1 877-431-4276Danger on the Mission Field | Daniel King
On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast we hear stories about danger on the mission field. Evangelist Daniel King shares stories of the most dangerous situations he’s ever faced when preaching the Gospel. We read Psalms 91 and as you listen you will learn about God’s plan to protect you even when you are under attack.
Transcript:
Jace Gustin (00:00):
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we hear stories about danger on the mission field. Evangelist Daniel King shares the most dangerous situations he has ever faced while preaching the gospel. We read Psalms 91, and as you listen, you’ll learn about God’s plan to protect you while under attack.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:30):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:55):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Jace Guston. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast
Jace Gustin (01:08):
And I’m glad to be here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:10):
Alright, so Jace, you have just started an internship with King Ministries and you have a great heart for missions. Where are a couple of the countries that you’ve been to so far?
Jace Gustin (01:23):
So I’ve really just been to Guatemala and Brazil.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:27):
And you had a great time in both those countries.
Jace Gustin (01:31):
Yes, we’ve seen a lot of people went over for Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:34):
And so you have a heart to go to the mission field to tell lots of people about Jesus.
Jace Gustin (01:40):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:40):
And we’ve been talking some about what God has put on your heart. Do you have any questions about the mission field?
Jace Gustin (01:50):
Yeah, so I wanted to ask just one big question and it’s that, what was the most dangerous trip you’ve ever been on?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:00):
The most dangerous thing that we’ve seen on the mission field? That’s a great question. Well, first of all, I don’t think we should be too worried about going to the mission field. In Psalms 91 11, it says that God gives his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. And one time there was a missionary who said that there are no closed doors just as long as you don’t care whether you come back. And that’s true, we can go anywhere because we know that if we were to die, we are going to go to heaven. And so we don’t worry that much about the danger. Of course, you don’t want to tempt God. And so we take proper precautions. And over the years we’ve seen a variety of dangerous situations, but God has always protected us. And when I think about danger in the mission field, I really like to remember the example of Reinhard Bonnke, the great missionary evangelist from Germany. And one time he was doing a crusade in the nation of Sudan. And at that time, Osama Bin Laden was living in Sudan. He was the same one who attacked America on nine 11 and knocked down the World Trade Center. And at that time he was in Sudan. And when he heard that this evangelist was coming to Sudan to preach the gospel in cartoon, he actually sent threats by email to the offices of Christ for all nations. And so everyone was wondering, do we shut shut down the big festival?
(03:58):
And his staff, they’re wondering what would happen being threatened by this terrorist. And this is what God said to Reinhard. God said, you are Satan’s prime target for destruction, but you are my prime target for protection. I like that.
(04:19):
And so even when Satan threatens to attack us, even when he tries to come against us, we can know that we are under the protection of God. He wants to take care of us. Alright, so dangerous situations on the mission field. My parents were missionaries in the country of Mexico. And so we grew up working in the streets of Juarez, Mexico right across from El Paso, Texas. And every single week we would go across the border from El Paso into Juarez and we would minister on the streets. And of course in Juarez there’s a lot of different drug wars. At one time, Juarez, Mexico was one of, it was the number one murder capital in the world. So more people were being murdered per a hundred thousand people in Juarez than any other city on earth. And so it was dangerous. And so one time as my father was preaching in a church up on a hill, I wanted to go out in front of the church and invite people to come in. And so I went down the hill and started talking to a group of teenagers that were there and one of the teenagers, he was part of this Mexican gang drug gang, and he was angry that we were there preaching about Jesus. And so he reached in his pants and pulled out a pistol
(06:01):
And pointed it right at my forehead and told me to never come back to the neighborhood. And I didn’t really know what to do. I was just a teenager at the time.
Jace Gustin (06:13):
Not
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:14):
Scary, it was a little scary. But what I did is I went and I handed him a flyer and said, you’re invited to come to the meeting. And then I turned around and went back up the hill. And in wars, Mexico, we always saw God do great results, but sometimes people threw stones at us. I remember one time my father was preaching in the dump area in wars. There was this dump that people would go and they would dig through the trash in order to find tin cans in order to recycle, to make money. And so they’d support their entire family just going through the trash. Well, we would go to the dump and we would preach. And one time we were there preaching, and again there was a group of teenagers and they picked up some stones and they started throwing them at my father.
(07:12):
One of them hit my father on the head and he started to bleed, but he just kept preaching. And so that was kind of the example that I followed. And we’ve had people throw stones at us in different countries. I was in Ethiopia one time and in Ethiopia it’s about 30% Muslim. And so we were in an area that had quite a few Muslims in it. And I remember I was going out, passing out flyers, inviting people to come to the festival and there were a group of teenagers that got in my face and they started yelling at me and one of them knew a little bit of English and he started just getting in my face, why you say three gods? Why you say three gods, which he’s referring to the Trinity. Christians believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three unique beings together as one Godhead, three and one, one and three. That’s the way it has to be.
(08:19):
But Islam thinks that saying that there’s three gods is a blasphemy against the one true God, which Christians do believe in one God, but one God in three beings. And so they’re really mad at that. And I was quickly surrounded by a group of maybe 20 or 30 of these young Muslim boys and they were all yelling at me. And so I got out there just as quick as I could. Again, I invited them to come and many of them came. Then we were in Lalo, Chile, Ethiopia, and there was a Muslim mosque that was right next to the festival grounds. And so the imam of the mosque, he called people to come and pray five times every day. And his speaker was really loud and he turned it all the way up so that everyone could hear. But we were there for a crusade.
(09:19):
So our speaker was much louder than his speaker. And so as we drove by the mosque on Friday night, which is normally when people would go to the mosque, we noticed that out in front of the mosque, there were only 10 slippers there. So all of the people that would normally be at the mosque, we suspected they were probably at the festival with us. And so on Saturday night, they were really upset that we were there. So as we were driving past the mosque, somebody from inside threw a massive stone, probably about the size of a watermelon
(10:00):
And threw it over the fence and hit the side of our vehicle. And so it made a loud of bang when it hit and we’re like, what was that? And so we looked out and okay, well they were just throwing rocks at us. So we got stoned and we didn’t do anything, but we figured that the devil was mad that so many people were getting saved at the festival. By the way, we sometimes call what we do crusades in some countries it’s a crusade, but for Muslim nations we would call it a festival because of course the word crusade has a bad connotation for Muslims because during the Middle Ages, the people doing the crusades, they came and attacked Jerusalem, the Christians. And so we don’t call it a crusade, we call it a festival. Okay? So we’ve had, let’s see, one of the early events that we participated in was a crusade in Iquitos Peru.
(11:17):
Iquitos is in the jungle of Peru, right on the Amazon River. And so we actually rented a boat one day and went up the Amazon River and stopped at every village. As we passed by, we saw on the bank there was a little village. So we stopped, went and preached to the village and then went to the next village and preach. And so in Iquitos, when we first got there, they said that right now there’s a lot of unrest in the city. We said, well, why is there unrest? And it was the local teachers were rioting. And the reason they were rioting is because they hadn’t been paid in like a year. And so the government owed them lots of money and the government kept promising, oh, we’re going to pay you. We’re going to pay you next month. Don’t worry, we’re definitely even pay you next month.
(12:13):
But they never got the money. And so finally the teacher’s union shut down all the schools and they announced that they were going to hold riots. And so all of these teachers and all of their friends and their whole families, they were going through the city and we were scheduled to have the crusade right in the main plaza in Iquitos. And they warned us, they said, tonight is the big night where they’re planning to riot. And so they said, just be ready to shut down the crusade at any moment if people come. And so I was there preaching in the center plaza in Iquitos, and we heard reports that this riot was on the way and it was like 10 blocks away. And I said, well, is it bad? And I said, well, they’re taking sticks and breaking windows of the shops along the way.
