What is personal teaching/evangelism and how does it apply to your congregation today? Does Go Ye really mean Go Me and what is the imperative in Matthew 28:18-20?
REPLY TO 2 OF MY CLASSMATES DISCUSSION TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU AGREE. MINIMUM OF 200 WORDS EACH
CLASSMATE POST 1
Personal Teaching is one person talking to another person about his/her need for the salvation that is found only in Jesus Christ, the Savior of all people (Matt. 1:21–23; Acts 4:12)! This is the definition I desire you to learn not just for test purposes but for a lifetime of teaching. Agree? Or Disagree? Lost humanity must get to know, on a personal basis, Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God to be saved eternally (Matt. 16:16). The purpose of talking to the lost about salvation in Christ is to bring him to a positive decision. The place of this kind of discussion or Bible Study is unimportant. It can happen in the home, workplace, on the street, in a doctor’s office, or even while traveling. However, the discussion must take place before reaching the lost can possibly happen! The important thing to remember is we must talk to people about their salvation while we talk about every other subject under the sun. NOW: I want you to respond to the questions above and share with me and other class members, “What is happening with Personal Teaching in your congregation?” You have not mentioned this in your posts. I cannot help you unless I know where you are right now. I will look forward to your response. What is happening in your congregation concerning personal evangelism?
Does “Go Ye” really mean Go Me (Matt. 28:19–20)? This is significant because some in the church do not believe this question is applied to Christians today. They believe this commission has already been fulfilled by the apostles. The word “go” is the Greek word poreuthentes which is a first aorist participle nominative plural of the verb poreuomai. The two together mean as you go, while you are going, and is going. Bauer gives the following significance to these terms:
1. “Literally go, proceed, travel, with the indication of departing from someone or someplace, Mt 25:41; Lk 4:42.
2. Figurative of going to one’s death, Lk 22:22
3. Conduct oneself, live, and walk such as “the church in all Judea and Galilee was going on in the fear of the Lord” (Acts 9:31)
4. Of life in general, such as they passed by, Lk 8:14 (Bauer 698–99).
It was understood that disciples were expected to go to all nations and make disciples (the only imperative in these verses) as they traveled and went through life in general. It included their way of life, mission practice, and sometimes may have meant death. The participle phrase is plural meaning all disciples and as this is taught to every generation, it means me and you! Dr. Ivan Stewart in Go Ye Means Go Me stated: “This does not eliminate the thought that Christians should specifically go and teach but does include the fact that as Christians are going, they should teach” (3). Can you imagine how many souls would be converted to Christ because of teaching the gospel everywhere they went in life?
Please respond: You are among these 12 disciples, what action will you take? What is your reaction to this instruction? I look forward to reading your response.
CLASSMATE POST 2
Personal teaching/evangelism is the idea that we would (outside of the assemblies) go out into the community and teach those outside the body of Christ. We are all to do it every day of our lives. There is an example shown on the congregational level in Acts 2:46, where the Bible says they went daily to the temple. Why would they do that? I submit that there were two purposes behind it.
#1. They were going there to worship. They had no “meeting houses” back then, and the Temple was an accessible location for all of them to meet. So, go to a central location (the Temple), and you will be able to worship. #2. Personal Evangelism. The people they would encounter at the Temple who were not members of the saved would have, at the very least, believed many of the things the saved did. Therefore, it would have been a logical progression for any conversation to easily maneuver toward what they needed to do to be saved.
Our congregations do not see Temples in the same way that in the first century, but there are still many people in the world that believe a lot of what the Bible teaches. Would it not be our mission then to start returning to those types of places and striking up friendships in the hopes of being able to have studied with them? But Acts also tells us that they went house to house. Some suggest they went to their own homes, ate meals, and worshipped that way. But the church cannot grow if you do not give opportunities to those without the body. So, those lost had to have some “house to housing.” Or, at the very least, invitations for those lost to attend the house-to-house meeting, and as a result, the Church [saved] grew daily (Acts 2:47).
Go ye into all the world certainly means for all of the saved. Jesus gave the imperative of two things. #1 Baptizing them, which added them to the saved number. #2. Make disciples. You cannot have disciples if you do not teach. You cannot teach if you do not go. We would have an issue if the command were only to the apostles because they are all dead and gone. Also, Paul (who was an apostle) urged the brethren at Corinth to imitate him as he sought to imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Jesus’ whole mission was to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). If our Savior’s mission was to go and seek why would ours not be the same mission?
