God's plan for evangelism

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is full of promises about God's plan for world evangelism. He has a global plan and He is bringing it to pass in our day as never before. In fact, more people were born into God's family in the last quarter of the 20th century than in all the previous centuries of church history.

God's character makes world evangelism central in His thinking. He already has shown the beginning of His plan and He predicts the completion. His faithfulness assures us that it's going to happen.

• God's character makes world evangelism inevitable. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). From the overflow of His loving nature, He desired a being to love Him back. The fall of Adam did not change God's character. He continues to so love the world that He gave His own Son to buy us back for that love relationship. If love was the reason for Jesus' first coming, love also is the reason He hasn't come again. Peter tells us that the delay is because He doesn't want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9).

   

• God's activity proves what His heart is like. Every major act of God since the Fall is a missionary act.

   

   

  • God favored Abraham in order to bless the whole world through him (Gen. 12:1-2). He needed a people isolated from the moral pollution of the nations - so they could receive a revelation of Himself without distortion and be His messengers of God's saving truth.

     

  • The Exodus was God's way of re-establishing His missionary task force which had been in danger of extinction in Egypt.

     

  • As His task force became corrupt, running after other loves and other gods, God disciplined them, sending them into captivity in order to purify them. He was creating the spiritual and social context into which He could come Himself and find a foothold.

     

  • The incarnation is when God's only Son left His homeland to become one of us in order to save us.

     

   

• God's promises assure a successful conclusion to His plan. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing...and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Gen. 12:2-3). It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob...I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth (Is. 49:6).

   

• God's command means we must think the way He thinks, act the way He acts. Jesus gave the "Great Commission" many times:

   

   

  • As the Father sent Me, so I send you (John 20:21).

     

  • All authority is given Me in heaven and earth; go therefore and disciple the nations (Matt. 28:18-19).

     

  • He showed from the Old Testament how repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in [My] name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things (Luke 23:47-48).

     

  • You will receive power...and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

     

  • Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15).

     

   

From Life in the Spirit by Robertson McQuilken, copyright (c) 2000. Used by permission of Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, Tenn., 1-800-233-1123.