(13:27):
Some of the people are starting fires. And I said, yeah, that’s pretty bad. And so I said, well, keep me informed if it comes close. And so then we got the report, okay, now they’re nine blocks away. Now they’re eight blocks away. And so as they’re coming down the street, all the shops were closing. They had garage door type things out in front of the shop. And so they pull the garage door down and so that their windows wouldn’t be busted. And someone came up behind me and they’re like, preach faster, preach faster. They’re only five blocks away now. And so I got as quick as I could to the altar call, and when they were four blocks away, I told the entire team, get on the bus and head back to the hotel. Just leave one car for me. And so we had a big crowd.
(14:16):
I gave the altar call and lots of people prayed with us for salvation. And I said, amen. And dismissed the crowd and our crowd left the plaza going this direction as the riot of teachers was coming in from the other direction. And so they stayed there all night long. They tore tires off some of the cars and set them on fire and had bonfires. And so we got all that on video. I told my cameraman, I said, go get some video of it. This is good video. We can show people what’s happening. But as the right is coming in one side of the plaza, we said, amen. People got saved and we left and no one was hurt in ketos Peru. Alright, so one of the scriptures that I really like to think about in times of difficulty is Psalms 91, which is a psalm that talks about how God will protect us. So Chase, why don’t you read through Psalms 91, and as you’re listening, I want you to think about how God has plans to protect us even in the most difficult situations. Alright, go ahead.
Jace Gustin (15:44):
Yes. So we have it here. I’m starting from verse one.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:48):
Yeah, it’s starting in verse one of Psalms 91.
Jace Gustin (15:50):
Alright, so it says, he who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I’ll say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, and who my trust. Surely he will save you from the Fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence, he will cover you with his feathers. And under his wings you’ll find refuge. His faithfulness will be your shield and your rampart. You’ll not fear and terror of the night, nor will the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:31):
Alright, let’s take a break there. I’m thinking of another story. So I was in Goma Congo, and that’s where I met my wife Jessica. So she was a festival director. She was actually helping to organize and set up festivals. And I was a young evangelist, and so God took me all the way over to Goma Congo, right on the board of Rwanda and Congo. And it was at that festival that I met Jessica, but the conditions were really difficult. Goma has an active volcano and it had erupted a few years before we were there. And so lava covered half the city. And as you’re walking through the city, you could see iron bars sticking up out of the ground of windows of the houses that used to be there. And so the lava had come, covered the houses, but the iron bars from the windows were sticking up out of the ground and the lava made everything super dirty.
(17:40):
By the end of the day, you would basically be completely black and you would go back to the hotel and take a shower and it would take maybe five or 10 minutes for the water to wash all of the dirt and the black lava dust off of you. And that part of Congo is very rough. There’s a lot of different groups that are rebelling against the government gorilla groups. And so as the sound truck was coming to that location, it passed through an area where there were gorilla groups that were in control. And so they tried to stop the truck, but we gave instructions just keep going. And so as they passed the truck, they took a shot at the truck and when it arrived, it had two bullet holes in the container of the truck and one of the local leaders who was helping to sponsor the event, he was a colonel in the army of Congo.
(18:57):
And so he says, don’t worry, don’t worry. He says, we will protect you. And I went and preached to this church. He was a colonel, but he also had a church. He was a pastor. And as I was preaching for him, I noticed that in front of his Bible, he had three cell phones, which it’s very poor there in Congo. So to just have one cell phone is a big deal. But he had three of them. And I said, why do you have three cell phones? He’s like, that’s my personal cell phone. He says, that’s the cell phone that the Army uses if they want to call me. And I said, what’s the third one? He says, that cell phone was given to me by the president of Congo. If he wants to reach me, he says, I want you to make sure that you always have this phone so I can reach you anytime I want to call you.
(19:43):
So he had a direct line right to the president of Congo and he had a group of soldiers and he says, I’ll send my soldiers to the festival to protect you. So a lot of his soldiers were very young, like 14, 15 years of age, and they all had full armor with these big guns and everything, AK 40 sevens. And when the evangelists came to the field, they would run along beside his car to get us there to the platform. And then they stood around the platform, the entire service. And I was a little scared because I have a 14-year-old son and he loves swords. And the other day he threw a sword onto a bed and cut up one of the sheets. And my wife was like, don’t you know how to handle a weapon responsibly? I can’t imagine my 14-year-old son with an AK 47. But here you have these 14, 15-year-old teenage boys that are in the Congo military protecting us at the
Jace Gustin (21:04):
Crusade.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
And then they took it upon themselves to make sure that the crowd didn’t get too unruly. And so the evangelist would say, who needs a miracle? Everyone would raise their hand and even some people that were sick would start running forward to the front and these teenage soldiers with their AK 47 would grab a whip and start to whip people to stay back from the platform and say, no, please don’t hit the people. Don’t hit the people. And they’d be whipping them and say, get in line, stop being unruly. But then I noticed that one of these 14 year olds kids, he didn’t have an AK 47, he had a surface to air missile and a big missile on his back. And I was thinking, if any helicopters attack our crusade, we’re going to be okay. We got our surface to air missile and he stood at the back and just looked important there with his service to air missile. And it felt a little dangerous because of these military guys that were there. But this verse, you’re just reading, it says that I whatever slings and arrows, you will not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that flies by day. And so even though we were shot at in Congo, we didn’t worry because of Psalms 91. Alright, keep reading, let’s start there.
Jace Gustin (22:36):
From seven,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:36):
Yeah,
Jace Gustin (22:38):
Eight a thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:44):
Alright, let’s talk about this. A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 by your right hand. I was in Juba Sudan, and this was right after a civil war between what is now North Sudan and South Sudan had just ended. And so we were literally the first Christian organization that went in after the war ended. And lots of people were hungry because they’d been fighting and not much food had been able to get in. And so for the crusade in Juba, we bought 10 huge trucks full of food in Uganda and drove them up to Juba to give away. And so these were huge dump trucks. Each one filled with corn and rice and I think we brought some soap and some cooking oil, just different materials. All in all, it was like 53 tons of food. It’s a lot to give away to people. And the people were hungry. And so we were thinking, okay, if we pull up at the crusade grounds and start giving out this food, there’s going to be a riot. How can we give it away?
(24:20):
And we came up with an idea that we’re going to distribute the food to the churches that participated in the crusade. And then we were going to give away coupons at the crusade. So anyone who came to the crusade could get a coupon. And then on Sunday morning they could go to a Sunday morning service at one of the local churches and if they went, then the local churches would be able to give out the food. And so that kept it from being a big riot at the crusade grounds. But I was one of the team members at this crusade in Juba, and I was assigned to give away the coupons at one of the gates. So we had it in a football stadium or soccer stadium. And so people would come in one of the gates, and it was my job to give everybody who came in the gate a coupon.
(25:20):
And someone asked me, what is the coupon for? And I said, oh, later on you’ll be able to take it to the church and get some food. And so when they heard that there was going to be food, the people started rioting for the coupons. And at first it was like a dozen people yelling and then suddenly it was a hundred people yelling. And then suddenly it was like 2000 people pushing, trying to get a coupon. And people were pushing and yelling and grabbing for them. And I was trying to politely give everyone, I think you already got one. And so finally I had to take the entire batch of coupons I had and I threw it as far away from me as I could way up in the air. And so the coupons went everywhere and I went running in the other direction so that I could save myself. And so even though there are people falling down on the crowd, a thousand at one hand, 10,000 at the other hand, I survived passing out coupons for free food. Alright, keep reading.
Jace Gustin (26:42):
Alright, so yes, but it will not come near you. You’ll only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you make the most high, your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will befall you. No disaster will come near your tent for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:14):
So we actually have angels that are guarding us. I’m thinking about Pakistan. We’ve done quite a few different crusades in Pakistan. And I remember one of the first events that we did there, everybody that came to our event had to pass through a metal detector. They were worried that someone might bring a bomb to attack people. And then the police came and they put sharp shooters on all the houses surrounding where the festival was going to be. And most of these policemen are assigned by the government to protect us as foreigners because the government doesn’t want an incident. But these guys are Muslims. And so one night there was a Muslim policeman, his name was Muhammad Nassim, and he was blind in one eye that night Jesus healed him. And this policeman who had a big gun, he actually came to the platform to testify and says, I was blind in my left eye, but tonight when you prayed to Jesus, Jesus opened my eye and now I can see.
