As I was meditating in the book of Acts the tenth chapter, I was thinking about Cornelius, and about the faith that is in the hearts of the people who meet God. And it came to me, “There is an answer for us in this area of bringing people into the Lord.”
I know that some old order soul-winning teaches that unless a person is baptized into their denomination, he will never make it. It would be interesting to compare all of the fundamental denominations who hold as a basic tenet that unless you are a member of their Communion, you will never be saved. (Of course, they don’t enforce it; they still let you attend and pay tithes or give anything you want.) But it is a basic doctrine around which a lot of churches are built.
Still, they will look at the walk and feel, “Who do you think you are, some special people? Everyone else is wrong except you?” We have never made that claim. It is not part of our doctrine, and yet we get saddled with what really is in their doctrine.
I have come to find an answer in the Lord that I think all of us should embrace today. Especially when you consider that people have come from different routes into the walk; into a real relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ; into marvelous experiences. These routes were not all wrong. Many of them found a lot of good guidelines that helped bring them in. We have people who are Christians today who used to be Buddhists. Don’t tell me that everything they believed as a Buddhist was all wrong inasmuch as it hindered them from ever coming to Christ. Maybe they didn’t even believe in Jesus Christ in their religion, but I’m saying that anyone with a basic faith in God, a real living faith, has something going for him, if his faith is as sincere as Cornelius’ was. The Word says he was a devout man, and one who feared God with all of his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people, and prayed to God continually. Acts 10:2.
You say, “Cornelius wasn’t a Christian.”
Of course he wasn’t a Christian.
“He wasn’t a Jew.”
Of course he wasn’t a Jew. He was a Roman Centurion. I am pointing our that real faith, wherever it is found, has this one thing going for it—God tends, by the Holy Spirit, to lead that person into the way of life. God tends to do it. We are not concerned over whether the religions that they are in are right or wrong. We are only concerned about the faith that these people have, though it may be misdirected in its actual application and its doctrines and they may be completely off; yet, in their prejudice, if they are sincere, and they believe and seek God, He tends to meet them.
The book of Acts is full of this. In Acts chapter 8, Saul of Tarsus was as wrong as he could be in persecuting the saints (Acts 8:1–3). There was something in the early Church that was good—they could pray and believe for a man though he was dead wrong in his religion. They would believe that a man would have faith toward God, and the Holy Spirit would begin to work on that man. In the case of Saul of Tarsus, it was pretty drastic action!
“Who are You?”
“I’m Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
“That makes everything that I’m doing wrong!” Give him credit, Paul wanted God so desperately that he turned an about-face and began to seek the Lord with all of his heart.
This opens the door as to where we should be. We ought not to argue religion; we should believe for revelation. Encourage a person who is sincere and really seeking God. “I don’t know if you’re believing right or not, but I know you’re sincere; you keep right on seeking God.” Encourage them that way. “I can see that God is going to lead you; you are going to be all right. You pray for me, too.” You build their faith. We are in this walk because God revealed it to us. In the first place, this walk is unbelievable unless it does come by revelation—and then you wonder why in the world everyone does not believe it! It seems to be the only logical way.
I want to establish in your mind an attitude about how to deal with people. One reason the Lord Jesus Christ could get along so well with the harlots, the tax collectors, the chiefest of sinners, was because they saw His encouragement. Maybe they were wrong and didn’t actually know, but at least they were seeking for something—and God would meet them. On the other hand, the Pharisees were so persuaded that they were right. No one could teach them anything; they knew it all. There is not much hope for people who are that set.
Even when those who have a hunger after God and are seeking after Him have followed the wrong path, God seems to bring them into a real relationship with the Lord. This is what impresses me. One day Cornelius was waiting on the Lord (he prayed continually), and the Word tells us, Abouth the ninth hour of the day—that is 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon—he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in to him, and said to him, “Cornelius!” And fixing his gaze upon him and being much alarmed, he said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God.” Acts 10:3–4.
