at the hands of those who followed his orders?

In Galatians 1, we read his own description of his total devotion to the faith of his forefathers. The more people who followed Jesus Christ, the more infuriated he became. Nothing, he resolved, would or could stop him from achieving his goal of 100% eradication of Jesus’ followers and Jesus’ memory from the earth. And then…

On the road to Damascus, he met Jesus Christ face-to-face. In a split second, Saul’s life—and our own lives and destinies—were forever reversed.

In that split second, Saul of Tarsus became the man later known as Paul the Apostle, the greatest Jesus-believer the world has ever known. Everyone who reads this piece owes an unpayable debt to him and to Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, who made it all possible.

In those dark days before the light from heaven blinded Saul of Tarsus, most Jesus followers wondered how long it would take before that determined killer caught up to them. They did not count on what God was about to do to change the course of history.

In our own dark days, with so much demonic activity in India and our own nation arrayed against the advance of the gospel, is it not also hard for us to believe that anything will soon change? By the day, everything seems to get worse and worse and worse.

Many prominent Christians even say we live in a post-Christian age. Many of our children and grandchildren, raised in the church, are deserting the faith in droves for New Age, witchcraft, drugs, transgenderism and the like. We are told we will live as powerless exiles on the outskirts of Babylon until Jesus raptures us out of the mess.

But God never adopts a losing scenario. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the same God who reversed the life of Saul of Tarsus in a split second. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit—and Saul of Tarsus’ conversion—remind us that God’s work on earth never retreats but advances.

What God has shown us in the past is a foretaste of what He plans for the future. The greatest works of Christ have yet to take place in India and the world, in this country, in your lives and in the lives of those we love.

Surely, that day will come in a moment, like the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on that Damascus road. Pray and praise God for that day!

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 16 2022
1 Comment
Just One Minute

A New Era in World History

Acts 2 is one of the most amazing chapters in the Bible. It marks the beginning of a new era in world history—the era of the Holy Spirit. That new era came by the will of God, but at the same time, God willed it to come through the actions of His children.

First, they waited on God. They had to wait in order to learn that God’s plans are bigger and better than their own. They had to abandon their own expectations. They waited on God because God was waiting on them to adopt heart attitudes needed for receiving the Holy Spirit.

Up until now, most of the 120 who waited in the Upper Room expected Jesus to set up an earthly kingdom. They didn’t realize that such an earthly kingdom would become subject to the same forces that brought to ruin every other kingdom—the power of the devil.

Jesus’ plan was to completely rid the world of the devil’s power, and that depended upon the power of the Holy Spirit. Once their hearts were ready, the Holy Spirit came upon them with great power that shook the place and attracted thousands from the outside.

That day, Peter preached a short and simple message that went right to the point and pricked the hearts of those who heard it. There was nothing seeker-friendly about it, yet 3,000 people responded—a 2,600% increase in their number in less than 24 hours. All because the original group had gained expectant hearts to receive the Holy Spirit.

How many churches today expect great things from God through the power of the Holy Spirit? Today, too many churches depend upon seeker-friendly methods, intellectual powers of persuasion, social media and fancy programs, but the culture and influence of the church has continued to decline. Little is said in most churches about the Holy Spirit. In fact, there is much suspicion about the Holy Spirit. This must truly delight the devil!

Yes, we must establish a strong intellectual foundation for belief. But Peter was no intellectual. His blunt message to the crowd reflected his own “blue collar” background as a fisherman. His message demonstrates what the Holy Spirit can do through anyone who abandons his agenda and waits upon God with expectancy to do great and mighty things in his/her life.

A few years later, Paul came along and demonstrated his great intellectual powers in such works as his epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians. But even Paul knew that any intellectual arguments he used depended upon Holy Spirit power to truly transform lives.

Too many people treat Acts 2 as an isolated phenomenon. But Acts 2 lies at the heart of what Jesus introduced in John 14-16 regarding the Holy Spirit. In John 17, Jesus prayed not only for His disciples in their generation but all His people including our own generation and beyond. No, Acts 2 is not an isolated phenomenon but a model for every generation.

Like the 120 who waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit, we also must put aside our own expectations and wait upon God to work through us in Holy Spirit power to preach the gospel to all peoples. In the meantime, God waits for us…

Tagged , , , , , ,
Sep 08 2020
Leave a comment
Just One Minute

What Makes Jesus Mad?

What makes Jesus mad?

In John 2, we find Jesus cleansing the temple, driving out merchants, moneychangers and cattle. He must have shown real rage that day. By Himself, he drove out all of them with only a small whip. We find similar accounts in the other three gospels. Most of the time, we don’t think of this angry side of Jesus—nor do we like to.

In his book, “What Made Jesus Mad?”, Pastor Tim Harlow observes the recorded times when Jesus showed anger. Pastor Harlow notes that at no time does Jesus exhibit anger against “sinners,” but only against religious people and His own disciples.

