The results

Grab to eternal life!

Jesus is the way,
the truth, and the life

THE RESULTS

One important part of spiritual work and preaching are the results, the saving of souls. It is usually the principal objective and the largest motivating factor in all spiritual activity. If this does not take place, the work seems to be useless.

   However, the fact is that nowadays in the Western countries very few, perhaps only one in a hundred or less, are interested in the word of the Gospel and want to give their lives to God. According to the sowing parable of Jesus (Matt 13), only seed sown into good soil produces fruit, and in other places they do not produce fruit. Even “the prince of the preachers,” Charles H. Spurgeon, was forced to reveal that if people come out, it does not prove their real conversion. He noticed it in his own work but also when he followed the activity of others. He especially warned people about an intentional attempt to bring about an outburst of feeling (a different issue if it is borne by God):

Do not try to create sensation or “power". Tear flows and weeping, sobs and shouts can occur, in the meetings after there may be crowds, all sorts of confusion can occur, and such must be tolerated if it is evidence of genuine feelings but never try to cause such.

      It happens very often that converts who have been born in the middle of powerful outbursts of feeling die when the outburst of feeling passes. They are like some insects that are born on a very warm day and die after the sunset. (...) I don't like Christianity, which needs or bears agitation. Rather give me piety that blooms in Calvary than piety that blooms in Vesuvius.

   (...) My act did not pass the test. It did not pass even an ordinary test of the man who has affected the person leaving. When you leave the town or the village in which you have held a sermon, it is very probable that few who seemed to succeed will give up.

(...) Don’t calculate your fishes before they have been tried. Please, don’t calculate those who have just been saved either, before they have been examined and tempted. Such method will perhaps a little bit delay your work but, my brother, it will instead become surer. (15)

So what if people are really saved and turn to God? Do we influence this in any way, and what is the part played by God?

   The answer is that both of them are needed; both preaching by man, and God’s gift of new life – rebirth -- are needed.

   Paul wrote about preaching and the need for it in his letter to the Romans. He said:

- (Rom 10:13-17) For whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias said, Lord who has believed our report?

17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Likewise, we can see in the Bible that only God saves and opens the hearts of people. Even if preaching were as good and clear as possible, it is not enough on its own because only God can save a man and give growth to the sown word. This can be seen from the following verses:

- (Acts 16:13,14) And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we sat down, and spoke to the women which resorted thither.

14 And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened that she attended to the things which were spoken of Paul.

- (1 Cor 3:5-7) Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos but ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?

6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

7 So then neither is he that plants any thing, neither he that waters; but God that gives the increase.

It is important to consider how we build on the work of the past generations. It means that today’s results might arise from sowing and prayer done by previous generations. If somewhere there is born a revival in which many people are saved, it perhaps does not much depend on the preacher but on the work of people in earlier generations who prepared the soil through prayer and have been permanently involved in it. The current generation gets to enjoy the fruits of the labor done by these earlier generations.

   The same thing can be seen in the New Testament: Jesus said to His disciples that they would get to reap what they have not worked for and that they would enter into labours of others. In other words, in the reaping work it was not a question of their special talent but that the reaping time had come and they got to act in the part of the reaper. Jesus had chosen them to the task (John 15:16: You have not chosen me but I have chosen you). The necessary sowing and prayer work for them had already been done, and perhaps Anna who already decades earlier served God by fasting and prayers night and day was one of those who prepared soil for the activity of God. This can be seen from the following verses:

- (Luke 2:36,37) And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity;

37 And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.

- (John 4:36-38) And he that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to life eternal: that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together.

37 And herein is that saying true, One sows, and another reaps.

38 I sent you to reap that where on you bestowed no labor: other men labored, and you are entered into their labors.

Lastly, let’s study an account of Reinhard Bonnke about how he got to build on the work of the previous generations. He describes how the sowing and prayer work that had started over a hundred years ago was realized when the reaping time came:

I quote the diary of Livingstone:

We are like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. We make way for the excellent future. The coming missionaries will get to see that each sermon pulls people to receive the salvation. We are their predecessors and assistants.

   Don’t let them forget the night watchmen, us who did work when all was bleak and when no proof of success could be seen on our road in the form of converts. They will undoubtedly have more light than us but we serve our Lord sincerely and we preach the Gospel, as they too will do.

Livingston died in 1873, and so we came there over a hundred years later. What about the prophetic word of Livingstone? Was it mere wishful thinking? I rejoice greatly when I get to tell you what we saw. The seed, which was sowed so long ago starts now to ripen for the harvest. The residents of Malawi heard about the same God about whom Livingstone spoke, about the same Saviour, about whom Paul spoke, and the same Gospel that Peter preached. We were there for sixteen days, and tens of thousands answered to the message of Livingstone when we preached it on behalf of him and Jesus. The message reached the whole country. The Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said, “You go on tears of the previous generations.”

   Abruptly, I saw this all. We have been connected in God to the movement that includes also all His earlier workers, and so we are one with them all. We belong to their team, to their missionaries. We reaped with joy where they had sowed with tears before us. We did not get that harvest because we were better than those men and women before us but only because the time of the harvest had come. Both those who have sowed and those who reap the harvest will draw their wages, for the Lord of the harvest, Jesus, promises this in His Word. He says, “And he that reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to life eternal: that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One sows, and another reaps. I sent you to reap that where on you bestowed no labor: other men labored, and you are entered into their labors.” (John 4:36-38) (16)

                      Jari Iivanainen