“A popular evangelist reaches your emotions. A true prophet reaches your conscience.” (Leonard Ravenhill)

“Any method of evangelism will work—if God is in it.” (Leonard Ravenhill)

I'll admit I'm puzzled.

About twenty or so years after the Church started, two apostles, who made no great public claims about themselves and their work, walked into a city called Thessalonica and immediately set the place into an uproar because they were preaching that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. As soon as it was known they were in the city, a riot broke out and the house where they were staying was attacked, and the owner, Jason, and some other men who where there were dragged before the city rulers.

What scared the Thessalonica citizens so much about these two apostles?

They were afraid that what the apostles had done in other places they would do in Thessalonica: "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too." What they did not understand, of course, was that by preaching Christ and turning the world upside down, Paul and Silas were really turning the world right-side up.

But the point is that a city was shaken by two apostles coming into it and preaching that Jesus is the Christ. It was so shaken by the arrival of these two humble men of God that some of the good citizens broke the city laws and rioted.

The coming of spring in the United States marks the beginning of the annual fervent evangelistic efforts—characterized by conventions, conferences, and camp meetings. It's a frenetic time of doing and proclaiming. Not proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ, but proclaiming that one's particular activity is the biggest and best, and is the one where the presence of God and the power of the Holy Spirit will be manifested the most.

Now all of these activities will be held in various cities and towns throughout the United States, and at the same time there will be summer evangelistic activities by most of the local churches. They will hold local camp meetings, plays, music festivals, vacation Bible schools, door-to-door visitations, and many will buy and try whatever new evangelistic program has been devised by those organizations who sell them.

What puzzles me about all this activity, however, is that if this evangelistic season is like all the rest, there will be no cities shaken because men and women of God either have come there or live there, and no good citizens will riot in the streets because they're afraid of the message that's being proclaimed.

Oh, there will be many claims of great spiritual success by holders of conferences and camp meetings, and many will claim that cities were shaken by their evangelistic effort—perhaps by such things as the visitation of "power teams" displaying their physical powers on God's sacred altars. Or perhaps there will even be reports on the marvelous effect attendance at the "revival" has had on the local economy, such as was reported about a Florida city.

But when the snows of winter come, the cities where all these evangelistic activities took place will still be the same spiritually as they were when the first sign of spring budded forth. There will have been no shaking, no attacking the homes and Hiltons were the visitors stayed, no rioting in the streets, no fear by the citizens that their world was going to be "turned upside down" by these visitors and their proclamations.

That's why I'm puzzled.

Why is that two visiting men of God could so affect the citizens of a city two-thousand years ago, and thousands of men and women of God will visit cities in the United States during this summer season, and the cities will barely know they were ever there?

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