It has been said that, among Bible-believing Christians it takes fifty Christian years to lead one unbeliever to Christ. That is, on the average, it takes fifty years for a Bible-believing Christian to win one person to the Lord, or it takes fifty Christians to win one in a year. At this rate, if each believer lived fifty years after his salvation, he would leave only one believer to replace himself (not considering any children or grandchildren that may, or may not, be/remain in the faith). Truly, this is a statistic of failure. It represents a dismal failure to obey The Great Commission.
As we have seen, the command of The Great Commission is to make reproductive disciples. If each believer won and discipled one person each year, and if each newly-discipled believer won and discipled one person per year, starting with one believer, the number of believers in any year (not considering death of any believer or failure to win and disciple another) would be "2" taken to an exponent equal to the number of years.
Starting with one person (at zero year), at the end of one year there would be two believers, at the end of two years there would be four believers, at the end of three years there would be eight believers, and at the end of four years there would be sixteen believers. Assuming that this mathematical increase were continued for thirty-six years, the total number of Christians would exceed 6 billion. This mathematical example shows the power of God's plan for explosive reproduction.
Keeping in mind that The Great Commission is not a command to go, but a command for all to make "reproductive" disciples, world evangelism could be, and should be, accomplished by believers obeying our Lord's command to make "reproductive" disciples.
In the mathematical example given above, world evangelism started with only one believer. What if, instead of starting with one believer in the entire world, every local church and every mission started with one believer who would win and disciple to reproductive maturity one person each year? The result would be reproductive explosion, not starting with one believer and spreading around the world, but explosive reproduction occurring simultaneously at thousands of places around the world.
Conversely, what if our Lord's command to make disciples is not obeyed? What if it continues to take fifty Christian years (on the average) for one believer to win another? And when this one believer is finally won, what if he is not discipled to reproductive maturity? The world's population is exploding. There is no way to evangelize the exploding population of the world, except by using God's plan for explosive reproduction of believers.
Adding to this problem, what if the children and youth who are born in the church are not brought up in the manner that is commanded in the Scriptures? Even if world evangelism were accomplished, unless children and youth were kept in the faith, the world would become a mission field again in the next generation.
Therefore, unless our Lord's plan for world evangelism, and also His plan for childrearing (a subject for discussion at later date) are obeyed, attempts to evangelize the world will fail. The growth of Christianity, if any, will be exceeded by growth of the world population by a factor of perhaps ten or one-hundred to one, because we did not do it His way.
In, The Great Commission, Jesus provided a method of world evangelism in which the number of believers would explode, increasing at an ever increasing rate until the whole world would be evangelized (every nation evangelized, but not every individual saved).
Using His plan, the world can be evangelized. Is there any other plan that can reach the lost at more than a fraction of the world's exploding birth rate? Even if we think our plans are better, does a steward have the authority to substitute his plans for his master's plans?
God's plan in The Great Commission is for believers to reproduce in a manner that is significantly similar to human reproduction. The world's population is exploding. God's plan, as set forth in The Great Commission is for explosive reproduction of believers.
His plan is not to reproduce as a few local churches growing slowly in a great city, but as individual fire brands distributed by a wind over a vast forest of people, starting fires in the hearts of a multitude of unbelievers, and discipling each new believer to reproductive maturity.
Seeing that our present attempts to evangelize the world are falling far short of the world's population explosion, do you agree that substituting our plans for His plan is producing results that are similar to going up a "down" escalator?
Copyright 1997 by Wendell E. Miller
Downloaded from http://www.biblical-counsel.org
May be printed and distributed
by individuals and not-for-profit ministries
without written permission.
Coming Soon: Rethinking The Great Commission: Part VI
Return to Rethinking The Great Commission: Part IV
Before submitting your comments, please refer to Guidelines for Submitting Your Comments to "Let's Rethink It."
Send your comments to rethink@biblical-counsel.org.