Lessons in Witness Bearing

The church as well as individual believers send out numerous messages. The question that should be answered is this ... "IS JESUS CENTRAL?" Below is a portion of an exposition by FF Bruce Called The Bible and Evangelism:Lessons in Witness-Bearing. I believe it provides some great insight.

In the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we are told how the apostles received their evangelistic commission from their risen Master in the words: “shall be my witnesses.” It should be noted that it was in these terms, according to Isaiah 12, that the restored community of Israel was commissioned to spread the knowledge of the true God and His saving acts among the nations. In the remaining chapters of Acts, and indeed we may say in the rest of the New Testament, we are told how the apostles discharged their witnessing commission.

Although so many centuries separate apostles’ time from ours, there are still practical lessons of great value to learn from the narrative of their evangelistic activity. In the Book of Acts, particularly in the earlier half of book, we have several summary addresses delivered to various audiences by the apostles and their colleagues. Without entering here into the critical questions raised by a study of these addresses, we may confidently take them as genuine outlines of first-century Christian preaching. And we may recognize in them several features of evangelistic substance and method which the lapse of time has made obsolete.

Jesus Christ was central to their message. The apostles never forgot that their primary business was to witnesses to Christ, as ambassadors of Christ. So, in all their preaching, they put Him in the foreground. His appearance on earth, they affirmed, marked the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose, whether that purpose had been explicitly revealed through the prophets of Israel or dimly at guessed by poets and sages of other races. By His life and death and resurrection God had brought His long-promised salvation near, not for Israel only but other nations, too; not for that one generation only but for their children as well.


stay off the pave road ...

--craig