July 24, 2011
In an article in Popular Science Magazine entitled “The Power of Growth in Plants,” the writer, a botanist, documented a tree growing up through a huge millstone weighing several tons. The tree actually lifted the stone and displaced it and then completely filled in the hole. Remarkable!
This is nothing compared to the power of the spiritual seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It has the amazing supernatural energy to completely transform a life. The gospel when guided by the Holy Spirit is the only force on earth capable of infusing the spiritual life of God into those who are spiritually dead.
This is why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. He realized that it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. The success of his ministry did not depend upon his human ability to present the gospel and make it work, but upon the intrinsic divine dynamite of the gospel itself. Paul did not, nor could he, use human gimmicks to bring about conversion. God uses the gospel to make it happen.
It was in Bible college that I first began to witness this power. The entire sophomore class went on a witnessing trip to the beach. The point of the outing was to share the good news of the identity and work of Jesus Christ with as many people as possible. I was teamed with a small girl named Nelda Salee. Shortly after hitting the beach, she walked up to a stately-looking tanned fellow, introduced herself, and began to share the gospel. That was when things became a little tense. He responded with a barrage of intellectual sounding words denying everything she had said. He first attacked the credibility of the identity of Christ and His resurrection.
Her response was striking. She calmly said, “I don’t know about all that, but I do know that if you will believe in Christ, He will give you eternal life.”
He came back with another round of verbal assaults attempting to discredit the Bible and what he called her religious beliefs. She replied, “I don’t know about all that, but I do know that if you will trust Jesus Christ to save you, He will.” This went back and forth for some time. I remember feeling the overwhelming urge to jump into the conversation and give this guy a piece of my mind, but God held me back.
I watched in amazement as something that I never forgot began to happen. This man grew quiet and stopped his verbal abuse. He listened intently to what Nelda was saying. He became strangely calm and right there on the sand he fell to his knees and acknowledged that he wanted to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior. Why? The powerful seed of the gospel is the dynamite of God. Does this mean that everyone will respond positively to it? Not at all! The Spirit of God must make it happen. But the power of God is unleashed when the message is proclaimed. Its success does not depend upon the skill of the messenger.
The gospel has the power to break through every barrier, every objection, every human argument, and all the rationalization that is thrown against it. Like the tree and the millstone, it cuts right through them all and simply does its work. The simplicity of the gospel insults both man’s intelligence and his pride. It alone can give eternal life.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to go to Vijayawada, India, to teach the Bible to Indian pastors. Before that time, no protestant missionaries were allowed into India. Yet hundreds of evangelical pastors attended our Bible sessions. So where did the local churches come from that were represented by all these preachers? I was told that Bibles written in the language of the people had been smuggled into India and distributed throughout the land. Those who had come to faith in Jesus Christ did so through reading the Word of God. Churches sprang up and grew based solely on the ministry of God’s living seed. They all practiced believer’s baptism and the Lord’s Supper. What an amazing glimpse!
Sometimes this amazing seed lays dormant, maybe wrapped in an old dust-laden Bible tucked away on some bookshelf or in a small crevice in a grass house hidden in a remote jungle. When God is ready, the Holy Spirit guides the seed to a sinful mind and germinates it. The result is the birth of a new heavenly life.
One of the recipients of this amazing seed was considered to be the most dangerous man in all of India. His gang attacked, plundered, and terrified many of the villages of a certain area. He was wanted, dead or alive. While ransacking through a room in one of the small villages that he was holed up in, he found a little black book. At first he started to throw it away, but he noticed that the pages were very thin, just the right thickness to roll his cigarettes.
Each evening after a meal, Ramad would relax with a smoke. He would take out a page in the little book, fold it, and roll it around his tobacco. One evening while rolling up the paper, he noticed that the writing was in his own language. So he began to read the words on the page before he rolled it to smoke.
One day he knelt down and trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior. The small black book was the gospel of John. Ramad was born again from the living seed of the word of God. He gave himself up to the authorities. They quickly tried him and sent him to prison. The prison became his personal mission field. The Holy Spirit had moved the amazing seed of the gospel into that prison through this bandit turned prisoner of Christ. The gospel is still transforming lives today.
The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not contained in the Muslim Koran, the Hindu Veda, the writings of Buddha, the book of Mormon, or any other so-called “holy book.” The Bible alone contains God’s powerful seed.
For more on the gospel go to this article.