(28:37):
And so I said, what’s your name? He said, my name is Muhammad Nasim. And so of course everyone knew that he was a Muslim and the word spread that Jesus was healing Muslims. Another time I was going to Pakistan Ann, and the week before I went, I ministered at a church in Rockwall, Texas and God spoke to the pastor’s wife there in Rockwall that their church was supposed to be praying for us and God actually gave her a vision. And in the vision she saw that we were in danger and guns were being pointed at us. And so she said, we commit as a church to be praying for you. So we went, we were preaching and saw great results. The local imam came, stood in the back of the festival, saw all the people that were being healed by Jesus, and he went to his moss the next day and told everyone, Jesus is healing the Muslim people.
(29:37):
So if you want to be healed, go and the prophet Jesus will heal you. And so even the imam was encouraging people to go, but there were some that were not happy that we were there. And so on the last night as we were leaving this festival, we were out in the middle of this village, kind of in the middle of nowhere, and we were leaving on this dirt road that passed through some fields. And the bishop that we worked with, he suddenly told our driver drive faster because there was a suspicious car that was following us. And so this bishop, he’s a little elderly, and during the festival he would always kind of fall asleep on the platform when I was preaching, but then he would nod off and I’d get to a good point in my sermon, and then he would suddenly wake up and say amen and pretend like he hadn’t been sleeping.
(30:41):
But anyways, this bishop, he told the drive faster. So we sped up and this car that had five young Muslim guys who looked suspicious, it sped up and was following us. And so up ahead of us, suddenly there was a bicycle motorcycle, not a bicycle, a motorcycle that was parked in the middle of the road. And the guy who had the motorcycle, he had a handkerchief and he was trying to get us to stop. And the bishop told the driver, he says, just drive around him, just keep going. So we swerved into the field, drove around him and kept going. And as we passed him, the guy took a rifle off his shoulder and he shot at us. Bam.
(31:42):
We thought the driver was driving fast before, but now he really stepped on the gas. So he’s doing really fast. And the bishop’s wife, she started to pray in tongues at the top of her voice. She was just praying really loud. And then the bishop’s daughter, she had a baby that had just recently been born. And so she was scared. She thought her baby had been shot. And so she was freaking out and what are we? And so my wife was there with me, my wife was pregnant with Caleb at the time, and I was very proud of my wife. She started to minister to the daughter and saying, it’s okay, your baby’s okay, don’t worry, you weren’t shot. And then I was looking out the back window and trying to figure out what was happening, and this car was still following us with these Muslim young in it.
(32:40):
And so my wife, she was ministering to the daughter and then she kept turning to me and pulling me down and saying, if they shoot someone, they’re going to shoot the white face, so get down. And so she’s ministering to them. And of course I wasn’t listening to my wife, I was pulling, I kept looking out the back window. She kept pulling me down and ministering to the daughter. And then I looked over at the bishop and I didn’t know it, but the bishop had been carrying a pistol the entire time. And so he pulls this pistol out of his pants and he’s waving it around the car. And I don’t know much about guns, but I know you’re not supposed to point it at me. And so I’m like, Bishop, don’t point that thing at me, point it out the window, don’t point it at me.
(33:28):
And he’s waving the pistol all over, yelling at the driver, drive faster, drive faster. And this car is following us. And so we’re all praying and my wife is ministering to the daughter and then pulling me down and I wasn’t listening to her. And so we drove like this for like 20 minutes and then finally we were able to get off the dirt roads onto the main road, make some turns, and after 20 minutes we lost the car that was following us. I knew everything was going to be okay. When I looked over at the bishop and he had put away the pistol and he had fallen back asleep, that’s when I knew everything was going to be okay. But the amazing thing is, is that when we got back to the United States, the church from Rockwell called us and they said, we were in the middle of our Sunday morning service and we felt like we were supposed to pray for you guys.
(34:24):
So we stopped singing our praise and worship songs and we spent 20 minutes praying for you guys. And we figured out the time difference between Texas and Pakistan. And the very time that they were prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray for us was the time that we were in danger in Pakistan. And so the principle here is that if God prompts you to pray for someone, sometimes you’ll think of someone that you haven’t thought of for a long time and suddenly you’re like, why am I thinking about my Aunt Molly? Well, maybe it’s because your Aunt Molly needs prayer right now.
(35:10):
And so when the Holy Spirit prompts you to pray for someone, it’s probably because they’re facing a situation and they might be in danger. And so this church, they prayed for us at the exact time that we were in danger. So sometimes we need to be very sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit because he will bring people to our remembrance. He’ll prompt us to pray for people. And so now sometimes I’ll think of someone, why am I thinking of that person? Well, it’s probably because God wants me to pray for them. I’ll take a moment to just cover them in prayer. Alright, let’s keep reading.
Jace Gustin (35:57):
They will lift you up in their hands so that you’ll not strike your foot against a stone. You’ll tread upon the lion and the cobra. You’ll trample the great lion and the serpent, because he loves me, says the Lord. I’ll rescue him. I’ll protect him for he acknowledged my name. He’ll call upon me and I’ll answer him. I’ll be with him in trouble and I’ll deliver him and honor him with a long life. Will I satisfy him and show him my salvation?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:41):
So one time we were in k Myanmar, Burma, and we were doing a three night festival there. And as we were preaching, there were gang members who got saved. They were addicted to drugs, and they actually came up and threw all their drug paraphernalia up on the stage and we’re crying out. Jesus set me free. And so Jesus was setting them free from being addicted to drugs. And on the last night of the festival, the gang that was selling drugs in that neighborhood, they came and they attacked the brother of my crusade director who was helping me to organize that event. And they threw rocks at him and picked up sticks and beat him. And they hurt him so severely that he went to the hospital. He was in the hospital for several days. He had blood streaming from several cuts on his head, his face and his back was really bruised badly.
(38:04):
And we don’t know if he was attacked because they were Buddhists who were mad that we’re preaching about Jesus or because they were gang members who were mad that we are setting people free from drugs. We’re not quite sure why he was attacked, but he was attacked. And so there is potentially danger when you preach the gospel, but God also has special protection for you. Another time I’m thinking about my mother and father. So after 20 years as missionaries in Mexico and Juarez, which as I said earlier was the murder capital of the world for a period, then I kind of joke around and says it got too dangerous for them in Juarez. So they decided to go somewhere else and the place they decided to go was Kabul, Afghanistan, which probably is even more dangerous. But I was so proud of my parents. They went and they were in Kabbala, Afghanistan, and they taught at a school there.
(39:15):
But they had some friends that they went to their house for prayer meeting. They were very close friends of my family. And they had a son and a daughter who went to the school that my parents taught at and were actually the son and the daughter. They were in classes with my brother who was teaching there. Well, the Taliban attacked this family and it was in the middle of the day. They attacked the house where they lived. They used rifles and machine guns to attack their house, started throwing grenades. And so my mother and father, they lived just a couple of blocks away and you don’t really know what’s going on, but suddenly you hear all the gunshots and the grenade blasts going off. And so my mother and father didn’t have anything to do, but to get under their bed and to pray. And so they stayed there for several hours because the Taliban attacked and then the Afghan military was called and they attacked the Taliban.
(40:35):
And so all day long my parents were hiding under their bed listening to the bomb blasts, grenades, the rifles going off and just praying. And it wasn’t until later that they found out what happened. The Taliban came in and they killed several Afghans there that this man had been working with. They killed the father and they killed the son and the daughter, both teenagers and the mother escaped because she wasn’t there at the time. But she had to come in to the hospital, the morgue, and identify the bodies of the father and her son, her daughter. And as she’s identifying them, the Afghan doctor was really surprised and said, why are you so peaceful? Usually if someone has a family member who dies, they’re freaking out, they’re crazy. And she was able to minister to the Afghan doctor in the morgue say, I can have peace because I love Jesus.
