I am sick and tired of this sort of thing. What ever happened to the Gospel? How could things have degenerated to this point?Lifestyle Evangelism“Before I can preach love, mercy and grace, I must first preach sin, the Law and judgment.” John WesleyThere is false notion going around today that we can preach love, mercy and grace first and then preach sin, the Law and judgment, or perhaps gloss over sin, the Law and judgment. There are still others who pretty much cut it out altogether because they are almost solely focused on love, mercy and grace. This notion is false because it has no Biblical example. Since this is not the way the Old Testaments prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus or the Apostles did it, then neither should we. When we developing our own methods of preaching the Gospel we are in essence saying we know better than God knows and we are treading on the most steep, slippery and icy ground.It is true that there are many different acceptable ways and methods to evangelize and all acceptable ways and methods are set forth in Scripture. But, when you present the Gospel and teach other Christians in a man made manner which is inconsistent and/or not backed up by Biblical example that's "Evangelism from hell". One example of this is the modern idea of “Lifestyle Evangelism”"Lifestyle Evangelism" is a misnomer and is not found in Scripture the way it is presented today. It is true that our lifestyle must always be a positive representation of Jesus and the Holy Spirit we claim dwells within us, but this is never presented in the Bible as an evangelism technique. If you think you are going to convert people by not telling them what the Bible says about sin, the Law, judgment, wrath, and hell, instead just by the “moral” lifestyle you lead, the “niceness” you show them or by impressing them by what a good person you are, you may indeed make converts as many churches and people can profess, but few of them will truly believe the Bible. Rather they'll end up being just like you - putting their faith in themselves, their finances and the dollar god, rather than in the Word of God. This is not the type of Faith that the Bible teaches saves men from Hell. Many in the Evangelical community today are caught up in "lifestyle evangelism" - “show them the love of Jesus and how much better He can make your life“, contrarily, the Bible teaches let those who are born of the Word, put their trust in the Word, take up their cross, die to self, and suffer persecution struggling and striving to finish the race. Let the Jesus who is preached be the full and true Jesus of the Bible and not a all loving - no wrath "Jesus" that people make up in their own minds. Let the message of the Gospel be highly exalted and preached hot, bold and strong through humble contrite messengers who put their faith and trust in the Word of God. But there are still those refusing to heed Jesus' message and try to create there own Gospel by saying "whatever works is how evangelism should be done" and they measure if it "works" based on worldly standers like “numbers of converts“. But this not what the Bible teaches. Nowhere in the Bible does it say for man to try find the way that works best and that creates the biggest numbers. This is un-Biblical way of thinking fails to consider what kind of converts they produce. Yes, if the word of God is preached, there may very well be those who are converted and born of God. But often with "numbers" being the priority, a large portion of such "converts" end up being Christians in name only, not having been born of the Spirit. And such converts end up having the same kind of mentality as the messenger - a contempt for the Word of God putting one's own opinion above the Bible and thus an over-exalted view of oneself and/or of the messenger. The "Jesus" of such converts often becomes not the Biblical Jesus, but the "Jesus" they make up in their own minds conforming him to their own image. This new Jesus they made up allows them to build up treasure (money or money’s worth) here on earth, put their trust in their financial security, or put themselves and/or families before their obedience to Jesus Christ and the Great Commission. This is a all loving, no wrath “Jesus” and thus there is no sorrow, fear, repentance, death, or resurrection of the so called converts. These people or churches who make up their own Jesus refuse believe Scriptures that clearly contradict their own opinions and false “Jesus“. They conveniently pass over these Scriptures when reading the Bible; they try to justify the Scripture to there lifestyle instead of the other way around; or they just plain outright ignore them altogether. Anyone who has done any type of evangelizing knows that the hardest person to covert is a person who is already convinced they are saved. It is easier to convert a life long Muslim or Hindu then it is to covert a 3 year “word of faith” believer who is commanding God to give him the money and thinks he is saved, or a person who is convinced that their baptism in their church, frequent attendance of said church and their tithes and good works will gain them entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.When you present the Gospel and teach other Christians in a manner which is inconsistent or not backed up by Biblical example you may produce a lot of converts, but they will be false converts or at best an “almost” Christian. If you want to keep the “numbers” you have to throw away the Bible. But Jesus was not interested in what worked in a “numbers” sense. He was more concerned with quality than quantity. Today it seems that in many churches, Jesus Christ would be thrown off their evangelistic ministry team. Things were going so well, Jesus. We had so many crowds of people. But then you opened your big mouth and spoke the Word of God, convicted people of sin, scared people with hideous images of Hell, rebuked hypocrisy among our pastors and congregation and screwed up everything. Now no one comes but a bunch of Bible fanatics. -- Seems that things never change!
