Called to Witness

August 6, 2017 Background Scripture: Acts 1, 6, 7 Lesson Passage: Acts 6:1 – 8 After about two thousand years, opinions are still diverse on whether it is the calling of every Christian to witness to the world or only a select few. By witness, I mean to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the non-Christians of the world. Allow me to make my position clear. I believe there is a distinction between witnessing and preaching. I believe that witnessing is about sharing one’s own understanding about the gospel based on personal salvation and experience living as a Christian. This sharing by way of witnessing is done with non-Christians. On the other hand, I believe that preaching is receiving a message from God and verbally delivering it to those one is sent to whether they are Christians or not. Furthermore, I believe that one should receive a divine call from God to be a preacher. To this end then I will speak on the topic of today’s lesson from the standpoint of all Christians are expected to be witnesses to non-Christians. It is only from this standpoint that I would use the term “called” to apply to all Christians. After all, people who follow the teachings and ways of Jesus should do the same things he did—not individually but the group as a whole. It should be noted from Chapter 1 of Acts that Jesus told the group of disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they were empowered by the Holy Ghost to go throughout the world and be his witnesses. However, after the Holy Ghost came in a demonstration of power on the day of Pentecost, the group of Christians appeared to settle in and become reasonably comfortable meeting in the temple in Jerusalem as they were accustomed. It was only after the persecution against them turned fatal that the group began to disperse away from Jerusalem. Fatal acts of persecution against the infant church began on the day that Stephen was stoned and this led to the dispersion of the Christians out of Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria. Note that the apostles remained in Jerusalem but the Christians who scattered because of the persecution went and witnessed wherever they fled. They did exactly as Jesus commanded or prophesied they would except it was done under duress. Today, Christians are still called to be witnesses. Like our fellow Christians in the Jerusalem congregation, many of us will only do it under situations of duress. Unlike them, in America today, we don’t feel persecution that we believe is widespread and potentially fatal. Rather, we see internal dissension causing congregations to split and form smaller congregations that feel pressured to witness for the sake of growing the new congregations into groups large enough to sustain themselves. Whatever the cause or motivation, Christians of all generations and during all times have continuously returned to the mandate of Jesus that we must witness to a dying world the reality of personal salvation that is available in Jesus Christ alone. We either find it within us to reach out to the lost or we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations that are only remedied by reaching out to others to grow the size of the congregation. Whatever the motivation, we respond to being called to witness to others. Robert C. Hudson June 29, 2017