(41:53):
And Jesus. He died to save them from their sins. And because they believed in Jesus, they’re going to go to heaven. And if you will cry out to Jesus, you can go to heaven too. And so even right after this woman was seeing the bodies of her martyred husband and son and daughter, she had tremendous peace because of the prince of peace, Jesus whom she served. And so even in very difficult situations, we can have peace. Another time we were in Jammu, India and we actually had a situation where we set up a tent to do our festival in and a bunch of Hindus came and they rioted and they tore down our tent. And so they had 30 people who came in and they started marching around the place where we’re going to have our festival and basically saying, this is a Hindu nation and you are Christian, you can’t be meeting here. And they were acting very radically. So the pastor that we were working with, he went to the police to report the situation, say We have a permit. We were supposed to do a festival in this place, but they tore down our tent,
Jace Gustin (43:44):
They
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:45):
Tore down all the poles. And the policeman who was taking his report, he says, oh, I know what happened. He said, how do you know? He says, well, I was there. I was one of the people protesting. So they’re reporting this to the policemen. And the policemen had been one of the people there who was helping to tear down the tent. So the policemen weren’t able to help, but then a miracle happened. There was a local politician who came, and he was actually the head of one of the political parties that normally would be against Christians, but he heard that they tore down our things. And he came and he says, I don’t think this is right. And this politician, God really softened his heart. And he came to us and he says, the Hindus, they have their festivals and no one stops them. The Sikhs, they have their festivals and no one stops them.
(44:52):
He says, why shouldn’t the Christians be allowed to have a festival? And so he says, I’ll give you a place in town and you can have your festival there. And so we went from the outskirts of the city to he moved us right into the middle of the city, into this big hall that was normally used for weddings and that type of thing. And so we were able to have our festival there because God gave us favor with this Hindu politician. And many people were touched by God in that place. So there’s lots of potentially dangerous situations, but there are also great miracles that God does when we are obedient to him. And so I think it’s important to remember that we don’t need to fear, we are protected. God puts his angels in charge of us. And we read here in Psalms 91, these great promises of God, of what he can do to protect us, to help us. And ultimately we know that God will protect us here on earth. But even if something was to happen to us here on earth, we would go immediately upon death to be with God in heaven for all of eternity. Alright, let’s just finish by praying for protection. Jace, pray for my friend who is listening to this right now is maybe worried about going to the mission field. Just pray that God would protect our friends and that no harm would come to anyone on the mission field.
Jace Gustin (46:43):
Alright, well, father, we just invite you to be in our lives and that Father that in wherever we go, let it be guided and directed by your Holy Spirit so that wherever we are, we know that you are with us, that you are guiding us, and you’re just bringing us into the places that you have prepared to reach people for your name, for your glory. And Lord, just give us just the divine knowledge of where to go and what to say and how to act, and that we know and trust that you’ll carry us through it and protect us. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (47:29):
Amen. Thanks for listening to the Evangelism podcast.
Evangelism Podcast Host (47:33):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (48:35):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you. For
Evangelism Podcast Host (49:56):
More information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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Two Questions that Lead to Heaven | Ethan Hood
On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, I talk to Ethan Hood. He is only fourteen years old but he is already being used by God to lead people to Jesus. Today, he explains the Two Questions that can Lead to Heaven. Get ready to be inspired…If a fourteen year old can preach the Gospel, you can too!
Learn more about Ron & Christina Hood and their ministry: https://www.musgomissions.com/
Summary:
In this episode of the Evangelism Podcast, 14-year-old Ethan Hood shares how he uses his family’s “evangelism trailer” to share the gospel with people in his community. Ethan explains the two key questions he asks to start gospel conversations: “If today was your last day on Earth, are you sure you would go to heaven?” and “If you stood before God and He asked why He should let you into heaven, what would your answer be?” Ethan then walks through the five-part gospel presentation his family uses, covering grace, man, God, Christ, and faith. He shares testimonies of how this approach has led people to put their trust in Jesus, even including a 6-year-old child. At just 14 years old, Ethan has already seen God use him to share the good news and lead many to salvation.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, I talk to Ethan Hood. He is only 14 years old, but he is already being used by God to lead people to Jesus. Today he explains the two questions that can lead to heaven. Get ready to be inspired. If a 14-year-old can preach the gospel, you can too.
(00:29):
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:34):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Ethan Hood. He might be the youngest guest we’ve ever had on the Evangelism Podcast. Ethan, thank you for joining me today.
Ethan Hood (01:17):
Yeah, thank you for inviting me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:19):
Alright, so Ethan is the son of Ron and Christina Hood, great friends of ours here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they have a great ministry called Must Go Missions. And so Ethan has been our friend for many years. He hangs out a lot with my son Caleb, who’s also 14. And Ethan, do you remember meeting Caleb? How long have the two of you been friends now?
Ethan Hood (01:48):
As long as I can remember. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:51):
So you were pretty young when we first met. Now your father has a great heart for evangelism and he put together an evangelism trailer. Can you kind of describe for the people who are listening, what does the evangelism trailer look like?
Ethan Hood (02:07):
Yeah, so the evangelism trailer, it’s kind of like a food truck. So the sides open up and they’re flap so they open up and so you can speak from inside the truck to anybody passing by. So it’s painted sky blue with clouds all over it and it has big words, big letters on the front that say, are you going to heaven? Two questions are really answer. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:29):
Alright, so are you going to heaven? Two questions that reveal the answer, and in just a minute here we’re going to ask you what those two questions are. But first of all, kind of tell the people who are listening, how do your family use this evangelism trailer? What are some of the places you’ve taken it to and what would it typically look like when you use it?
Ethan Hood (02:55):
So we use it at different events and outreaches that happen all over the city. So we take it to the Tulsa Dream Center a lot and we talk to people there with Tulsa Dream Center. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:09):
So let’s tell people what the Tulsa Dream Center is. So we live in South Tulsa, but up in North Tulsa there is the Tulsa Dream Center run by our home church, a victory church. And there’s a lot of people that have a lot of needs up there in North Tulsa. And so our church has been reaching out to North Tulsa for many years now. People come to the Dream Center for food. They recently built a swimming pool to help teach kids how to swim up there and lots of ways to reach out to the community. And so sometimes they’ll do a big feeding event, and right now it’s Thanksgiving time and so they just gave out a bunch of turkeys and stuff. And so when people come for the food, you guys will take your trailer and you’ll park it there in the parking lot and as people are waiting in line, you’ll start to talk to them.
Ethan Hood (04:07):
Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:08):
Okay. So kind of tell us what those conversations are like. What do you say when people come and start talking to you?
Ethan Hood (04:15):
So for a lot of the time people are just wondering what the two questions are that I mentioned earlier. And so those
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:21):
Two now they’re wondering because big on the truck it says, are you going to heaven? Two questions that reveal the answer.
Ethan Hood (04:29):
Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:30):
Alright, so everyone’s wondering, Ethan, what are the two questions? Can you tell us what are the two questions that reveal if someone is going to heaven? I really want to know. I want to make sure I’m going to heaven when I die.
Ethan Hood (04:43):
Yeah. So the first question is that if today was your last day on Earth, are you sure that you would go to heaven?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:52):
Okay, so if today was my last day on Earth, am I sure? Well, I hope so. I sure hope I go to heaven.
Ethan Hood (05:00):
That’s the answer we get a lot of the time. And so then that’s why you have the second question. If you were to stand before God and he was to ask you, why should I let you into heaven, what would your answer be?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:13):
Well, what answer do people usually say there?
Ethan Hood (05:16):
Well, a lot of the times they are Christians. So they say, I believe in Jesus Christ and this is good. And once, if they say that, then we ask if we can pray for them if they need any prayer. But also a lot of the time they say, well, I’ve been a good person, I’ve done good things. And this is,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:35):
Oh yeah, I go to church sometimes. Every Christmas I go to church. I love going to church at Christmas time, usually you get some presents and stuff and you see a little twinkly line on the top of the tree. And so probably got to let me in if I go to church on Christmas. Do you hear that type of answer?
Ethan Hood (05:54):
Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:55):
Okay. And so if someone gives you that type of answer, what do you do?
Ethan Hood (05:59):
And so then that’s whenever we go into the main message,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:03):
The main message, Ethan, tell us the main message. How can we be sure that we’re going to heaven when we die?
Ethan Hood (06:10):
So we use a format that was made by an evangelist who taught other people how to lead people to Christ. And so it starts with grace, then man, then God, then Christ, and finally faith.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:27):
Okay, so let’s go through those. You start with grace, then you talk about man, then you talk about God, then you talk about Christ, then you talk about faith. And so each of those different points, I’m sure you would say several different things, maybe pull out some scriptures to talk about. Kind of walk us through how you would present the gospel to someone. By the way, I think that this format was originally developed by d James Kennedy, who he started evangelism explosion. And so he taught people to go through these five different points. Alright, so start with grace. What would you say about grace?
Ethan Hood (07:08):
So grace, it’s really short. You just share the verse, the verse. Romans 10 13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:21):
That’s a good place to start. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And so that’s God’s grace. Okay, then you go into talking about man. Now does it include women too? Is it Yes.
Ethan Hood (07:33):
This is man as humanity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:35):
Man as humanity. Okay. And so what would you say about humanity?
Ethan Hood (07:39):
And so a lot of people at this point are wondering, well, what do I have to be saved from? And so man, we have to be saved from sin and saved from death. And so we lead with Romans 3 23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:54):
Okay, I’ve sinned, you’ve sinned, we’ve all made mistakes. What is sin? What do you say? If someone asks you what is sin?
Ethan Hood (08:02):
Well, sin is the wrong things that we do, the things that keep us from God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:09):
And so when people sin, there’s a price that has to be paid. What’s that price?
Ethan Hood (08:15):
And so the Bible says in Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:26):
So Jesus was the only one who was ever sin free. He was the son of God and he, he died on the cross to take the price for our sins. So we’ve gone through grace and man, then we go to talking about God, what would you tell someone about God?
Ethan Hood (08:42):
And so a lot of people have misconceptions about God. Like I said earlier with the second question, they say, oh, well I’m a good person. I should get into heaven. They think that God is up there with a set of scales judging the things from the bad things you’ve done. And if you’ve done more good things than bad things, then you get into heaven. And so we really just explained that this is not how heaven works. And so heaven is a free gift and that leads into Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:09):
So if you’re talking about God, you might quote John three 16 there. Can you quote that for us? Do you know John three 16?
Ethan Hood (09:17):
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever shall believe in him shall be given eternal life
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:25):
And kind of explain what does that verse mean? Imagine you’re talking to someone they maybe haven’t heard John three 16 or they don’t really know what it means. What do you tell ’em it means?
Ethan Hood (09:36):
Yeah. So Jesus Christ came down from heaven and was born as a baby and he lived a sinless life and died on the cross for our sins. And if we believe in Jesus Christ, then we will be saved and we’ll be given eternal life in heaven.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:54):
Alright, so you talk about God, God loved the world so much, he gave his only son, and then you talk about Christ. What would you tell them about Jesus Christ?
Ethan Hood (10:04):
Yeah, so with Christ, we start off with Ephesians two, eight through nine, which says four, by grace we are saved through faith and that not of ourselves, it’s the gift of God not of works so that no one should boast.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:21):
Okay, so why was Jesus’ death on the cross necessary? Why was that needed for people to be saved?
Ethan Hood (10:28):
Well, we said in man sin, you have to pay a price for our sin. And so Jesus died on the cross for our sin. He paid the ultimate price so that we could live free sinless lives with Jesus. And so that’s what Christ is talking about. For our grace, we are saved through faith.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:50):
Alright, then we come to the fifth and final term that you talk about and that is faith. What is faith? How can someone have faith? How do we put our faith in Jesus Christ?
Ethan Hood (11:02):
Yeah, people really don’t know what faith is. So faith is kind of like trust. Faith is sitting in a chair, which is a common example that we use. If you sit in a chair, you have full trust in the chair, you completely trust in the chair that it’s going to hold you up and it’s not going to break. If you see a chair that one of its legs is broken, you’re not going to sit in it, you’re not going to trust it. You’re not going to have faith in it, so you’re not going to sit down on it. And that’s what we have to do. We have to have faith in Jesus that he can save us.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:36):
So we put our trust in Jesus, that through Jesus we can be saved.
Ethan Hood (11:41):
And so with a chair, if you sit down partially, but you still have all your weight on your feet, you’re not really sparing your feet, you’re still on your feet. So you have to put all of your trust in the chair so that you can have rest for your feet. See, you have to put all of your faith in Jesus. You can’t put some of your faith in Jesus and still try and do good things. Try to get into heaven that way. You have to put all of your faith in Jesus. That’s the only way to get into heaven.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:12):
Alright, so then if someone says, I’m ready. I want to put my faith in Jesus right now. I want to make sure I’m going to heaven, I want to make sure I’m saved. How do you lead them in the process of putting their faith in Jesus?
Ethan Hood (12:25):
Yeah, so we just start off with again, or not again, sorry. Romans 10, nine. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And it’s really that simple. You have to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart. And so we just lead them in the salvation prayer.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:47):
Okay, well why don’t you lead us in a salvation prayer right now. What would that sound like?
Ethan Hood (12:54):
Well, very simply, it’s just, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for me and for my sins. Thank you for your forgiveness that you’ve given me, and thank you for helping me to live with you forever. Jesus name, amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:10):
Amen. Alright, and then after someone says a salvation prayer with you, then what happens?
Ethan Hood (13:15):
Well, after that we ask if there’s anything they need prayer for, any problems that they have, family issues, anything like that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:23):
Alright, this is a great outline and you do a great job of quoting the scriptures, knowing how to present the gospel. Does this work, have you actually seen some people come to Jesus as you’ve been talking to them? Give me some testimonies. What have you seen happen?
Ethan Hood (13:41):
Yeah, this works all the time. Every time we go there are people who just come up interested and we tell them about this wonderful gift that God gave us and they believe. I remember one time we were at a community event, not a church outreach or anything, and it started raining. So we put up a tent to help people just get away from the rain. And so there was this family that was under this tent and they were just sitting there and we weren’t trying to force ’em or anything, we were just there, just reaching out to them, giving them water as we do. And eventually they just came up and asked, you guys are really nice, why are you like this? My dad and me, we just helped them go through this process and we just went through the process. This process is very adaptable so you don’t haveta halt, always start with the two questions. And so they didn’t come asking about the two questions. They came asking about why we’re so kind. And so with this process, it’s really easy. You can just share the gospel with anyone. And so we were able to lead these people to the Christ just originally just being kind to them and then helping them with this.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:59):
And you often give out water or something to people who are coming by.
Ethan Hood (15:04):
So we give out water and sometimes other drinks if they’re available and we just give them out. Sometimes it’s hot days and so they need water. So we’re just able to help the community and just help.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:17):
Alright, I got some rapid fire questions for you. One question is, what is the oldest person you’ve shared the gospel with and then what’s the youngest person you’ve shared the gospel with?
Ethan Hood (15:29):
Oldest person I’ve shared the gospel with, well, the cool thing about this, I haven’t just done this with my truck. I’ve been on mission trips and I’ve helped with this too. The oldest person I’ve shared the gospel with I think was in Florida. We were on a mission trip one year and we were going to door to door and knocking and just telling them about a block party that we were doing with our ministry there. And so we were just talking with them and if given the chance, we would tell them about Christ and tell them about Jesus. And so when we were talking, this old lady came to the door, I dunno how old she was, but she was maybe 60 or 70 and we were just,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:08):
Yeah, that’s really old.
Ethan Hood (16:09):
Yeah, we were just talking with her.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:11):
Don’t tell my grandma that.
