None Can Stay His Hand – The Certain Triumph of the Gospel

David Mathis: I was a freshman in college when I first heard a preacher named John Piper. I was piled into a van with some older students who had recruited me to go to a weekend men’s retreat with a college ministry. One of the guys played for us a message called “Doing Missions When Dying Is Gain.” The reason I mention it is because that message was the first thing to come to mind when I received this topic for our few minutes together: “The Certain Triumph of the Gospel.” I had grown up in church, but up to that point, Matthew 24:14 had never really landed on me. It was the first verse that Piper quoted in that missions message. These are the words of Jesus: This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14) As a 19-year-old, who wanted my little life

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The Fuel For Missions

  Without the Bible, world evangelization would not only impossible but actually inconceivable. It is the Bible that lays upon us the responsibility to evangelize the world, gives us a gospel to proclaim, tells us how to proclaim it and promises us that it is God’s power for salvation to every believer. It is, moreover, an observable fact of history, both past and contemporary, that the degree of the Church’s commitment to world evangelization is commensurate with the degree of its conviction about the authority of the Bible. Whenever Christians lose their confidence in the Bible, they also lose their zeal for evangelism. Conversely, whenever they are convinced about the Bible, then they are determined about evangelism. – John Stott in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, p.21 (HT: Zach Nielsen)  

The Pastor’s Role in World Evangelization

. John Piper: What then should a pastor do to promote a passion among his people to see God glorified by the in-gathering of his sheep from the thousands of unreached people groups around the world? My answer: above everything else, be the kind of person and the kind of preacher whose theme and passion is the majesty of God. . . . The most important thing I think pastors can do to arouse and sustain a passion for world evangelization is week in and week out to help their people see the crags and peaks and icy cliffs and snowcapped heights of God’s majestic character. And let me sharpen the point in two ways: 1. We should labor in our preaching to clear the mists and fog away from the sharp contours of the character of God. We should let him be seen in his majesty and sovereignty. I know of one denominational official who, when asked how to preach

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