Present-Day Evangelism

Most of the so-called evangelism of our day is a grief to genuine Christians, for they feel 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 Lord Jesus Christ. They deplore 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 root from which this evil has sprung. It will now be our endeavor to expose the same. Its aim was wrong, and therefore its fruit is faulty.

God’s Objective In Evangelism

The grand design of God, from which He never has and never will swerve, is to glorify Himself: to make manifest before His creatures what an infinitely glorious Being He is. That is the great aim and the end He has in all that He does and says. For that He suffered sin to enter 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 people who 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 forever and ever. Amen.”

(Romans 11:36)

The Preacher’s Objective

That grand and basic truth is written right across the Scriptures with the plainess of a sunbeam, and he who sees it not is blind. 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 grace” (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 religious world. “Youth for Christ.” Well, what is wrong with that? Its emphasis! Why not “Christ for Youth?”

Feverish Urge of Modern Evangelism

If the evangelist fails to make the glory of God his paramount and constant aim, he is certain to go wrong, and all his efforts will be more or less a beating of the air. When he makes an end of everything less than that, he is sure to fall into error, for he no longer gives God His proper place. 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, 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 Word, and faithfully proclaims “all His counsel,” and not merely those portions which appeal to him.

To say nothing here about those evangelists who aim no higher than rushing people into making a formal profession of faith in order that the membership of the churches may be swelled, take those who are inspired by a genuine compassion and deep concern for the perishing, who earnestly long and zealously endeavor to deliver souls from the wrath to come, yet unless they are much on their guard, they too will inevitably err. Unless they steadily view conversion in the way God does — as the way in which He is to be glorified — they will quickly begin to compromise 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 multiply conversions. The whole current of evangelical activity during the past fifty years has taken that direction. Losing sight of God’s end, the churches have devised means of their own.

(To Be Continued)

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