Christianity 201

September 4, 2012

A Challenge To Reproduce

Today’s post appears jointly with Thinking Out Loud, where it published as Rejoicing With The Angels.

NIV Luke 15:7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

This is the verse that is indirectly responsible for the phrase:

“All the angels in heaven rejoice when there’s a soul saved.”

That particular phrase does not appear in scripture.

The principle does appear in scripture.

Two recent stories at Christian Post were worthy of more than a simple line and link in the Wednesday Link List.

The first one I saw was a report that 1,251 people were saved at New Spring, Perry Noble’s South Carolina church. I know not everyone reading this (or writing this) is 100% sold on all Noble’s methods, but even if this statistic were exaggerated by a factor of ten, this would still be reason to rejoice.

Meet your new brothers and sisters.

But another story at CP a day earlier reports that 11,000 people — out of a crowd of 650,000 — were saved at a two day Evangelistic rally in Ponta Negra Beach, Amazonas state in the northwest of Brazil, conducted by that country’s well-known televangelist Pastor Silas Malafaia; a name most of us have never heard before. Again, a rather round number; but why doubt that something extraordinary happened.

11,000! The Christian world should stop and party.

To our newest members of the faith family: Welcome!

I once heard someone say that each Christ followers should — at the very, very least — ‘reproduce themselves’ spiritually by leading one person to Christ in their lifetime.

Have you led someone to Christ? I know at this point many will want to cite this verse:

NIV I Cor. 3:6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.

This verse is used to justify the idea that some people plant seeds while others are ‘harvesters;’ the people who get down to asking the question that brings someone to a point of decision. But I think this dodges responsibility and makes bringing someone to faith someone else’s job.

If you haven’t had the joy of being in the spiritual delivery room — of witnessing a new birth take place — let me challenge you. Not 11,000 people, not 1,251… one person… and here’s the extra impetus: Before this year is through.

Read more at Passing the Blessing Along

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