The Warfare Against Evangelism

 Yeshua conceived His church to be a movement- a movement on the go. In fact, “Go” is the first word in the instruction He gave to the early apostles/disciples to spread the good news. In Mark 16:15, He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation”. After the Day of Pentecost, the early church was almost getting comfortable in Jerusalem when God Himself allowed the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities to unleash persecution on them. The stoning of Stephen, as recorded in Acts 7:54-60 was the catalyst for the persecution against the early church. Acts 8:4 explains that those affected by the persecution took the gospel to Samaria and other cities. Another wave of persecution was unleashed on the church after Herod beheaded, James the brother of John.

The later persecution was instrumental to spreading the Gospel beyond Jewish controlled areas. Before Saul (later named Paul) preached to Gentiles, believers dislodged from Jerusalem preached the good news to only their fellow Jews in cities like Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Cyprus and Antioch. It was not until Peter had his encounter with the Lord in a vision leading to the conversion of Cornelius, as well as Paul’s arrest by the Lord on his way to Damascus that the Gentiles became partaker of the good news. 

The Bible did not tell us at what point the apostles left Jerusalem, but church history gives us an idea of where each ministered and died. It is apparent that they allowed the Holy Spirit to lead them to strange lands to preach the good news. From available records, only John died of natural causes among the twelve of them. Others were murdered while preaching the gospel.

If the good news was so important in the days of the early church that people willingly laid down their lives to spread it, why are we of this generation treating the souls of men with levity? Sadly, most believers are not perturbed that billions are under captivity to satan and his demons. The worse culprits are the so-called ministers who make mercantile of their followers. Where the Lord Yeshua counselled us to make the Kingdom of God (soul-winning) our focus, these folks focus on things like wealth, careers, children, properties, health etc. Nobody says that these things are irrelevant. The assurance we got from Yeshua is that we would not need to pray for them if we make God and His kingdom our priority.

 In fact, the greatest enemies of the Gospel right now are some church leaders with large followership. A few of them have categorically repudiated the gospel message itself. According to one of them who happens to preside over the Catholic Church, evangelism ended with the Crusades. This man is the arrowhead of the Ecumenical Movement expected to form the backbone for the One World Religion under the Anti-Christ.

Each time I read about what this man is saying about the church and the Lord, I marvel that millions of people are willingly following him to perdiction. How can a mere man assume more authority over the church the great Jehovah? Yeshua clearly asserted that He was sent to this earth by Almighty God. It is the same Yeshua who gave us the instruction to disciple the nations. Should we not be alarmed that a mere man would attempt to invalidate the word of God Himself? Of course, that makes him the perfect candidate for the prophet of the Anti-Christ!

The influence of this man is so pervasive in Christendom that some minsters who hitherto condemned him for his blasphemy against God are now fraternising with him. They have also abandoned evangelism for huge church projects that add little or nothing to the Kingdom of God. Where Yeshua emphasised “Go”, these “men of God” are like descendants of Noah in Genesis 11:4 who said, “Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top will reach to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the earth”. This was a direct affront to the authority of God’s word because He clearly charged humans after the flood to be fruitful and multiply on the earth”.

Therefore, any believer who rejects God’s word in favour of a conflicting instruction from a church leader has created for himself another ‘god’. There is no church leader on earth with authority to counter the word of God. Men might deceive themselves that they are in the lineage of Peter, whom they claimed was the first vicar (pope) of the church. That is all hogwash. It is same Peter who described Yeshua as the living stone which the builders rejected but which God made the chief corner stone of His Kingdom on earth. Paul spoke in the same vein in 1 Corinthians 3:11, “For no one can lay a foundation other than the one already laid, which is Yeshua the Messiah”. Sometimes, we tend to forget Yeshua’s declaration that He would build His church and the gates or counsels of hell will not prevail against it (Mathew 16:18). Does this sound like the declaration of a Personality who later changed His mind and made a mere man the head of His church? The worse deceit is self-deceit.

 Global evangelism has also been hampered by the lack of holiness among Christians. Yeshua said in John 12:32, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself”. Although this was fulfilled at His crucifixion, there is an aspect of this Scripture that has to do with the conduct of believers. There are things I have read about some so-called Christians in the social-media that boggles the mind in a very negative way. Some of them engage in ritual sacrifices in their quest for anointing; others exploit their followers to build mansions and buy airplanes. Too many others engage in sexual perversions or divorce their spouses at the least provocation. Many Christians have become so modern that sin is no longer something to be preached against. After all, “God is love”! Without holiness in the church, how can we be effective witnesses to Yeshua’s resurrection?

 Why did He send the Holy Spirit to us? Is the Holy Spirit here to empower us to sin more so that the grace of God may abound? Do we need grace to sin? Yeshua is emphatic in John 6:44 that no one can come to Him for salvation except the person is drawn by the Father. In fact, this is one of the responsibilities of the Holy Spirit as Yeshua stated in John 16: 8-11, “When He comes, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I am going to My Father, and you will see Me no more: and of judgment, because the ruler of this world stands condemned”. If people who claim to be disciples of Yeshua do no exhibit the nature of God’s Kingdom, how can they convince other people that they serve a risen Lord who defeated sin, death and the grave?

The church must put on its robe of righteousness before it can have the authority to speak for Yeshua. How can we evangelise the nations when some of us do not even reckon with the Lordship of the Holy Spirit? There are some charlatans that sat down in the so-called “Bible Schools” and seminaries to concoct doctrines of devils. Some of them assert that operations of the Holy Spirit ceased with the early church. If any generation required a double portion of Holy Ghost anointing, it is this generation. If the early apostles and disciples could not face the power of darkness in their own strength, what makes us think that we can do better than them? The truth is that satan and his demons are only afraid of the power of God. There is no amount of Bible study or theological advances that can save a soul except through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. This is the reason the enemy is using his agents to deceive gullible people to reject operations of the Holy Spirit. And this is why global evangelism has been stalled.

          We do not need to seek a seer to tell us what to do to depopulate hell. Believers must accept the inerrancy of the word of God. That is to say, every interpretation of Scripture must align with the word of God. We are commanded to disciple the nations. Any contrary instruction must be ignored regardless of the spiritual status of the one that issued it. We are charged to pursue holiness without which no man shall see the Lord (Hebrews 12:6). Anyone who preaches anything contrary to this sound doctrine should be ignored. Anyone who tells us that the grace of God is a license to live like the world should be treated like satan himself. Anyone who calls himself a ‘a man of God’ but refuses to preach against sin or to promote holy living among his followers should be treated as an angel of darkness.

The church should be at war against sin and not cuddle it or be at peace with it. When we have put our house in order, we would create the enabling environment for the Lord to add more people to our churches or fellowships. This is the only way to counter the warfare against global evangelism.