The Preaching of the Gospel Is the Main Responsibility of the Church

Yesterday I shared the story of Mrs. H. How much wrongly used time and effort must be hidden behind a story as this!

Once in East Africa I heard a young African evangelist speaking to a white missionary who was responsible for the direction of a group of churches stretching over a wide area. He made the following statement: “Your churches are only storehouses, storing people for hell.”

To some people this might appear a shocking statement, especially coming from a national to a missionary. Yet, knowing the situation as I did, I realised that the young African was speaking the truth.

Most members of those churches had never once had the basic facts of the gospel presented to them and had never been faced with the need to make a personal response to those facts. They had exchanged paganism for a form of Christianity; they had memorised a catechism; they had been through a form of baptism; they had been accepted as church members; many of them had been educated in mission schools – yet of the essential facts of the gospel and the experience of salvation they had no knowledge nor understanding whatever.

Churches such as these – whether in Africa or in America or anywhere else in the world – are just what that young African called them: “storehouses storing people for hell.”

The supreme purpose of every true Christian church, the chief duty of every Christian minister, the main responsibility of every Christian layman, is to present to all who may be reached, in the clearest and most forceful way, the basic facts of the gospel of Christ and to urge all who hear to make the definite, personal response to these facts which God requires. To this, the supreme task, every other duty and activity of the church must be secondary and subsidiary.

Let me now state once again these basic facts of the gospel and the response which each person is required to make.

1. Christ was delivered by God the Father to the punishment of death on account of our sins.
2. Christ was buried.
3. God raised Him from the dead on the third day.
4. Righteousness is received from God through believing these facts.

In order to receive salvation, each individual soul must make a direct, personal response to Christ. This response can be described in any of the following ways: calling upon the name of Christ as Lord; coming to Christ; receiving Christ; drinking of the water of life which Christ alone can give.

To every person who has read this far I would ask this question: Have you believed these facts? Have you made this definite, personal response? If not, I urge you to do it now. Pray with me, just as Mrs. H. prayed there with me in that hospital room. Say these words: