The following sermon was delivered at a meeting of the Spanish-speaking ministers and evangelists on September 6, 1980, at Tranquility, New jersey. Elder Bradford's inimitable preaching style shines through even in this torsion edited from a tape of that meeting. We felt the message was too beneficial to confine to only those in attendance, so we decided to make it available to all our Adventist ministers in this way. —Editors.
I want to talk about the cost of evangelism, and to do so I want to read two texts. The first is Isaiah 66:8: "Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children." There is no birth without pain, without labor.
Now I'm going to the New Testament, to Galatians 4:19. Remember our subject: the cost of evangelism. The apostle Paul says, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you."
So you see, there's no easy, painless method of saving souls. Evangelism costs something. It means anxiety, severe soul conflict, sacrifice; and there are no short cuts. The church must be willing to sacrifice and pay the price if it is to have success in winning souls. Soul winning is not easy, my friends; it is a difficult task. It costs blood and sweat and tears. We must be willing to pay the price, but the rewards are enormous.
You've heard of D. L. Moody. All the evangelists know D. L. Moody. One time Moody was late for the meeting. Thou sands of people were waiting. "Where is Mr. Moody?" They all looked around. And then someone went to his hotel room. When he came to Moody's door, he heard a voice in prayer. It was Moody's voice, and he was crying to God: "Oh, God, give me souls or take my soul!" And that is why Moody won souls.
One time a group was talking about calling Moody to hold a meeting, and a fellow evangelist was jealous. Envy is a terrible thing, isn't it? So this fellow said in a sarcastic way, "Does Moody have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?" And the answer came back, "No, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly on him."
So I say, brethren, there's no easy way, no painless method. I've not found any way yet to take the difficulty out of it. Evangelism puts a knot in your stomach. It puts butterflies in your breast. Sometimes it causes you to lose your appetite. Some times you cannot sleep; the burden is heavy upon you. But when Zion travails, when the birth pains come, the child is about to be born! When a woman goes into labor, when the pains come, and come again, and come again, you'd better call the hospital!
And a church without any travail, a church without any earnest prayer, a church without any knots in its stomach, a church without any labor for souls, will never have any children. That is a sterile church, a barren church. That is a church that will never grow.
Now, what is your job? What is my job? Our job is to induce labor pains in the church. That's our job! You ought to lay the burden upon the hearts of the people. You are not to do all the work yourself. There is a work for the church to do; the people must be involved. We must tell the people, "This is your work."
Get every department of the church involved, everybody sharing the burden. Ellen White has told the ministry many times, "You must not do all the work yourselves." Some preachers want to do all the talking, all the praying, all the doing, all the visiting, all the teaching, and to let the members be spectators. They are looking on; they're enjoying it. And the pastor is wearing himself out. He'll go down to an early grave, and we will say, "What a wonderful man he was! He was a hard worker." He was also a foolish man, for the Lord has said, "Share the burden. Bring everyone into the process. Involve the total church—men, women, and children."
Someone told me that a new member must wait six months before he gives a Bible study! I told my friend, "After six months, without witnessing for his faith, he'll be just as cold as you are." We must bring them in and immediately put them to work. Your job is to assign the people their task. You are not merely to preach to the people. All of us are ministers in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The ministry belongs to the people of God. All of us have a ministry to perform, and you are robbing the people when you take their ministry from them. My Jewish friends in New York City used to roll their children in baby carriages. They kept them in those baby carriages until sometimes the baby was a year old—and still in the carriage! Two years old, and still in the carriage! Keeping babies in baby carriages makes them invalids. They need to get out of the baby carriages.
"But," somebody says, "they will fall and stumble. They will bruise them selves." But that's the only way to learn to walk!
Some ministers make their people spiritual invalids. They keep them in the baby carriages. They push them around. They tell bedtime stories to them. They do everything for them and make them invalids. I say to you, brethren, your job is not to do six men's work; your job is to put six men to work!
Assisting at birth
Now, my son-in-law asked me a hard question the other day. He said, "Have you ever been in the delivery room and helped to bring a baby into the world?" I said, "No. In my day, when men were men, they didn't allow us in." Really, I probably would have fainted. But they have a new approach now. The father goes right in with the wife, and he helps the doctor. He puts on a gown and a mask, until you can't tell the doctor from the daddy. And there he is when the baby is born.
So I asked my son-in-law, "What is the purpose of all this?"
"It makes the father more involved; it makes him a better father—helps him to understand what's going on. He sympathizes with the mother, loves the children better."
Well, let me tell you, friends, it is time for the whole church to go into the delivery room. Not only the evangelists, not only the pastor, not only the Bible instructor, but the lay activities leader, and the conference president, and the departmental leaders, and the General Conference brethren. And when we all go into the delivery room, then it's our baby!
