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before he went to the meeting that God would help him in this matter. As he was going to the meeting, he saw three young men standing on the corner of the street. Here was an opportunity to talk to three men personally. He stepped up to them and said, “Young men, I would like to ask, if you are Christians?” “Yes, thank you,” said two of tflem, “we are, and belong to the Methodist Church.” The third said, “I am not, but my mother is a Christian and belongs to the Methodist Church.” “Well,” said the pastor, “won’t you come to the church tonight with me?” He said, “I can not very well; I am preparing for a high school examination.” But after a great deal of urging, the young man accepted the pastor’s invitation, went to the church, was converted that very night, and today is preaching the gospel. That pastor was A. C. Dixon, now pastor of Spurgeon’s Taber nacle, London, who is now crowding the old Tabernacle—a thing which has not been done before since Spurgeon died. Every pastor that goes after men will have a church that goes after them too. The work must begin with the pastor. He must be not only a feeder of sheep, but also a seeker after the lost. PREACHERS IN THE PEW But the Church, too, has a responsibility in the matter of personal evangelism. The Church is to be a personal evangelistic force. The Church is not merely, certainly not primarily, a field in which to work so much as it is a force with which to accom plish God’s purposes in the world. It mat ters not how magnificent a history a church may have, nor how heavily its library shelves may be groaning beneath the weight of its historical origin; no church, be it Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, or any other denomination, can live on past history. No church can live on history at all. The Church must live on souls, and the very minute she ceases to go after souls, she dies. We hear a great deal being said about the church being a conservator and defender of the faith. We are told thc.t the church’s busi
ness is to be evangelical, and that it does not matter so much about being evange listic. If we understand the church of Jesus Christ aright, the church that is evangelical must and, indeed, will be evangelistic. What is evangelical truth? What is an evangeli cal church? An evangelical church is one that believes that all men are lost outside of Jesus Christ, that believes that the race is going down to ruin without the redemp tion of Jesus Christ, that there is nothing in the world that can save a man or woman but faith in the Lord Jesus. That is an evangelical church. Can a pastor or any member of such an evangelical church believe that truth and not be evangelistic, and not go out into the streets and bring in men and women to be saved? EVANGELISTIC CHURCHES If you stood outside a house and saw the flames coming out of the wihdow and knew that a family were sleeping within, ignorant of the danger, would you, could you stand there idly and make no effort to rescue those within? No, certainly not. Nor do we believe that men are lost if we stand idly by and do nothing to save them. No church is really evangelical that is not evangelistic. Our Lord said, The gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church. Some of us may have in our minds a picture of the powers of evil attacking the Church of Jesus Christ, waging the battle and bringing their forces right up to the very gates of the Church. But we have changed our viewpoint here. We find, as we study ancient methods of warfare, that the pepple did not carry the gates up to the enemy, but the enemy came up to the gates. We have here, then, a pictorial representation of the Church of Jesus Christ carrying her warfare right up to the gates of hell and not waiting until the gates of hell come to her. The Church takes her message, her gospel, right (o the very gates of the foe and wins her con flicts there. And not until the Church of Jesus Christ takes her message out to the individual, out to the sinner, out to the gates of hell, shall she prevail. The whole
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