Can a person evangelise if they don’t know what the God of the Bible is like?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

by Vic Gill (MP3)

Can a person evangelise if they don’t know what the God of the Bible is like? I believe the answer to this question is yes, you can evangelise without knowing the attributes of God. You can evangelise and witness to someone about God all day long without knowing much about the attributes of God. But let it be known, that it will be nothing more than a dribble of words coated in sugar. It will be nothing more than dross. This type of evangelism will degenerate into sentimental ideas at a horizontal human level, or evangelism that describes a god other than He who is alone revealed in the Bible. Sad to say, it is to this point that modern evangelism has fallen.

Biblical evangelism must proclaim the full counsel of God. We must talk about God as the central object of our witness. Whilst felt needs do play a big part in witnessing to someone, it must be remembered that they are part of a bigger issue - the symptons of a fallen nature, sin and a violation of God’s holy Law. If you spent all your time addressing the felt needs of those you were ministering to, you will never get to the wound, the root of the issue. 

Ray Comfort tells of a young lady who was heckling him whilst he was open air preaching and expounding God’s Law to a group of mostly unsaved people. At the top of her voice she shouted out “don’t listen to this man, God loves you.” Ray stopped speaking and asked her if she cared about the salvation of the people, to which she replied she did. So Ray encouraged her to get up on the soapbox and asked her to give her testimony. After she had bravely shared her testimony, Ray asked her where her listeners would go if they died without the Saviour. She hesitatingly said “hell…” then she began weeping and said “but God is nice.”

Evangelism in Athens

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean.” For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:

Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” So Paul departed from among them. However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. (Acts 17:16-34)

Evangelism – The Apostle Paul’s Way

Note below the underlined attributes of God in an evangelistic sermon preached by the Apostle Paul to the intellects of his time. Note how he describes the full counsel of God by proclaiming God’s attributes.

1.            God exists and is knowable. “The One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim”, v.23

2.            God is the creator of all things. He is “the God who made the world and everything in it,” v. 24.

3.            God is sovereign over heaven and earth. “He is Lord of heaven and earth”, v. 24.

4.            God is transcendent, not confined. He “does not dwell in temples made with hands,” v. 24.

5.            God is independent and self‐sufficient. “Nor is He worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything,” v. 25.

6.            God is benevolent (kind). “since He gives to all life, breath and all things,” v. 25.

7.            God is wise in His ordering of creation and omnipotent in that He can take from one blood every nation. “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings” v. 26.

8.            God is immanent, not far from any of us. “so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” v. 27.

9.            God is immaterial, spirit. “we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising.” v. 29.

10.          God is forbearing, patient. “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,” v. 30.

11.          God is righteous, justice and omnipotence. “Because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” v. 31

As a result many were converted (V34). Of them was Dionysius, who Church historian Eusebius later records became the first Bishop of Athens.

A Fitting Illustration

In 1978, missionaries from the New Tribes Mission commenced pioneering work with the primitive Bisorio tribe in the central highland foothills of Papua New Guinea, a people oppressed with violence, fear of enemies, personal jungle and ancestor spirits. When reasonable communication was eventually possible by means of Pidgin English and the native language, Scripture was taught to the Bisorio people over a period of eight months before the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ was formally presented. The method was as follows:

We began teaching the Bisorios, of course, about God of whom they had no concept. Their god was the sun. . . . We knew that this was where we had to begin, tearing down their previous concepts and beginning to build according to the truth. . . . We began by teaching who God was and who he wasn’t. . . . [We taught] God’s eternity. He had no beginning or end, that He was before anything. . . . As we taught them the Old Testament, we sought to bring out four basic things. [First], God’s holiness and righteousness, [second] man’s sinful condition, [third] God’s wrath against man’s sinful condition, [fourth] and yet God’s grace and His condition for acceptance by faith in His provision for salvation. Now we figured the best way to teach the Bisorios about God was not just giving them a list of dry doctrines, but to teach through Old Testament history where they could see God in action and appreciate and begin to understand who this God is. . . . We began to share the truth of God found in Genesis 1‐2. And we took them through creation bringing out the fact of God’s power, His greatness, His almightiness, creating things just with His Word, how He was a God of order, and a God of kindness, how He provided for His creation. . . . One of the things that stood out in this teaching, as we began to develop the character of God before their eyes in Genesis 1‐2, was the fact that God was creator and that He was the owner and it stood out immediately in the Bisorio’s mind that if God created everything, surely He was the owner of everything, and this really gripped their lives.

Beloved, we need to go back to the basics. We need to stop studying cultural anthropology and societies felt needs and begin studying and teaching people who God is and what He is like. The love of God only makes sense to a person who realises they are unworthy of it.

Tags: Attributes, Evangelism, God is Holy, God is Wise, Holy, Knowability of God, Ray Comfort, The Atttributes of God

Category: FAQs, Latest Article