“And at that time there was a great persecution against the church
which was at Jerusalem; and they were scattered abroad throughout the regions
of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.”
(Acts 8:1)
We learn a lot from the record of early Christian activity given to us in the Bible book named the Acts of the Apostles. The divinely-inspired account of what the followers of Jesus did after He went back to heaven is organized around His parting words on the Mount of Olives.
We learn a lot from the record of early Christian activity given to us in the Bible book named the Acts of the Apostles. The divinely-inspired account of what the followers of Jesus did after He went back to heaven is organized around His parting words on the Mount of Olives.
“Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you:
and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
(Acts 1:8)
As the story is told, we find the
Holy Spirit coming upon the band of believers in chapter 2, and the
evangelization of Jerusalem going forward from that chapter and continuing
through chapter 7. But the next phase of
the plan given by Christ (witnessing in the rest of Judaea) has not been entered
as we begin to read chapter 8. The
witnessing had not spread out from the city into “all Judea.” But clearly God was (and is) serious about the
Acts 1:8 program. We see Him bringing severe
persecution to the Jerusalem church so that the members were “scattered abroad”
spreading the Gospel into Judaea and Samaria.
However the twelve apostles stayed in Jerusalem. Chapter 8 records the progress of the Gospel
in Samaria and in chapter 9 we see it moving into new parts of the province of
Judaea. Of course, in these chapters of
Acts we are also reading about how the groundwork for the “uttermost part of
the earth” phase of the plan was being laid with the conversions of the
Ethiopian treasurer and of Saul the persecutor.
Oddly, as the Lord moved to cause His people to fulfill His plan, the
apostles held back, and at least for a time, stayed in Jerusalem and stalled in
the first stages of the program.
Somebody years ago noticed this phenomenon and said that the book could
be titled “the inaction of the apostles”!
But the program went forward, as “they that were scattered abroad went
every where preaching the word” (Acts 8:2).
Since those early days, one obstacle
to the fulfilling of God’s plan for the evangelization of the world has been
the tendency of His servants to pick and choose what parts of the plan to
pursue, and what parts to neglect. The
plan is not unclear. See it again in
Acts 1:8, and follow how it was understood and implemented in the next chapters
of the book of Acts. We are to get the power
to fulfill the daunting task of telling every person in the world the good news
of salvation, not from our own energy and enthusiasm, or from well-devised and
implemented human planning, but from the Spirit of God Who came to live in
believers on the day of Pentecost. In
His power, we are thoroughly to evangelize our cities and our countries,
forming churches with the converts in order to carry the Gospel to regions
beyond. Eventually the churches will
send divinely-called individuals from their growing congregations to go to new
places and spread the Gospel. As
believers are made by the preaching of the Gospel, and made into disciples by
the work of the churches, and as churches are multiplied through the Acts 1:8
program, the message of Christ’s deliverance from man’s bondage to sin will get
to every last person in the world! In
partnership with God, it can indeed be done, was accomplished in the first
century, and will be fulfilled again just before the return of Christ to set up
His Kingdom on earth. The main reason it
is not being done today is that God’s children, including many very serious
ones, are adopting the program of the Lord in pieces, and not as a whole.
Revival, a term quite familiar to
evangelical Christians, is the work of God to bring His people back to
spiritual health. God is willing to
bring us back, to lift us up, to where we ought to be, when we are willing to
humble ourselves and seek His face for the revival we need. The goal, in a sense, is to get us back to
the program of Acts 1:8. In these
desperate days, more and more earnest servants of the Lord are seeing more
clearly what that program is, and how far we have come short of it. But some of the best lights that shine among
us in these dark days are still shining only on pieces of the plan, and partly
for this reason, we are seeing very little of powerful revival in our
Bible-believing churches. Some say that
“this” is the answer, and others are saying that “that” is the answer. In a sense every one of these voices are right,
but most of them are giving us only part of “the answer.” We are being taught about revival in pieces,
although it really doesn’t work in pieces, but must be implemented as a whole.