I've heard some people say, "The evangelist baptized them too soon. He didn't instruct them. He just brought them in and put them in the water. They went down dry devils and came up wet devils." But, my friends, if we're there when the baby's born, and we see that new life come into the world, and we're involved in the process, it's not the evangelist's baby, it's our baby. We all must save the baby, even the premature ones. We'll put them in the incubator; we'll keep them warm. We'll make everything inviting for them. Why? Because the baby must grow, and we're all happy when he does.
One of these days we're going to have the greatest population growth in the church since the day of Pentecost. But before that can take place, the church must agonize. The church must go into serious, earnest prayer. The church must examine itself. We must see to our own garments. We must be willing to risk everything personal loss, the possibility of being called fanatics. We must be willing to spend and be spent. And when that happens, call the doctor, because the baby's going to be born!
Walls in the church
But is that the situation in the Seventh-day Adventist Church today? We must admit the church has become lazy, self-centered, and preoccupied with trivialities. May I preach the gospel to you straight today? There is too much picking fault with each other, too much splitting of theological hairs, too much dividing up into various camps—the highbrows and the lowbrows, the educated and the uneducated, the blacks and the whites. There are all kinds of little groups in the church today, each going its own separate way.
I hope I'm not offending you by preaching straight. Walls are being built up, shutting some out and excluding others from our circle. As long as that takes place there will be no revival in God's house. We need to take those ice cubes out of the refrigerator and put them out in the sun. Sister White says some of us have a frigid religion. Some churches could be called the First Church of the Frigidaire. We need to come up out of the cellar, Ellen White says, out of the darkness, the coldness, the selfishness, and out into the sunlight. And when the sunlight shines upon those ice cubes, they may all be separate, but as they warm, they melt, and finally they will all flow together.
Isn't that what's needed in God's church? We all need to come out of our little cliques, our little clans, our little special groups, out into the sunshine of God's love, and allow Him the Sun of Righteousness to beam down upon us. When that happens, old, cold Bradford will melt, and all of us will melt and flow together like two pools of water. Instead of saying "I," "me," and "mine," we will say, "we," "us," and "ours." You see, God taught hydrogen and oxygen to say "our," and that's how we have water. When we say "our," then we have unity in God's church.
Caught not taught
The church has become like a welfare state, sheltered, guided, protected, self-satisfied, big government, big business, weak individuals. The members call for sermons. "Come and preach to us, Pastor.
We need you to preach to us. We need more pastors. We need more sermons." Brethren, we've had enough sermons to put us in heaven already! We don't need more sermons; we need more doing. Ellen White says that the greatest work ministers can do is not to preach sermons but to put the people to work. Take them by the hand and give them on-the-job training. Let them see how you do it.
Elder R. A. Anderson used to say, "Evangelism is caught rather than taught." How do you learn to swim? By reading a book on swimming? The only way you'll ever learn to swim is to get into the water. Now, when we were boys, some would run and jump right into the water. Others were afraid. They would go down and put their toes in, and then a little more, and a little more. Finally one of the fellows would come up behind them and give them a push! Many members in our church need a little push, and the Lord has called you to be the pusher. You ought to push them into the water! You ought to tell them that the water's fine. They will tell others.
We need to change our whole philosophy. We're not great orators, charming large crowds with wonderful words. No, we are here to assign the people a responsibility. We are to see that everyone has something to do. There must be no drones in God's church, no lazy people in God's church. And you are to be the one to see that the work is done.
You know what happened in Amos' day. Amos had a controversy with the people because they were living in good times. The people were having a wonderful boom in tithe. They were building homes. They had the good things of life. And so the Lord sent a message to them through Amos: "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria, which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel came! ... That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall;. . . that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments: but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph" (Amos 6:1-6).
They were taking it easy, enjoying the Sabbath—a good Sabbath school and a nice sermon, and then home to dinner and a nice snooze in the afternoon. They had no agony of soul, no travail for the lost. They were apathetic, disinterested, thinking only about themselves. They looked to themselves and entertained themselves. They had beautiful music to soothe them. In today's world, they have their hi-fis and their TV sets and their wall-to-wall car pets. They have two-car garages and Cadillacs. They anoint themselves with the chief ointment; they're well deodorized. They shower two or three times a day. They don't like to get their hands dirty. They withdraw themselves from the dirty crowd. But the Lord says, "Woe to them."
You remember that those in the ninth chapter of Ezekiel who had the mark upon them were the ones who sighed and cried. They were the ones who were in agony of soul, and when Zion travailed, immediately she brought forth children. Then came joy. There was great rejoicing. There is no greater rejoicing than at the birth of a child! When a child is born, joy goes throughout the community. When a child is born, the family takes on new life. When a child is born, even hard men smile. And no greater joy can come to this church than to see souls born into her.
I'm looking forward to great things, brethren. Somebody has said that North America is dead. Nothing is going on. No souls are being saved. Some have said, "Well, you can't do evangelism here. The people are different here. They're more affluent here. They're materialistic here. Oh, you might be able to do evangelism down in Inter-America. They don't have money. They're poor. They have nothing else to do. But it's different here." And we've kept telling ourselves that for so long that we're beginning to believe it, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can't do it, so we don't do it.
But God did not call you to be a thermometer. He called you to be a thermostat. The thermometer can only tell you what the temperature is, but the thermostat can set it where it ought to be. If it's cold, the thermostat can make it hot.
Let me tell you, my friends, on the day of Pentecost there was wind and there was fire. There was also a noise. Something was happening. There were tongues of fire, the fire that warmed the disciples' hearts.
Restless angels
Let me tell you, a cold-hearted church cannot warm the cold-hearted world. It takes a warm-hearted church to burn its way through the coldness and indifference of this world, and God is waiting and ready to send us the wind and the fire. He is waiting and ready. He's restless. The angels are restless, wings rustling. They want to move out in power.
There's one mighty angel who is straining at the bit. He's the mightiest angel of all. He wants to come down with great power. He's the fourth angel, isn't he? We see a picture of him in Revelation 18. And he is saying, "Lord, I want to go down with great power." That fourth angel is prancing like a boxer getting ready to go into the ring. That fourth angel wants to give the devil a knockout blow. He says to the Father, "Let me go now." He sees the world in sin.
But the Father says, "You must wait a little while. The church is not ready. They are looking at little things. They are thinking about themselves 'What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we put on? Wherewithal shall we be clothed?' They are in competition with each other. They are looking at their friend, but they don't rejoice in his success; they rejoice in his iniquity."
It's a funny thing when the Lord blesses a brother and he has great success. He baptizes one hundred souls, and we say, "Well, he baptized a lot of children." "He had an easy place to work." "Everything was ready when he went in." "The people just fell into the baptismal pool." "He's not a very good evangelist. Things just went his way." But when a brother has some trouble, we begin telling it everywhere. "Did you hear? Brother Jones is out of the work. He's gone. He got in trouble." "What happened? What happened? Tell me some more."
We need to reverse that, my brothers. We need to begin praying for one another: "Oh, Lord, bless my brother over there. He is fighting a hard battle for souls." "Oh, Lord, I'm so happy. He's had many souls baptized. The church was built up. I'm so glad, Lord, You blessed him." This is the spirit we need today. What about it, brethren? And it is the only spirit that will bring the finishing of God's work.
Evangelism costs, but it pays. Some times the church is misunderstanding. Things are going badly. But you still fight the battle. You still press it. Let me tell you one thing, brother. You're going to receive your reward. How sweet that music will be on your ears when you hear the Saviour say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You were faithful down there in New Jersey. You were faithful in Florida, Illinois, and Michigan. Wherever you worked, you were faithful. You had opposition, but you were faithful. Enter now into the joy of the Lord."
What is the joy of the Lord? Heaven rejoices when one sinner repents. That's the joy of the Lord! When you walk down heaven's boulevard, looking all around—golden streets, crystal-clear river, tree of life on both sides—you will see something familiar, a familiar form walking toward you. Who is it? Ah, it's that brother who was baptized that time when you had so much trouble and you wanted to give up. And there he is! He's rejoicing in heaven. And he will shout with you.
The cost to God
Last of all, I want to tell you that evangelism cost God something too. He paid a great price. During the civil war in Spain the rebels captured a general's son. They took him to their stronghold. They got the general on the wire, and they said to him, "We have your son, and we will put him on."
The son said something like this, "Father, they say if you don't give up the fort they're going to kill me. If you don't surrender, they'll take my life."
"Well, son," replied the general, "say your prayers; cry, 'Viva la Espana!' and die like my son."
So on that Friday afternoon—I can see the picture in my mind—as our Saviour is hanging on the cross, the enemy is telling him, "Give yourself up. Come down from the cross. Why should you sacrifice your self for those people? They're worthless. They reject your love. If you don't give up this plan of salvation, then you must die."
And so the Father says to His Son, "Die like My Son. Cry, 'Long live the world,' and die like My Son."
Can we neglect the sacred trust and deny that Man who died on the cross? Can we turn our backs on a dying world? Can we go selfishly on our own way? No, we cannot do it, for when we see Calvary we find out the worth of a soul. So I will not complain anymore. The blood. The sweat. The tears. All the sacrifice. Brother, it's cheap enough, isn't it? For one soul our Saviour would die.
I want to give myself again to Him today. How about you? The love of God constrains us. That's the secret of it all. And when the love of Christ is in my heart, it is a burning fire. I can't hold it back! You could just as soon stop Niagara from flowing or stop the sun from shining. It is an irresistible force. We cannot hold it back. We have to preach the message, isn't that so?
