Revival's Golden Key (26 page)

I thanked them for listening. They gave a rousing applause. Every one of the 250 tracts I brought
were
taken from the table. Most of them were our
skeptic’s
mouth-stopping tract, “Science Confirms the Bible.” The professor was pleased with his $100, and I was ecstatic.

This is something that anyone can do. It is much easier than open-air preaching. There are no hecklers, the crowd is already there... and no one will beat you up. This is an unprecedented opportunity. Don’t let fear stop you.

Remember, you don’t have to debate or even have a question-and-answer time—just pray, pre-sent your evidence, and make tracts available. Make sure you speak first so that you won’t be tempted to answer your opponent’s objections and get distracted from your mandate. That mandate is simply to present the gospel—which is “the power of God to salvation.”

George MacLeod of Scotland said,

I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the
center
of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between

two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroad, so cosmopolitan they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek... at the kind of a place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble.
Because that is where He died.
And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where church-men ought to be and what church-men ought to be about.

Thank you for being open-minded and allowing me to share my heart with you. May God continue to bless you and grant you your heart’s deepest desires, as you delight yourself in
Him.

NOTES

1.    See “Closing Words of Comfort,”
The Evidence Bible
(Gainesville, FL: Bridge-Logos), p. 663.

2.    While Charles Finney has his critics for his convictions regarding “revivals,” and some even see him as the father of much of modern evangelism, we cannot ignore his insightful convictions when they are indisputably in line with the Word of God.

3.    I see nothing unbiblical about a call to the altar for prayer. However, I believe that it is a great mistake to use music to stir a response. Music plays to the emotions of the human heart. It can produce fear, peace, joy, tension, etc., and can easily bring us to tears. Think of it like this: A little child has broken something I told him not to touch. I soberly challenge him with, “I told you not to touch that. Are
you sorry for what you have done?
Before you say anything, let me put on some gentle music to help you make up your mind.” That would stir his emotions, when instead I should be appealing to his will and conscience.

4-
Reidhead
Publications, Box 556, Denton, MD 21629.

5.    The audiotape version of “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” can be heard free online at
www.raycomfort.com
.

6.    For further teaching on how to use the Law to bring the knowledge of sin, see my books
Hell’s Best Kept Secret
(Whitaker) and
God Wants You
(Bridge-Logos).

7.    We have an open-air preaching video called “In Season, Out of Season” (showing open-air preaching in Santa Monica, London, Paris, Amsterdam, New Zealand, and Tokyo) in which you can see Lazarus in action. See
www.raycomfort.com
or call 800-437-1893 for details.

8.    The woman at the well is often cited to justify that we come to Jesus for happiness. However, to say that the “thirst” spoken of in John 4:13-15 is a thirst for happiness is mere conjecture. The
biblical
reason we come to the Savior is for
righteousness,
not happiness. Jesus said that those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness
are blessed (Matthew 5:6). He said that unless our
righteousness
exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we wouldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven. He told us to seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness.
This woman had transgressed the Seventh Commandment, and without the
righteousness
of Christ, she would perish. The Law makes us thirst after a righteousness that we have no desire for.

9.    This would seem to be another reference to the fact that false converts sit in the midst of the kingdom of God. In Revelation 18:2, “birds” are likened to the demonic realm.

10.    Matthew Henry says of Luke 13:21: “This shall have its accomplishment in the destruction of the corrupt and hypocritical part of the Church” (Matthew
Henry's Bible Commentary,
p. 1191). In reference to Leviticus 23:17, where two loaves of bread in a “wave offering” contain leaven,
Ungers
Bible Dictionary
says: “The two wave loaves typifying the Church contain leaven because there is evil in the Church” (Moody Press, p. 652).

11.    See
www.raycomfort.com
or call 800-437-1893.

12.    I normally deal first with lying, stealing, and lust, because people can more easily acknowledge them as evident “sins.” It seems that this is what Jesus did in Luke 18:20.