Ethan Hood (16:14):
But we were just talking with her and just telling her about this block party and she was saying, oh, I don’t know if I can make it. And so we just started talking about how this gift that God gave us and how we can live free of the burden of sin. And so we just led her to Christ through that, just knocking on doors, giving out flyers, talking about Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:40):
That’s awesome. What about the youngest person? How young have you shared the gospel with someone, the
Ethan Hood (16:45):
Youngest person? Well, I think again, on the mission trip at this block party that we had, a lot of families came and a lot of children came because we were giving out clothes and toys and stuff. And well, we let our ministry let an altar call at this place and the people who lifted their hands, we would go out through them and just pray for them and just help them through it and just help them understand what they’re getting into because we don’t want to sign them up without actually telling them what they’re getting into. So we were doing this and there was this little boy who raised his hand and he was just wanting to know Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:27):
How old do you think this little boy was?
Ethan Hood (17:30):
He must’ve been six.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:33):
About six years old. Yeah. Okay. So from six all the way up to 70, you’ve seen the two questions work in sharing the gospel. Okay, here’s another question for you. How many times, just an estimate, doesn’t need to be exact, but how many times in the last 12 months do you think you’ve gone out with a truck witnessing?
Ethan Hood (17:55):
Yeah, so we’ve mainly done it over the summer, over the hot months, just handing out waters and things like that. And we really helped a lot during Covid as well, just handing out food and ministering, stuff like that. So over the past 12 months, we’ve probably gone to an event almost every month, so maybe 10
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:16):
Times. Wow, that’s amazing. Now each time you go out, how many times would you share the gospel typically?
Ethan Hood (18:22):
Well, when you go out to these events, they’re sometimes mainly Christian events that are held by Christian organizations. So I wouldn’t start with these two questions maybe 10 to 15 times, but five out of those I would actually share the gospel with and 10, they would already be saved.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:42):
So if you’ve done it like 10 times this year, you’ve probably shared the gospel anywhere from 50 to a hundred times this year. That’s pretty impressive for a 14-year-old to share the gospel. Now, how many people would you estimate that you’ve prayed a prayer of salvation with?
Ethan Hood (19:00):
Yeah, so a lot of people, they hear this story and they’re really moved, but they’re not really ready yet. So we don’t push them, we just only do it when they’re ready. See, sometimes these people, they’ve been going through a lot and there’s been so much leading up to this moment. And so when they finally ask, they’re ready for it. And so sometimes this is the first step in their process. Sometimes we’re the first step in the process for them being saved sometimes or the last out of the however many times I’ve shared the gospel with them, I’d say maybe 20 or so.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:34):
Wow, that’s amazing. I mean, for a 14-year-old young man to be able to share the gospel that many times and to lead 20, probably even more people that you’ve actually led to Jesus is really impressive. Now, last March you got to go on a mission trip with us down to the nation of El Salvador. And my son was on the trip too. What was one of the things on that trip that really moved you, that God really did in your life when you were in El Salvador?
Ethan Hood (20:10):
Yeah, in El Salvador. Man, that mission trip was so amazing there. After one of the Crusades, I believe, or maybe it was the night before we had a crusade just talking about it. I just realized, and a lot of us realized that we are on this mission trip to save people, but this is also helping us personally. And so on Wednesday night we had a massive worship session and the pastor of our church came down to help with this and we just had this massive worship and we really just had massive baptism in this pool at the hotel that we were staying at. And so many people were getting baptized. And eventually towards the end I decided to get baptized too. And that was really impactful for me. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:07):
What did it mean for you in your life spiritually?
Ethan Hood (21:10):
Well, spiritually, I was sharing the gospel. I was going out and I believed it, but I wasn’t really talking to God. I was praying for these people, but I wasn’t praying to God. I wasn’t really having a connection with God. I knew he was my savior. I knew that he was my friend, but I never really understood that on a personal level. And so after that, I just started, whenever I was praying for people, I wouldn’t just pray for them to a spiritual guy up in the sky floating around. I would pray to a friend and asking them, please help this person. Help them to realize that you are so much more than just an angel floating around up in the sky who has magical powers. You are a real person who can help them. And it just really came on a deep person.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:13):
And so your relationship with God really became more personal and God really moved in your life. That is so awesome, Ethan. Thank you so much for sharing. If you want to know more about the ministry of Ron and Christina Hood and Ethan Hood, and the entire family is involved, you can find out more about them by going to their website must go missions.com. And so you spell that M-U-S-G-O missions.com. And on the website there’s a place where you can give to them through PayPal. You can be involved in helping them to go out. If you are in the Tulsa area, the Oklahoma area, you can connect with them and actually go out and volunteer and help to witness to people. They’re doing stuff almost every single month. And so you can get involved in helping to witness to people. And so let’s just finish up today, Ethan, by praying for the people who are listening today, would you just pray that everyone who’s listening would have boldness to share the gospel? Maybe they’re much older than you, but if a 14-year-old can do it, I think anyone can do it. And so just pray that we all have boldness to talk to people about Jesus.
Ethan Hood (23:40):
Oh dear God, I just thank you so much for all that you’re doing in all these lives, and thank you for everyone listening that you are helping them to realize that no matter what age they are, no matter who they are, that you can help them and you can empower them to lead anyone to Christ and you can connect with them on a personal level. I thank you that if there’s anyone watching who may not be saved, I thank you that you are just working in them. Jesus name, amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:12):
Amen. Well, Ethan, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Yes,
Ethan Hood (24:17):
Thank you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (24:18):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism, learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give antar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:20):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (26:41):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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Shane Degen | Jesus Loves America
Shane Degen is a from Australia, but he has a heart for America. God gave him a vision to do fifty stadium events – one in each state in America. Today we talk about how God set him free from a life of addiction to heroin and gave him a passion for evangelism.
Learn more about Shane Degen: https://jesuslovesamerica.com/
Discover Shane Degen’s Two Hearts Gospel Presentation:
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Shane Deagan is from Australia, but he has a heart for America. God gave him a vision to do 50 stadium events, one in each state in the United States. Today we talk about how God set him free from a life of addiction to heroin and gave him a passion for evangelism. You’ll be inspired as you hear his passion for living for eternity.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:43):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
Daniel King. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Shane Deagan from Australia. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Shane Degen (01:20):
Good morning, Daniel. Thanks for having us.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
Alright, so you are an evangelist.
Shane Degen (01:25):
Yes sir.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:25):
And you have come here to America as a missionary because God has given you a vision to reach the nation of the United States for Jesus.
Shane Degen (01:38):
Yes sir.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:38):
And your ministry is Jesus loves America. Yes,
Shane Degen (01:42):
He does.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:42):
So I love us.
Shane Degen (01:43):
Yes. It’s the gospel in three words.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:45):
Well, let’s start at the beginning. How did you become a believer and then how did you start stepping out in evangelism?
Shane Degen (01:56):
Okay, right. So we’ve only got half a day. No, I’m kidding. Give an evangelist to Mike, he’ll take over the show, but okay. So I met Jesus in the jail cell in the year 2002, January 16. So up until that point in my life, I’d gone to church as a boy. But in my latter teenage, some stuff happened to me as a kid and I got kind of tempted by the enemy as it were for that big wide world of sin and depravity. And so as a teenager started taking drugs, trying to probably numb the pain, but looking for hope. Never really as a boy, I went to Sunday school and church. I never really met the Lord. I just had lots of good teachings, but I did love God in my heart. Anyway, at any rate, I went off into the world, got tempted and started taking drugs as a teenager, starts with marijuana. But by the age of 19, I was a heroin addict. I had a $3,000 a day habit, but I was always very, that’s pretty expensive. Yes sir. It’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:10):
After a few days I’d run out of money.
Shane Degen (03:13):
Yeah, I guess. So thus eth the lifestyle of crime to support that. And so there’s a lot of people either deal or steal in that world. And I was selling a lot of drugs to support my habit and it just went from the lighter, lighter party drugs. It just got worse and worse. But I was studying science at university and my major was chemistry. So I kind of fell in with some meth cooks and I was using that to support my heroin habit and all that. Started around 18, 19 and continued up until about 24. I owned some businesses. I had an internet business, a nightclub, and a rave production business. So I was a bit entrepreneurial. Within a year I dropped out of university. I didn’t finish my undergrad at that point. And by the age of 24, the police caught me, sent me to jail.
