The
entire nation and the world is so much hit by the pandemic that the crisis is
cumulating in every form with newer challenges each day. A new strain has been
detected this Wednesday, which is 15 times more virulent. In my last blog, I
addressed on the sovereignty of God looking at God’s judgement. In case you
missed reading it, you may do so HERE. The death figure worldwide is crossing
the limits, which includes many Pastors, leaders and Christians. How are we
going to reconcile things?
Tom Ellie, President of Oasis World Ministries presents statistics to awaken the spirits of Christendom. It is believed, each day around the globe 158, 857 people die. This includes approximately 66, 000 who have never had access to the Gospel, i.e. 2, 750 people per hour and 49 people per minute going to their graves without hearing the Good News of Jesus Christ! These numbers don’t even count those who heard the Gospel in their lifetimes but died without knowing Him.
Are we doing anything about it besides just praying and doing very little to impact those figures? The gift of Salvation is a “limited-time offer”! None of us know our last time on this earth. Yet, it is easy to be lulled into complacency, believing we have plenty of time to share our faith. We can easily slip into the "no-urgency" mode, which is alarming.
Missional has become the big buzz word in the last 15 years. Shane Pruitt, Director for the North American Mission Board comments, ‘Mission and Evangelism is becoming like a junk door, everything we don’t use we put it in the junk box.’. The exclusive evangelistic organizations existing to reach out to Non-Christians world in colleges, personal evangelism, etc., are the only ones sharing the Gospel. But is every Christian and the member of the Church equipped enough to share the Gospel and win souls? This is a serious question Churches should be asking often and find out how it can break the barriers.
Church operation is not the work of Evangelism. Today, Christians are smugly satisfied attending only the weekly Sunday Church service and trying to be good Christians at home and nothing beyond that. Most of the Christians are ill equipped to share their testimony or talk about Christ to Non-Christians. Hanging banners with statistics, flyers, evangelism and quotes is not evangelism. There are many leaders who give big discourses on evangelism but how many people they brought to Christ in their lifetime is still a question mark. This is the hard truth. Everything is about conducting programs, fancy reports, presenting statistics and drawing out information on PowerPoints culminating to big programs and then things fizzle out. Funds flow and programs are active and all are elated being part of a big program. Again, the question remains is the actual evangelism happening at the ground level?
With Corona finding a strong ground, all are focusing to mitigate Corona challenges and busy reaching out to people's needs. The big crisis is to know that every day countless number of people are dying without knowing Christ is insignificant to even bother us, to be more specific, to know 49 people are dying without knowing Christ every minute. We need goers. In my experience and even many have commented that long time Christians becoming stagnant and standstill is the status quo. They are just managing their Church-going activities and busy in programs, sometimes attend training on evangelism, discipleship seminars and probably hear lots of comforting sermons and are satisfied with it.
John’s ministry was bang on! The first sentence was “Repent because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”. Matthew 3:2. Jesus’ ministry started echoing the same words right from the start was “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”. Matthew 4:17. Peter after tarrying and infilling of the Holy Spirit echoes the same message in the beginning of his ministry in Acts 2:38, “Repent and be baptized, each of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…”. The way to salvation and eternal life was the priority, unlike today the message has diluted to God will bless you, keep you safe, protect you, give you all that you need and you will never die. Where is the message for sinners and unbelievers today? Think about it! In Proverbs 11:30 says, “… And he who wins soul is wise.”. What excites heaven is to see one believer repenting and finding eternal life. Luke reminds in Luke 15:7 “I tell you, in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous people who don’t need repentance.”. Can we address the bigger crisis seriously?
No comments:
Post a Comment