Forward

This book is comprised of two teachings that we did many years ago. This first part is from a series that was preached in Switzerland in 2003.

The gospel was preached to a live audience and it resulted in the salvation of souls. The teachings that followed led to many going out and spreading the gospel the way they learned from these lessons.

I believe that as you read this book you will sense the anointing that was present when these messages were preached. Because of this you will learn to see the essential principles of salvation in a way you have not understood them before.

Although several basic doctrines are covered here, this book is extremely practical and not just boring doctrine. I pray that you will be blessed by it, and inspired to reach out to the world with the wonderful gospel of salvation.

The sections on the different baptisms, and especially the gifts and ministries, should inspire you to reach out for everything that the Lord has for you.

The Gospel is Good News

To start this section off I would like to share on the most important subject in the Bible which is the gospel. This is a word that a lot of people use without fully understanding what it means.

If I were to speak to you about the gospel you will likely say to me,

"Oh I've heard that many times; it's nothing new to me."

Well I hope that you are going to learn something new as you read this section, because you see I always like to share things a bit differently.

Even if you have heard it before, there is no harm in hearing it again. So I want to start by sharing a short passage of Scripture from 1 Corinthians 15:3 and 4. In this passage the Apostle Paul says this:

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

The gospel means good news. Jesus said to His disciples,

Go into all the world and preach the good news.

Well what exactly is the good news?

Good or Bad News

A long time ago there was a whole new group of jokes that came out. They all started the same way and they said something like this:

"I have good news for you, and I have bad news for you."

I am sure you have heard some of those jokes. The person either says,

"Well give me the bad news first."

Or they say, "Give me the good news first."

Then once they have heard the first part, the second part sounds funny.

I am not going to bring you any good news/bad news jokes here. What I am going to do though is give you a couple of illustrations of how people interpret this with the gospel.

The standard good news/bad news where the gospel is concerned goes like this.

"If you do not know Jesus, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is you are going to spend eternity with all your good friends. The bad news is you're all going to be in hell together."

Sometimes Christians want to try and change that and make it a bit more positive. They think that this is the way the gospel should go.

But you see the gospel is not good news and bad news. It is just good news. There is no bad news. But most people seem to think the gospel is both good news and bad news, so they say,

"I've got good news for you. You can go to Heaven and live eternally with God. But I have some bad news too. It's going to cost you everything.

You are going to be miserable for the rest of your life. You aren't allowed to enjoy anything anymore. Life is going to become very tough if you become a Christian."

There is an old saying that people sometimes quote. They say,

"Everything I like is either sinful, illegal, or makes me fat."

That is not the kind of gospel I am going to tell you about or that Jesus gave. Because you see the gospel is good news.

You Can Choose

Okay I do have some bad news which I will give to you first. But the bad news only applies if you reject the good news.

You see I'm not going to give you both bad and good news. I am going to give you one or the other and you must decide which one you will choose. I'm not going to give you both of them together.

Do you want the good news? Well then in case you don't choose the good news, let me give you the bad news quickly.

If you are a sales person you might just want to have the good news. But you cannot have a sale until you have produced conviction.

You see most sales people actually give the bad news at the end. They get you all excited about their product, then they try to frighten you into buying it now because they say,

"You need to buy it now because the prices are going up tomorrow."

Or they say, "I only have two left, and if you don't buy it now there will be none left tomorrow."

I am not giving you that kind of sales pitch here. I'm going to give you the bad news up front, so then you can have the good news and concentrate on it.

The Sin Issue

What then is the bad news?

The bad news is that man is a sinner. I am not talking here about man and woman as in male and female. I am talking about man in general, just in case you are a woman and you think you can escape here.

The Bible says,

All have sinned and come short of God's glory.

What is sin? Sin is firstly part of our very nature. You don't have to teach anybody to become sinful. As we grow up we automatically start to follow our own way.

One of the first things we do is to violate our own conscience by deliberately doing what we know is wrong. That is the first sign of sin.

The second evidence of sin is when we disobey what we know to be God's commandments. Sin is quite simply disobeying God. And each one of us has disobeyed God and gone against His commandments at one time or another.

We now find ourselves with a problem. There is sin in our lives but we want to reach God. We want to receive all the blessings and the benefits that He offers us.

This means that we have to find some way of going from our sinful condition into a place where God will accept us. So what most of us do is try to figure out what the price is. We think,

"God is selling us this good product, but how much does it cost?"

Everyone has a different idea of how much it is going to cost. And usually we think about how hard we will have to work to earn God's blessing.

No Self-Effort Needed

How good do you have to be to make it to Heaven? How righteous must you be before God will accept you?

I want to give you a little picture here to show you how this works. I want you to take any two objects in your room that are fairly close together.

I want you to imagine that those two objects are like two high mountains with a big gulf between them. There is a big distance between them of about 100 meters.

Supposing we now took everybody who ever lived and told them all to form a line on one of the mountains. Then we said,

"Okay you are all going to have a turn to jump. If you make it to the other side you're safe, but if you fail you're going down."

How many people do you think will make it? Has anybody jumped 100 meters yet? I don't know if anyone has. I don't think it's possible.

Some people are very strong. Some young, slim athletic types are always climbing mountains and are full of energy and strength. They are going to come and make a wonderful jump - and fall down.

Then you will get somebody like me who doesn't weigh quite so little, but I'm going to give it a good try.

I am going to run really hard and jump as far as I can. But you know I am going to end up in the same place as that other athlete did. You see it doesn't matter how hard you try.

Post A Review For This Book