(04:16):
Then six months later, I was laying on my bed of the Toowoomba Watch house, which is kind of like the holding cells in Australia. And I was just laying there and I was thinking about what am I going to say to the judge because the next day I had to stand before him and give an account and he was going to sentence me and I realized I am not going to be able to talk my way out of this one. They had me, had me on some, I had stabbed a guy. I was on production of methyl amphetamines. So very serious charges. I was going away to jail for a long, long time. And as I was laying on my bed trying to come up with an excuse, realizing going to, I can’t took my way out of this, God spoke to me in that moment.
(05:08):
I wouldn’t say I necessarily heard an audible voice or I didn’t see a light just deep within my heart. I knew I knew and it was like God said to me, how would I like to be standing before him on judgment day, trying to come up with an excuse for hell because that’s what I was doing, trying to come up with an excuse for the judge and I didn’t want to go to jail for a long time. The idea of hell and eternity, that’s not just a couple of years, that is forever. That struck me. The fear of the Lord struck my heart, eternity became real. And so I surrendered to God in that moment. In my heart, I just chose to do the Christian thing, whatever that meant, I’m going to do that. So read a Bible, get to church on Sunday, try and pray. But really what happened in that moment, even though it was a fear of the Lord moment, I had an amazing encounter with the love of God that just changed the trajectory of my life. I did do a couple of years in jail, but when I got out, I met my amazing wife, Amanda.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:24):
And now you have eight kids.
Shane Degen (06:26):
Yes sir. So our oldest
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:28):
Is 22. A big family.
Shane Degen (06:29):
Yes. Well, God has blessed us. Yeah, without a doubt. My joy.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:37):
So your oldest is 22,
Shane Degen (06:38):
That’s Locklan.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:39):
Yes. Going down to what’s your youngest?
Shane Degen (06:42):
So I’ll go through it. So Locke’s 22. Then we have Elijah, he’s 20, they’re kind of one’s in the army and one’s a mortgage broker. Then I have Noah, he’s 18, just finished school. Then Gabriela is 16. Then we have Moses is 13, Abe, Abraham. Oh, sorry, I missed, Evangeline is 11 and then Abe is nine and then Isaac is
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:10):
Seven. Okay, so then you got out of jail.
Shane Degen (07:14):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:15):
You became an engineer.
Shane Degen (07:16):
That’s true.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:17):
And then God called you to be an evangelist. And so how did that happen?
Shane Degen (07:24):
Okay, so from jail. Yeah, I got out. I started studying engineering in aerospace, avionics and I did undergrad. I worked for Boeing for a season in Australia. And then my professor offered me a scholarship to do a PhD. So I was about six months into that scholarship, enter revival now. So from 2002 I went into jail. 2004 I got out and started college straightaway. And then up to 2008 was my undergrad years. And then my last few years I worked for Boeing and I was going to work for them full-time when the scholarship opened up. But in the mid of 2008, there was, that’s the year I started my PhD. There was a revival that was broadcast on God tv and that just changed my world. I saw lots of people getting healed. I saw wheelchairs getting empty.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:19):
Which revival was that?
Shane Degen (08:20):
That was in Lakeland, Florida.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:23):
Okay.
Shane Degen (08:23):
Yep.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:24):
And who was leading that?
Shane Degen (08:28):
I forget the name of the evangelist, but yeah, but that revived.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:33):
I remember hearing about that. Yeah, it was powerful. It was a big deal.
Shane Degen (08:36):
Yeah, they had like 35 people get raised from the dead over a series of 120 days.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:44):
Wow.
Shane Degen (08:45):
Now I’d been a Christian for six years and I’d never seen any miracles. We believed in miracles. I just never saw them in the west. You’d hear about happening in places like Africa and that kind of thing. But I was seeing them live on TV every night. I mean 55 people got up out of wheelchairs over the course of 14 days watching these people get up and walk. And then every couple of days there was a new dead raising testimony. There were 35 different testimonies. I tuned in about day 55 and tuned out about day 80. But that 30 days was enough to catalyze me into the things of God. So up until that point, if you had have asked me how long was I going to live, I would’ve said, oh, 70 years, 80 years would be good. But after that, I just knew that I was going to live forever and I had to reprioritize my life for the forever.
(09:45):
As an engineer, I won’t in this major international competition for UAV design, I was a workaholic. We would be up to 80 hours in the lab or field testing. And I realized in that revival that everything I was working really hard on meant nothing in eternity. I was going to get to heaven bankrupt as it were, that I couldn’t take any of that stuff to heaven with me. The only thing I could take to heaven with me was people. And I needed to reprioritize my life to help others get to heaven. So that mobilized me out onto the streets to start showing the gospel, the message of that evangelist, it was essentially, Hey, the stuff we are doing up here, God will use you to do it. Get out there, tell people about Jesus and you will see these miracles break out. Gone are the days where we just tell people about Jesus. Now we need to demonstrate the power of the kingdom. I’d been a Christian six years, never shared the gospel. Once I had seen one person come to the Lord just through living it, he’d seen the change in my life and he started coming to church with us. I was too scared to be honest with you. But since that revival, I see a handful typically get saved daily.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:08):
Wow. So in Australia you had the opportunity to do a stadium event.
Shane Degen (11:15):
Yes sir. Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:16):
Jesus loves Australia. Tell me about that. It took a big step of faith to do it
Shane Degen (11:21):
Right. Wow. Let me just tell you the process to that. So I stepped out of my postgrad in 2010, took a masters just for an early exit just because I had this fire for souls in me. The word of the Lord is shut up in my bones, like a fire says Jeremiah and I grow weary of trying to hold it back and indeed cannot. And so I just had to go after God. So I stepped out, started going out on the streets. But then within a couple of weeks I went to a conference, had a visitation from the Lord and he said, stop, wait. I had stadiums and crusades and everything in my heart, but the Lord said to me, wait, I want you to pray for three years. And if we do that, then we would see the birth of a worldwide revival in 2018.
(12:15):
So this is the year 2010. I needed that word from God. It was a very clear conversation, two-way conversation. It was only a few sentences, but I had it with the creator of the universe. And up until that point, I had very little faith for hearing God’s voice, but I needed that word to sustain me through a three year prayer meeting. So from 2010 to 2013, I just prayed like about eight hours a day, up to 16 hours a day. Instead of going to work, I would go pray, but I would still go out on the streets once a week into 2013. That’s kind of when I stepped into the ministry just started. But even since then, I spend the first half of my morning with the Lord just in prayer and worship, really trying to hear direction from him. And then we mission in the afternoon, go do whatever it is God’s called us to do.
(13:11):
So just in our local area, we started off with a seven university campaign across southeast Queensland in Australia. All this kind of transition happened in Brisbane, Australia, which is the capital of Queensland. And so we did seven university colleges kind of doing revival and harvest. But I was very frustrated at the fruit I was seeing, wasn’t seeing much. But then we stepped out and we did cities. We started doing country towns. We did three major towns, but again, there was only some getting saved. We weren’t filling the arenas and the stadiums we were booking at that stage. And so I left Australia, I packed up, moved to North India, poured my life for a few months into North India as a missionary, trying to reach the largest, most unreached people group on the planet in the states of Uta, pian, Bihar. But that door closed after a few months.