Looking at the book of Acts
again, we can discern at least five visible elements in the fulfilling of the
Acts 1:8 program. Each of these is being
emphasized by some of our preachers today:
1. The
need for the enduement of power from on high for the effective spread of the
Gospel;
2. The
duty of Christians to evangelize the city, producing the growth of the church;
3. The
work of evangelism in widening circles of the surrounding areas, eventually
covering the whole country and neighboring nations, and bringing about the
establishment of new churches;
4. The
prosperity of the churches facilitating the progress of the Gospel to the ends
of the earth, through the development and sending of missionaries to other
parts; and always
5. Prayer
meetings to gain and sustain divine blessing in the churches in the work of
evangelism.
Obviously there is not enough of
any of these elements in the work of Christians today. And strong voices are calling for a return to
these factors in real New Testament religion.
Some are seeing the need for intensive prayer, including the practice of
fasting and even spiritual warfare. Some
see powerful revival as the great need, with the focus on power for
service. Some see the need for revival
with the focus on victory over sin and holy living. Some see evangelism as the need, producing
rapid church growth. Some preach
church-planting as the great need of the hour.
Some see missions and sending missionaries as the answer to the problems
of the world. Some say that the key to
remedying the malaise of Christianity is purging the churches of worldliness
and worldly methods and unscriptural associations. Some see in prayer meetings the key to guiding
and empowering the churches, and bringing them back to life. And none of these revival-oriented preachers
are wrong. But some of them are giving
us only pieces of the revival puzzle.
In a way, the situation in the
fundamentalist world is very encouraging, since more than in the recent past, we
have all the elements of real revival coming before us. For years we rarely heard from the pulpit
sermons on the invisible world, fasting and prayer, the power of the Holy
Ghost, the New Testament church, hope for new awakenings, world-wide
evangelization, how to conduct effective prayer meetings, church growth without
compromise, or victory over the flesh and sin.
These are good days for hearing old revival themes proclaimed. The problem is that too many of our leaders
suffer from too narrow a vision. To
some, the whole thing is church-planting, but not revival prayer meetings. To some, the great cause is the missionary
cause, and not the old separation issue.
To some the main thing is evangelism, with little attention given to
church-planting, Baptist distinctives, or the Holy Spirit. To many the need of the day is knowing more
about church growth, with less interest being given to church standards. Each advocate can convince us for a while
because on some level, each position is right, but each of them is looking at
only a piece of the plan of God.
That plan (outlined by Jesus in
Acts 1:8) includes turning without reservation to the Lord for the power of Spirit
to fulfill the Great Commission. Such a
call to repentance will make us into bold witnesses of Jesus, with transformed
lives and countenances to support our testimonies. What an effect this will have on the world
around us when we go out as an army of powerful witnesses for Christ! The plan sends us into our cities to saturate
the population with our message. It
forms us into churches dedicated to fulfill the rest of the plan. Churches operating on the Acts 1:8 plan
energize it through effective prayer meetings, and by doing battle with the
enemy on their knees. Believers revived
in this way live happy and holy lives by the power of the cross and of the
Spirit of Christ. The movement will go
forward across the map in projects to spread the Gospel and found new
churches. The book of Acts gives us the
whole picture, and we need to keep the whole picture in mind.
Let the men that are teaching us
to pray, keep a Biblical emphasis on evangelism. Let the church-builders make sure that it is Jesus
Who is building His church by the power of His Spirit. Let those who inspire us to spread the Gospel
also inspire us to exercise our faith to live in victory over sin and the
world. Let those who hold up the church
as the center of God’s cause in the world, present it also as the means of
getting the Gospel to the city, to the nation, and to the world. Let missionary statesmen emphasize the
connection of revival to missions. Let
all of God’s people seek His face for revival, and recognize that all the
pieces of revival are essential to the whole.
Our need and our obligation at this time is to turn our hearts fully
back to the God of the first Christians, and to settle for nothing less than
the complete revival He intends to bring us!
Dr. Rick Flanders
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