The greatest "evangelism" of all time was what happened at Pentecost. It was not emotionalism, and what brought the deep conviction of truth on people's hearts was not the miracle of the apostles' speaking foreign languages--a "sign and wonder" indeed, but not the real thing that did it: the apostles proclaimed what had happened when the Son of God died on His cross.
They didn't "mince words," or say it daintily; "YOU murdered the Prince of life, the Son of God!" They laid the guilt of the ages upon the souls of those Jews and Gentiles. There was no political making friends and influencing people, no attempt to make the message palatable, to "win" the top leaders by psychology. It was the most direct super-confrontation that has ever been between lowly people and religious society leadership (read it in Acts 2:23, 36; 4:10; 5:30, etc.).
Ordinary people like the apostles could never have galvanized themselves to tell it like they did had it not been for the 10 days of repentance they spent beforehand. They had knelt very low in self-humiliation; what fools they had been! The Holy Spirit had 11 men in whom self had been "crucified with Christ." This made it possible for the Son of God to be exalted in them.
Why was it the prototype of all genuine "evangelism"? What Jesus had said a short time earlier happened: "On the last and most important day of the festival [Feast of Tabernacles] Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice, 'Whoever is thirsty should come to Me and drink. As the scripture says [S.S. 4:15] "Whoever believes in Me, streams of life-giving water will pour out from his heart." Jesus said this about the [Holy] Spirit" (John 7:37-39). That was the "former rain."
The "latter rain" (which is still future) will be a re-play.
Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
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