World Christian Week and Imposing Jesus

This is World Christian Week here on the campus of Columbia International University. WCW is one week we set aside out of each year, taking a break from academics to hear the heartbeat of God for this lost and dying world. This year's keynote speaker is the Rev. Celestin Musekura. Musekura, a Rwandan, founded the African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries, or ALARM. In the face of tribal wars, ethnic conflicts, and genocide in Africa, ALARM actively promotes healing and reconciliation. We are being challenged with his personal testimony of pain and hope.

Every year during WCW, the Lord brings to my remembrance the words preached by our Chancellor, Dr. George Murray on October 10, 2004:

“Thomas asked, ‘How can we know the way to heaven?’ Jesus answered, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Is Jesus Christ really the only way of salvation for the whole world? And if so, isn’t that rather narrow? Yes, it is. Doesn’t that sound exclusive? Yes, it does . . . How can Jesus Christ claim to be the only way of salvation for the whole world? The answer is two-fold: 1) because of who Jesus is, and 2) because of what Jesus did.”

Just yesterday I was having lunch with a representative of one of the visiting missions agencies, and he asked what I get excited about. I get excited about the very thing that drives missions: the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ! Evangelism is one thing, sharing with people the good news that Jesus died and rose again to pay the penalty for sin, justifying us before God the Father and sanctifying us to walk in Holiness before Him. Missions is telling people there is a Jesus to believe. Dr. Murray helps us think about it in light of Acts 4:12, “And there is salvation in no other One; for there is no other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved”:

“9 of every 10 people in the world are lost, outside of personal faith in Jesus Christ;
2 out of every 3 people in the world have never heard a clear explanation of the gospel;
1 out of every 3 people in the world are still in the “unreached” category, with no near neighbor to tell them the message of the gospel.”

That last category includes people who don’t know there is a Jesus to believe.

Test yourself to see if you know the names of these early missionaries who did these very things—went into “all the world,” gave a clear explanation of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, even telling there is a Jesus to believe in (and note the responses):

• This fellow told an Ethiopian eunuch there was a Jesus to believe in (Acts 8:26-27). (Bonus points: Can you remember the name of the prophet he was reading?);
• This man prayed with John that the Samaritans would receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-15);
• Who was the guy God sent to restore Saul’s eyesight? (Acts 9:10-12);
• Peter was sent by this man to Samaria to check on Philip’s work (Acts 8:14);
• This young man was stoned to death for what he said about Jesus (Acts 7:59);
• Who interceded for Saul after his conversion? (Act 9:27)
• Who caught Philip up, and the Ethiopian eunuch saw him no more? (Acts 8:39)
• This man went to Mars (Acts 17).

What gets me motivated is (with all due respect) less the speaker and his message per se; rather, it is the overall challenge to be mobilized, going into all the world with the good news there is a Jesus to believe.

Just last week I was confronted by two young women who came back to me with the tracts I had just given them. One thrust the tract back in my face and told me I had no right to push Jesus on people. I told her 1) I had enough tracts and encouraged her to read the good news found therein; and 2) I have been commanded to go into all the world to preach repentance and the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ—He Himself has given me authority to do so. She just stared at me.

Her friend began to tell me she was a good Presbyterian but she would take the tract and would read it. By this time I could smell the alcohol, so I asked her that if she called herself by the name of Christ, was she representing Him properly to the world? I told her that drunkards have no place in the kingdom and she needed to repent and walk in obedience. The first girl thrust the tract at me again. I stood with my hands by my side. I encouraged her to think about what she is saying—I am not pushing Jesus on her—He is doing that by Himself.

She dropped the tract and walked off. I called after her, reminding her that littering was breaking the law. Her friend glanced back at me as they both walked off. A man came down the sidewalk from my left, picked up the tract and kept walking, reading it . . .