Bill Rice, who founded the Bill Rice Ranch ministry in the early 1950s, related a story of a girl going to China as a missionary. Once, when she was on deputation in a church, someone remarked to her, “You sure must love the Chinese people. The very fact that you would leave your homeland, your loved ones, and your family shows that you really do love them.” The young lady replied, “I do not know any Chinese people. I do not know if I love them or not, but I do love the Lord Jesus, and He has impressed upon my heart to go and help these needy people.”
After a number of years in China, she returned home to the same church. This time she could say, “I do, indeed, love the Chinese people. My love grows for them from year to year. I’m so glad the Lord sent me to these lovely people.”
Before the risen Christ ascended back to Heaven, He commanded His disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; then “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:18-20) This command was the bedrock of the Church that He had already promised the disciples He would establish, which promise was realized beginning on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2. The Church would be built upon the foundation of Jesus and the Apostles, by the method of discipling peoples of all nations, one by one, until the end of this age, claiming His last promise: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matt.28:20) A critical component of the building of His Body, the Church, then, is “teaching all nations”—that is, making disciples of peoples everywhere and soul-winning, one by one.
H.C. Mears, one of the founders of the National Sunday School Association, said, “It is true that Christ alone can save the world, but Christ will not save the world alone.” He has chosen to enlist His followers, from the first day the Church was birthed until the present hour, to be His ambassadors in spreading the good news that “Jesus Saves.”
Evangelist D.L. Moody spoke of the privilege and responsibility of every follower of Christ to be a soul-winner: “This lost world will never be reached and brought back to loyalty to God until the children of God wake up to the fact that they have a mission in the world. If we are true Christians, we shall all be missionaries too. If we have no desire to see the world discipled, to see men brought back to God, there is something very wrong with our religion.”
Moody himself was brought to God because a Sunday School teacher, Ed Kimball, had a burden for his Sunday School class and sought to bring them one by one to Christ. After Moody was saved, in time he became an evangelist, striving first to win America, then England, to His Savior. When Moody was preaching in England, Pastor F. B. Meyer heard his message but at first was not stirred by it. One of Meyer’s Sunday School teachers, however, was so moved by Moody’s message that he came to Pastor Meyer and shared how he and the Sunday School class of girls that he taught had been mightily draw to repentance, confession, weeping, and prayer. Meyer was so affected by the testimony that he went off by himself and did some soul-searching, and God got a grip on his heart—so much so that his ministry began to open and spread until he received an invitation to preach in America.
Furman University in Greenville, SC , was his first preaching place in the states, and in the audience that day was a young ministerial student so discouraged that he was about ready to throw in the towel and return home. But the message F. B. Meyer preached lit a fire in the heart of R. G. Lee who, at the invitation, bowed his knee and rededicated his life to God, and to God’s calling upon him. In time, Lee became the renowned pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN, and was known as a “peerless pulpiteer.” His sermon “Payday, Someday,” has blessed untold numbers of believers.
Meyer went on to preach at other locations on the east coast. In one of the services was a man by the name of J. Wilbur Chapman—who, because of Meyer’s message, was stirred to preach throughout the whole northeastern coast. Chapman was so used of God that his ministry expanded to city-wide crusades, and he realized he needed help to continue on with the expanding meetings. Someone suggested he get in touch with a young convert named Billy Sunday. Sunday, influenced by J. Wilbur Chapman—who had been set on fire through preaching of F. B. Meyer—went to Charlotte, NC, to hold a revival meeting. A group of laymen there caught the vision of evangelism and organized a committee to invite other evangelists to come to their city. One of them was Mordecai Ham of Louisville, KY.
Ham preached in a Charlotte meeting attended by a young man named Billy Graham, who converted in that meeting and was called to preach the gospel. And Graham, of course, before he was called home to glory, preached to kings, presidents, and untold millions in mass crusades as a world-renowned evangelist. And it all started with a Sunday School teacher named Kimball who took soul-winning—one by one, as Christ commanded—seriously. Do you?
(Note: The stirring story I have related above was copied; I regret that I did not note the original source. I had read of most of the conversion stories separately but not as the connected chain described above.)
“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that winneth souls is wise.” (Provs. 11:30)
YOU and GOD 