If someone wants to be a real humanitarian and his motivations are right (it’s not some ego trip he is on), don’t criticize. The world has many people out there who are on that kind of a thing. We don’t give to philanthropic groups, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t bless those who want to give millions of dollars. Let them give it. God bless them. Where will we put our money? The best thing we can do with any money we have is not to send rice to India; but send the Living Word; send an apostolic company; be a part of this move of God. That was what the early Church was concerned with: Getting out the Word. Everything that I can, I’m going to put into the Lord’s work. That does not mean that we have to argue about the corruption in philanthropic groups. When people have a good motivation, are hungry for God, and they keep reaching in, start praying for them; believing for them. We need to eliminate that antagonistic and argumentative nature within us that feels it has to change people. So they are in a wrong doctrine, they have a wrong idea; God is able to bring them out of it. He is able to lead them directly into revelation.
I am not calling for tolerance, I’m calling for the fact that we need to move away from splitting hairs about the doctrines and look to the spirit that is in a man. God was looking for that in Cornelius. Cornelius really didn’t know what to believe, but he had a good spirit. God was going to meet that spirit, but it took a little bit of listening. When the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius, he had all of his relatives gathered together. At the angel’s instruction they sent for Peter to come and preach to them, and the Spirit of the Lord fell upon them (Acts 10). It was marvelous.
You say, “That was a great miracle; that was a sovereign moving of God to open the door to the Gentile believers.” You may want to interpret it that way, but the Bible doesn’t actually say that. The Bible really says that there was a Gentile who was hungry for God, and God met him. God wasn’t just looking around for a way to get the Gentiles in here some way. No, He saw a man whose heart was hungry, and He led him. I believe in the leading of the Holy Spirit. I believe God is moving everywhere by His Spirit. There are many people whose prayers are being answered and to whom strange things are happening—and it should not be, because their doctrines are all wrong! That is true, it should not be happening; but it is!
I believe God has even answered Buddhist’s prayers. (Oh my, wouldn’t that make marvelous ammunition for people who want to persecute the walk?) There are many people in the world—not Buddhists; nothing—who pray and God hears them. You say, “Well, we can’t get anything except through the Lord Jesus Christ.” I know, but God has a way of seeing this hunger; He has a way of honoring it; He has a way of coaxing people along, showing them something. Do not judge everything by what appears at the moment, but give God a chance by your prayers and your faith to lead a person into the walk.
God is going to lead people from so many different paths into this walk. I believe there is a way we could break through to the Communists.
“God couldn’t save a Communist.”
You don’t know. Maybe some of them have been on an ideal trip, they are sick of their atheism and are looking, praying for something. They have taken a look at the churches and don’t want to believe that; they would rather read Karl Marx than some theologies that have been written. It makes more sense to them. Don’t you think God can save them? He sure can. We must realize that God meets a man who cries out to the Lord in sincerity. He has no idea what he is going to believe, and neither did you have any idea what you were going to believe. God led you along, step by step. The teachings have to follow the experiences, and the experiences come by grace through faith.
You say, “That is false doctrine. Fundamentalists say that you first preach the Gospel, and then others will begin to understand and can believe and can be saved.” That is not the way Jesus did it. He said to someone, “Your sins are forgiven you” (Mark 2:5). The man didn’t even repent; he didn’t shake the preacher’s hand; he didn’t go to the inquiry room; he didn’t even make a commitment for Jesus—but his sins were forgiven!
It happened that way in Honolulu. The Lord revealed different afflictions in the people and they would stand to be healed. That was enough, “Jesus healed you.”
“Yes, Jesus healed me.”
“And now, don’t you think you ought to serve Him?” They would accept the Lord after they had been healed. The book of Acts opens that way. The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was received up… Acts 1:1, 2a. This shows us something. Jesus would do something and then say, “Now, do you know what I’ve done unto you?” Then He would explain it.
He washed the disciples’ feet, and they were protesting. “Now do you know what I’ve done to you?”
“No.” And He explained it. That is the best way to receive teaching.
In this walk I am asked, “Where did you get this apostolic foundation?” You may not believe this, but many times the Lord would meet my heart, and I was aware something had happened; then I would look in the Scriptures and find what it was. I have been a student of the Word all my life, but I don’t think that the great experiences are stumbled onto by only reading the Word or many people would have found these truths; they have been there, concealed in plain sight. All one had to do was pick them up, but they didn’t, because the revelation only comes to the hungry and to those who are seeking the Lord. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13. That is beautiful.
You say, “This is upsetting all of our teaching.” Maybe a little, but let’s just say that we are leaning it a little to another direction, bringing it up truer to what it should be.
