First, we are the priests of the New Testament gospel. Therefore, we must act, behave, live, and move as priests of the gospel. All of us have to visit people where they are to get them saved, to bring them to Christ. Although many have been preaching the gospel, most of the preaching of the gospel today is not scriptural. Although some preach things that are according to the Scriptures, the way they preach is not scriptural. They do not preach the gospel of the New Testament according to God’s ordained way. We have to realize first that we are the New Testament priests of the gospel. We all know that the main work a priest does is to offer sacrifices to God. We must do the work of the gospel as a priest to produce some sacrifices for God. From my youth as a Christian, I learned that we Christians are priests of God, but I did not know what sacrifices we should offer. I was taught that we should offer our praises and thanks to God as sacrifices. I also learned that we should give material things to God, His children, His church, His servants, and so forth as sacrifices. But these are too minor. The major sacrifices we should offer to God are the sinners saved by the gospel through our preaching. In Romans 15, Paul says that he was “a minister of Christ Jesus to the nations, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, that the offering of the nations might be acceptable” (v. 16). Paul offered the Gentile believers saved through his preaching as a sacrifice to God. We all must have this kind of concept. How many people have you brought to Christ since you have been saved? As one of God’s priests, could you not bring one person to the Lord in one year, three hundred sixty-five days? This is logical and fair. If not, suppose you were the Lord, what would you say? I believe you would fire such a priest.
Some have criticized door-knocking, saying, “I went out for two months and did not gain anyone.” Then I would answer: “What about the other ten months? Does a mother bring forth a child every day?” God’s natural law regulates. A child should be in its mother’s womb for nine months. If a mother wants a second child, it is not so easy because nine months of one year are gone. She has only three months left, so she has to borrow from the next year. This is God’s regulation. Once a mother has conceived, she learns the lesson of patience day after day for two hundred seventy days. If we preach the gospel like such a patient mother, in at least nine months, we could bring one to the Lord.
You may think this would be small, but actually it is not small. Suppose each one of us will get one yearly. Surely the church will be doubled within one year. God’s way seems too slow, yet it goes very fast. God created only one man, Adam. But today there are billions of Adams on this earth. It is very slow, yet the most prevailing. I recently studied some statistics. In the past one hundred fifty years, two heretical groups have been the most successful in increasing their numbers. They did this by the way of door-knocking. One group is the Mormons, and the other is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I studied statistics put out by the Jehovah’s Witnesses for the twelve nations in which their work was the most prevailing last year. In Japan, they figured out that they need to spend more than six thousand hours to get one person. This means that even if they work ten hours a day for two years they may get only one. Even if you could get only one person in one year, although it seems slow, it is much better than doing nothing. You may have gone out for two months and gained no one. So why not try another two months? Why not try the third two months, the fourth two months, and the fifth two months? If you could not gain one this year, try the next year. Our problem is, first, we do not realize that we are priests of the gospel, and second, we do not persevere in our practice. Some may say, “Peter spoke once on the day of Pentecost and three thousand were saved, and then a few days later, five thousand were added.” There is such a history in the Bible, but today who can say, “I speak, and I gain three thousand”? That is not God’s ordained way. God did not say that if a woman would be faithful and believe in Him, one day He would suddenly give her three thousand children. I believe Adam brought forth many children, but I do not believe he brought forth one dozen a year. Some have said that we should bear fruit every month like the tree of life in the New Jerusalem. To talk this way is one thing, but to practice it is another. I would not count on that way. It would be good if each of us would gain one person within three years. If every member in the church could bring one person to the Lord and into the church life within three years, the church would increase by one third each year.
But how many among us even do this? Our way to preach the gospel is too old and stale. I still remember D. L. Moody’s story. He once vowed that he would not go to sleep without speaking the gospel to at least one person each day. Then one night near midnight, he realized that he had neglected to speak the gospel to anyone that day. He went out, but nobody was on the street. He could only find a policeman, so he went to him and tried to get him to believe in Jesus. But the policeman became very offended and angry. Later though, he became interested and found out who the man was that had preached to him. Eventually, that policeman got saved.
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