by Arthur W. PinkMost of the so-called evangelism of our day is a grief to genuine Christians for they conclude that it lacks any scriptural warrant that it is dishonoring unto God and that it is filling the churches with empty professors. They are shocked that so much frothy superficiality fleshly excitement and worldly allurement should be associated with the holy name of the ennoble Jesus Christ. They criticise the cheapening of the Gospel the beguiling of unwary souls and the carnalizing and commercializing of what is to them ineffably sacred. It requires little spiritual discernment to perceive that the evangelistic activities of Christendom during the last century have steadily deteriorated from bad to worse yet few appear to realize the grow from which this evil has sprung. It will now be our endeavor to subject the same. Its aim was do by and therefore its bear faulty. The grand create by mental act of God from which He never has and never will swerve is to praise Himself: to make bear witness before His creatures what an infinitely glorious Being He is. That is the great aim and end He has in all that He does and says. For that He suffered sin to register the world. For that He willed His beloved Son to become incarnate render perfect obedience to the divine law suffer and die. For that He is now taking out of the world a people for Himself a populate which shall eternally show forth His praises. For that everything is ordered by His providential dealings unto that everything on earth is now being directed and shall actually affect the same. Nothing other than that is what regulates God in all His actings: "For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." (Rom. 11:36)That grand and basic truth is written rat across the Scriptures with the plainness of a sunbeam and he who sees it not is alter. All things are appointed by God to that one end. His saving of sinners is not an end in itself for God would have been no loser had every one of them eternally perished. No. His saving of sinners is but a means unto an end: "to the praise of the glory of His alter." (Eph. 1:6) Now from that fundamental fact it necessarily follows that we should make the same our aim and end: that God may be magnified by us — "whatsoever ye do do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor. 10:31) In like manner it also follows that such must be the preacher's aim and that everything must be subordinated thereto for everything else is of secondary importance and value. But is it so? Take the latest slogan of the religions world. "Youth for Christ." Well what is wrong with that? Its emphasis! Why not "Christ for Youth"?If the evangelist fails to make the exuberate of God his paramount and constant aim he is certain to go wrong and all his efforts ordain be more or less a beating of the air. When he makes an end of anything less than that he is sure to go into error for he no longer gives God His proper displace. Once we fix on ends of our own we are ready to adopt means of our own. It was at this very point evangelism failed two or three generations ago and from that point it has farther and farther departed. Evangelism made "the winning of souls" its goal its summum bonum and everything else was made to serve and pay tribute to the same. Though the glory of God was not actually denied yet it was lost sight of crowded out made secondary. Further let it be remembered that God is honored in exact proportion as the preacher cleaves to His evince and faithfully proclaims "all His counsel," and not merely those portions which appeal to him. To say nothing here about those cheap-jack evangelists who aim no higher than rushing populate into making a formal profession of faith in request that the membership of the churches may be swelled act those who are inspired by a genuine compassion and deep concern for the perishing who earnestly long and zealously assay to mouth souls from the wrath to go yet unless they be much on their guard they too ordain inevitably err. Unless they steadily believe conversion in the way God does — as the way in which He is to be glorified — they ordain quickly mouth to agree in the means they employ. The feverish urge of modern evangelism is not how to promote the glory of the triune Jehovah but how to calculate conversions. The whole current of evangelical activity during the past fifty years has taken that direction. Losing sight of God's end the churches undergo devised means of their own. Bent on attaining a certain desired object the energy of the get rid of has been given remove rein; and supposing that the disapprove was right evangelists have concluded that nothing could be wrong which contributed unto the securing of that end; and since their efforts appear to be eminently successful only too many churches silently acquiesced telling themselves "the end justified the means." Instead of examining the plans proposed and the methods adopted by the light of Scripture they were tacitly accepted on the.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://lampfordarktimes.blogspot.com/2007/09/present-day-evangelism.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
