Month: February 2020
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The Fourth Woe: Spiritual Blindness
The purpose of a guide is to lead people through places they have not been before. The most important attribute for a guide is good vision. A blind guide would be useless and indeed dangerous. Concerning the Pharisees, Jesus told the disciples: “Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a…
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Evangelism: A Greater and Lesser Commission?
This is the Great Commission given by Jesus to the disciples: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and…
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Model Evangelism
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for trying to turn ordinary Jews into people like themselves through their evangelism, which hurt both the converter and the converted. In the Parable of the Sower and the Seed and the Parable of the Wheat and Tares Jesus emphasized the spreading of the Word and leaving it to take root,…
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Evangelism Among the Weeds
The fatal flaws in the evangelism of the Pharisees were that it was specific and exclusive. It was offered primarily to fellow Jews and it specifically sought to turn them into Pharisees. Jesus condemned this in His comments about the “woes” of the Pharisees and gave us the principles of proper evangelism in the parable…
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Evangelism: The Nature of Seed and Sowers
What would Jesus do about sharing faith? The parable of the sower and the seed perhaps provides a clue: “Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil;…