An experience without the Word is like catching the rain of heaven in two hands. You may rejoice in it, but it will leak right through your fingers. God often brings an experience that you desperately want to hang onto; “I don’t want to lose it.” Then He brings the bowl of teaching for you to hold it in. This is where the Word really has come forth in this walk. That is the great advantage of studying the Word and having it hid in your heart. It is as if the Lord reaches into the cupboard, brings out a bowl, and says, “Now, hold that which I am doing for you in this. Here is the framework of the Word; here is the teaching of the Word to house it.”
We want to give the Word a higher, more exalted place than it has ever had in God’s revelation to our hearts. We do not arrogantly stumble through and say, “Now, I’ve worked out my religion. This is what I believe.” But we look for the Spirit of truth to come; to open up parables and visions and dreams in the Word; to open up all of the cryptic sayings that we could never figure out accurately. The reason the world has so many doctrines is because it has approached it the other way. Every man has been a law unto himself in interpretation. The Word has been a private interpretation, but was never intended to be so; it was intended to be an element by which revelation could be substantiated and confirmed to your heart. It was to house everything that God wanted to do and become within your life.
Read the Word, devour it, love it, but don’t become obstinate about your interpretation of it. Wait for the Lord to make it an experience. Let it become alive to you. Read about Cornelius and the hungry ones that God would meet. They were hungry; they didn’t know their right hand from their left.
Remember the colored man from Ethiopia, riding his chariot, reading the scroll of Isaiah. Philip approached him and said, “Do you know what you are reading?”
“I can’t figure out if he is talking about himself or someone else!” (That is true with us, also! We may read in the Psalms of David and say, “Let’s see, is David talking about himself, or is he talking about the Lord Jesus Christ—or is he talking about me?” The understanding has to come by revelation.) The Ethiopian stopped his chariot and Philip baptized him (Acts 8:27–38).
I have known people to use the text about Philip baptizing the Ethiopian as an argument against sprinkling in favor of immersion because it says there was much water in that place. Actually the text is about how God directs ministries to the hungry hearts.
“I am sending you to reap where you have not sown. The harvest is ready” (John 4:35, 38).
“Well, I have to first convince them that they are a sinner.”
Wait, they may not have a clear picture of that. They may think they are almost ready for sainthood! They may have gone through all the degrees, and they are now ready for nirvana. If you tell them that they are sinners, you have turned them off immediately. I tell you, pray for them and let the Lord give them the revelation. Begin talking about what the Lord has revealed and how wonderful it is; then they will respond. “Yes, that’s what we found in this meditation route.” Even though you know they don’t know what they are talking about, don’t argue that they are off; let them go on and stumble onto something from the Lord.
You know, you get a revelation of the Lord and you feel, “Oh dear, here I am, exposed before God and everybody!” Which comes first, a conviction of sin or the revelation of the Lord? I think the two go hand in hand. For example, Isaiah received a vision of the Lord and the glory filled the temple. Did he enter into ecstasy? No, he said, “Woe is me! Woe is me” (Isaiah 6:5). We get a glimpse of the glory of God, and all our self-confidence leaves. We find it has slowly oozed out like an oil leak in a car, leaving a black trail behind. “There it is, all my confidence, gone!” God causes us to see Him in a way that makes us see ourselves as we should.
“Then you don’t have to convince a man that he is a sinner?” Not necessarily so. I know this was a reformation style of preaching sermons. Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” dangled the listener right over hell. “The arrow of divine wrath is pulled, and the judgment is pointed at your heart. There is not one promise in the Word guaranteeing that God will spare eternal judgment for one second.” It was a sermon that God used and it was the truth, but God has to have a variety of ways of leading people on, step by step. There are many people who are adamant about their disbelief and many other things. After they find the Lord Jesus Christ, then they have to go back to the Word and accept it because God has become real to them. I want you to realize that your head is not, necessarily, going to be straightened out before your heart.
The Lord will meet many people, and we will be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16).
They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. Daniel 2:3. We are going to turn many to the Lord. Don’t begin by giving them theories and ideas; only believe for the Lord to be revealed. Stir up the hunger after the Lord that people have. Build it up. Have faith that you may be talking to another Cornelius or a hot-headed Saul of Tarsus! Believe that God will meet them.