In His Hands International Bible College

Growth in the human body starts with one cell of life. That cell multiplies over and over again until a human baby is formed.  After birth, the process continues in the child.  Human cells continue to multiply and growth occurs.  The same is true in the spiritual world.  Each person who has experienced new life in Jesus is similar to a living cell in the human body.  Each believer must reproduce spiritually. The Gospel is spread as believers continue to multiply in this way. This chapter reveals your personal responsibility in this spiritual process. You will learn of the plan of God for spiritual multiplication which makes "1 plus 1" more than two.   THE CHALLENGE The challenge of Jesus to believers is to reach the entire world with the Gospel (Matthew 28:19; Acts 1:8).  Today we live in a growing world.  Thousands of new human beings are born each 46 day.  The population of the world is increasing rapidly.   There are many unreached people groups in the world who have never heard about Jesus.  These groups consist of millions of individuals who have not yet been reached with the Gospel. Many villages and communities have no church.  In many nations, there are not enough trained pastors for the churches that do exist. How can we ever achieve this great challenge of Jesus to reach the whole world with the Gospel? GOD'S PLAN God has a special plan for reaching the world with the Gospel.  Jesus summarized it when He told His disciples... But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.  (Acts 1:8)   Here is God's plan: The Holy Spirit is the divine power behind the multiplication process, Jesus Christ is the content of the message, and the whole world is to be the recipient of the message. Disciples are the agents of multiplication.  God's method is for each disciple to bear "witness" of the Gospel message.  To "witness" is to tell what you have seen, heard, or experienced.  In a court of law, a witness is one who testifies about someone or something.  As  a witness, you are to testify  about Jesus and His plan for the salvation of all mankind.  There are two kinds of evidence presented by witnesses in a court of law.  One is testimony which is verbal witness about the subject.  The other is evidence which is visible proof. The Holy Spirit helps you bear witness to the Gospel both verbally and through the demonstration of God's power.   DIVISION BETWEEN CLERGY AND LAITY God's plan is for each disciple (believer) to be a witness of the Gospel.  The early church grew as they followed this plan. Each believer shared the Gospel and was reproductive spiritually.  Their homes became centers of multiplication (you will learn more about this in a later chapter).  The church grew and multiplied as individual believers bore witness to the Gospel. As the church grew, God called  some people to serve full-time as pastors, evangelists, prophets, teachers, and apostles.  Over a period of time,  believers became part of one of two divisions in the church.  They were either "clergy" or "laity.@ The word "laity" comes from a Greek word which means "belonging to the chosen people of 47 God.@  The basic meaning of the word is "all the people of God.@  The terms "layman" or "laity" came to be used for those who were not serving in special full-time functions in the church. The term "clergy" developed to identify professional ministers in the church.   Clergy refers to those who consider the ministry their profession and who usually are employed full-time by the church.  They may or may not be ordained by a denomination. Over a period of time in church history, a gradual separation developed between clergy and laity. Many laymen stopped reproducing spiritually.  They began to leave the challenge of reaching the world to the full-time clergy.   No professional clergy can ever accomplish what the entire Church was commissioned to do.   This is one of the reasons we have not yet reached the world with the Gospel.  Believers have shifted their personal responsibility to the clergy.  The Bible does teach division of labor in the Church, but every person is to be involved in the spread of the Gospel.  (Read Acts 6:1-6). As the church at Jerusalem multiplied, it became necessary for a division of labor to meet all the needs in the church.  The leaders gave themselves full-time to  study of the Word and prayer.   Laymen performed duties like ministering to the widows and other such tasks of serving.  But although believers served in different offices in the church, they were all involved in the spread of the Gospel.   Stephen was one of the laymen chosen for serving tasks, yet he bore powerful witness to the Gospel (Acts 6:8-11).  Philip was another layman chosen for serving tasks.  He shared the Gospel with the Samaritans (Acts 8:5-12). When persecution came in Jerusalem and believers scattered to other cities they continued to be witnesses of the Gospel: Therefore, they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.  (Acts 8:4)