In every case of Jesus’ recorded anger, we find him directing His wrath against those who claimed to know God but blocked others from God’s grace. When we examine the accounts of the temple cleansing in detail, we find that the Jewish religious people were blocking God’s grace from “the nations,” or Gentiles. He rebuked His disciples for blocking the children from seeing Him.

Jesus’ love does not permit anyone to turn away those who need Him. That is also the message of the torn veil in the temple—all peoples have access to a holy and loving Father.

How do we block others from God? We block them by judging them less than worthy when they don’t meet our standards. We create spiritual “elites.” We block others by legalism, by trivializing what is essential and making essential what is trivial. We block them by pretending to be holier than we are—the word is “hypocrites.” Jesus had a lot to say about that.

Do our own churches block others from hearing the gospel? Our churches should be filled with homosexuals, prostitutes and the homeless. Why do we so rarely find them? Our churches should be sharing the light and bringing people out of darkness, but most churches do not support missionaries to the unreached. Are we examining the reasons for this failure to win others?

Do we block the Good News from those who have never heard? “Unreached peoples” are “the nations” of our own day—those who cannot hear the gospel until someone goes to them (or are sent by those with kingdom vision). They cannot absorb the gospel by osmosis from neighboring cultures. According to Bethany Global University, 3.14 billion people remain “unreached.” Of the 400,000 missionaries worldwide, only about 13,000 focus upon reaching “unreached peoples.”

What about the churches? Bethany Global University finds that 99.99% of all church money goes to causes other than reaching the unreached. Here, Jesus’ people have dreadfully failed, and yes, Jesus has every right to be mad.

Isobel Kuhn, missionary to the unreached Lisu people of China, has written, “I believe that in each generation God has called enough men and women to evangelize all the yet unreached people of the earth. It is not God who does not call. It is man who will not respond.”

The Pharisees did not learn their lesson. Instead, they rejected the rebuke of Jesus, and the temple was destroyed. The disciples, slow to learn, finally learned their lesson. The Spirit-filled church expanded throughout the known world, and you and I are their legacy.

What will future generations—and our Lord Jesus—say about us in our generation?

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Jun 03 2013
Leave a comment
Uncategorized

The Source of Abundant Life

“Religion…is the opium of the people,” wrote Karl Marx, considered the founder of modern-day Communism and icon of secular humanism.

Opium is a drug one takes when he or she feels hopeless, weak and depressed and has no realistic approach to a better life. To Karl Marx, Christianity was an opiate because it kept a person from fulfilling his own agenda for a “realistic” and better life.

Karl Marx did not know about Jesus’ “I have come” statements. Jesus plainly tells us, “I have come…to fulfill the law…to reveal the Father…to bear witness to the truth…to serve others and give my life as a ransom for many…proclaim freedom…call sinners to repentance…seek and save the lost…give life in abundance.”

I have come Statments of JesusThese are positive statements of purpose, not to deaden our pain and hopelessness, but to give life new meaning, love and fulfillment. Jesus Christ comes to put us back in touch with God who leads us to a life beyond human capacity to think and imagine. He leads us to a loving Father, to the truth that sets free. He leads us to a supernatural power to live full and productive lives in partnership with God the Father that multiplies into hope for those around us.

This is not “pie in the sky, bye and bye,” but for this life as well as the life to come.

God’s abundant life and love is anything but an opiate. As we trust Him, He awakens our senses, lifts us above our circumstances and transforms individuals, families and nations by awakening our dead spirits.

Jesus’ “I have come” statements declare His purpose—to put God’s redemptive plan into effect. Jesus claims a power that no other person can claim because He is the Heaven-sent One.

Karl Marx is right about one thing, however. Religion can become an opiate–if it conflicts with God’s plan for our lives. Both the Pharisees and Karl Marx had their own “religions.” However different they may have been, they had one thing in common—they relied on the opiate of self-sufficiency. This is the false notion that we can “do it alone,” whether we try to obey God’s law or revolutionize society.

These are illusions—drugs that deaden reality of our true condition before God and our ability to transform our situation. These drugs make us “feel good”—while we actually kill ourselves. People who “feel good” hate to be reminded they are following deadly pipe dreams. They may fight back and get nasty and destructive about it.

This is why Jesus said—prophetically, it turns out, “I have come, not to bring peace but a sword.” He foresaw the day when those drugged by the opiate of self-sufficiency would kill Him, persecute His followers, and say all manner of evil against Him and them.

Jesus proved his detractors wrong through His resurrected life which has multiplied itself hundreds of millions of times since.

This Good News of the kingdom, Jesus tells us, will not stop until all peoples on earth have heard it. That includes all of India. Even anti-conversion laws will fail to stop it, and may even help to speed the Good News along.
Let each of us make sure that we live in God’s abundant grace so that we may effectively take that Good News to those who have not yet heard it.

Tagged , , , , ,