(14:16):
We couldn’t work there any longer. So returned to Australia, just started seeking God, what do you have for us? What do you have for us? And it was stadiums, big stadiums in the capital city. So went in and had a lot of conversations with those guys. Went and booked this massive series of gospel events and then went back to my prayer closet and prayed for the 80 million to do it. And it didn’t come, but that caused me to go get alongside churches, start to rally churches, work with pastors. And then in 2017 I went to Sydney because I kept having dreams about Sydney. Sydney’s the largest city in Australia, has a population of about 5 million people. And I kept getting words about Sydney. So I said, okay, Lord, well which part of Sydney do you want to do? Like this area or this area or this area? And God just said, stop. He says, come up here, see what I see. I saw the whole city of Sydney. I went, all right, well if it’s going to be Sydney, then we need Stadium Australia, which is right in the middle of Sydney. It’s the largest stadium in Australia at that time. Its sponsored name was a NZ stadium. And so we booked it by faith, this multimillion dollar stadium. At the time I was still believing God for a bottle of milk for breakfast some days for our family. But whilst we booked the $2 million.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:55):
So you booked the stadium while you were praying for milk for your family,
Shane Degen (16:00):
Right? Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:00):
So that’s a big step of faith
Shane Degen (16:03):
That actually the word that caused that to happen actually started eight years earlier in 2010 after I first stepped out. So one day I was in my backyard really trying to figure out how I was going to get a bottle of milk to feed my children. The next day we had no milk and I just cried out to Lord. I said, Jesus, I need $2 for a bottle of milk. And I very clearly heard the audible voice of the Lord say to me, son, right now you’re learning to trust me for $2. One day it will be $2 million. I woke up, went to bed that night, a great peace came on me. I went to bed, I woke up the next day, milk was on our doorstep. And so God showed his faithfulness with the milk. And indeed it happened almost a dozen times over the next 12 months where we would go to bed, no milk, and it would just be on our doorstep the next morning. So that really sustained me through that eight years until we saw the fulfillment of that word December 1st, 2018, where we booked the $2 million stadium.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:15):
And so God enabled you to raise the budget, and what were the results of that outreach?
Shane Degen (17:24):
So we had a couple of thousand people turn out growing in the grace of fundraising. So yeah, we didn’t have any money two weeks out, but we got enough money for the deposit six weeks out and then two weeks out we made the final payment on the stadium. But over the course of watching it unfold, churches when we came to town, they knew we had no money. And so it was hard to get them to come on board. But as we just kept going back to the churches, letting them know what’s happening, helping them with their evangelism programs, we had a point where we had a couple of major breakthroughs, either financially or with connections, and it was those breakthroughs that the churches saw, oh wow, God is in this. So they started signing up and in the end we had 2002 people come in the door according to the counter.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:34):
Wow, okay. So then God gave you a vision for America.
Shane Degen (18:40):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:40):
So you’re from Australia, but you’ve come here to America as a Australian missionary and you’ve started, Jesus loves America. What do you see God doing here in America?
Shane Degen (18:54):
Well, first of all, the harvest is so ripe. It’s just amazing the number of people who know about Jesus but don’t know him. So we see a lot of people come to the Lord here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:08):
Do you feel like the United States is more open right now than Australia?
Shane Degen (19:15):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:16):
Just in conversations that you have with people.
Shane Degen (19:19):
Without a doubt, I would say that America is probably four to five times more Christian than Australia, particularly in the southern states, which is where I mostly am. But even in the northern ones, the ones that a lot of people would consider heathenistic states, they’re twice as Christian as Australia. So yeah, there is definitely an openness for the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:43):
I think that’s an encouragement for people in the United States to hear, Hey, we have a great place where we can really make a big impact for God.
Shane Degen (19:52):
That’s right. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:53):
I mean, you talk to pastors everywhere you go, it doesn’t matter where you go in the world. They say, oh, in this place it’s really hard. It’s hard. But I’ve found that wherever you go, there’s people that are open to receive Jesus.
Shane Degen (20:05):
That’s right, absolutely. The harvest is ripe. It’s the laborers that if we need people to know their God, that lion of the tribe of Judy, he wants the raw and he wants to save souls. So yeah, it’s definitely very ripe here. What’s kind of mobilized me for stadiums and those kind of events is personal evangelism. Everything that I’ve just learned on the streets, we just take into churches and we take that from churches to the cities. So our typical campaign philosophy, what a typical campaign would look like is we’ll go into a city and tried to connect with the gatekeepers in the city, the senior leaders, senior ministries, just share with them. We’re evangelizing pastors. Go in there, share what we do, asking them if they need help with their evangelism programs. Could be bible colleges, seminaries or just ministries in general. And then typically they’re a little bit standoffish until they get to know you. But once they see some of the fruit, then they’ll open their doors and then we go and train, mobilize their people. But it’s right from the beginning, it’s with this vision of we are going to bring the city together. So at the same time we’ll start talking to the stadium, start negotiating with them the price, because that takes a lot of money plus faith and yeah, whilst rallying a team that’s going to help us pull this event together.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:42):
So what does that look like when you go into a church
Shane Degen (21:47):
And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:47):
You’re training them in evangelism, what are some of the principles that you share? How do you motivate normal church members to get involved in sharing their faith?
Shane Degen (21:59):
Okay, well, so the key is the Holy Spirit. We always start with without the Holy Spirit, he is the master evangelist. We are wasting our time because the number one reason you probably know these statistics that people don’t share their faith is fear. 22% don’t share their faith because of fear. 17% don’t share their faith because they dunno what to say. Another 17% don’t share their faith because they don’t have opportunity and 9% don’t share their faith because they are too busy. So the fear thing, the Holy Spirit is the key. The spirit of power and boldness dunno what to say. Well, we’ve got simple little tools that we train people and what to say. But also what we’ve found is that once people know what to say, many Christians actually dunno how salvation works. So when we train people in tools, they just got saved, they made a decision, they prayed. Now they come to church on a Sunday, maybe go to a midweek group meeting, but they don’t know the process of salvation. So by training them in how to evangelize their friends, we’re actually giving them the confidence in how to be able to share the gospel. So that lowers the fear factor as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:24):
So what do you want to see God do here in the United States?
Shane Degen (23:30):
Well, we were just at Lasagne and I just came back from, well, okay, a few weeks ago now, about a month ago I think, or six weeks. Yeah. I came back from Anne with such a fire. God shifted something in me that it is possible if the church collaborates for us to evangelize nations. Two years ago we had a prophetic word given to our ministry. We came to America to Dallas based on two words and a dream a friend had. So that sent me to America and really it was just to do a citywide event. But while we were there raising the money and bringing churches together, training churches, getting a team and everything, we received this prophetic word around 50 states, 50 stadia simultaneously. One day, 20, 25. Now at this point in time, I was struggling trying to pull together a multimillion dollar campaign, one team, one budget, one city, the whole,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:39):
It’s interesting how God works, like our biggest vision, we’re like, we’re going to dream so big, we’re going to take the whole city. And then God says, no, my vision is 50
Shane Degen (24:50):
Because you start once you’ve
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:52):
Done, because God thinks way bigger than we do.
Shane Degen (24:55):
And sometimes when you’ve done something once, he wants to stretch you.
(25:00):
My background’s engineering. We have project management plans with roadmaps and milestones and yeah, that’s not how the Lord works. He wants you to get out of the boat, walk on the water. It defies all science. So yeah, that’s often what we find, which is why I don’t always have a management plan anymore. Our project management plan is the Lord. We seek him daily. He kind of shows you, I’ve found the big picture, but the mistake that we can make is trying to get to the big picture in our strength, leaning on our own gifts and talents and that kind of things. If we want to see God type fruit, God type results, we need to become 100% dependent on him letting him do the work, letting him bring it together. And we are just following him that way because he does the work. It’s a lot more effortless, it’s a lot more fun, and he gets the glory.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:04):
Now you also have a passion for entrepreneurship.
Shane Degen (26:09):
Yes.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:09):
And God’s given you a mandate to raise up believers who will be so entrepreneurial successful that they can give 90% and keep 10%.
Shane Degen (26:27):
What
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:27):
Would you say to the entrepreneur who wants to be used by God to put resources into evangelism?
Shane Degen (26:36):
So this whole concept comes from a man, I’m pretty certain his name is Rg Lano, about a hundred years ago. And what he did, his testimony is he was just a business guy who went to his local church, but they were always telling these stories of missions overseas and how God was moving. And so he went to his pastor from memory, he went to his pastor and said, what can I do? I really want to help more. He felt called to go be a missionary overseas. And his pastor said to him, no, how you can help the most, you’re an entrepreneur, how you can help the most is get more money to give to missions and let the missionaries do it. This was kind of the mentality, the philosophy at the time and just with that church. And so he was like, alright, God, well bless me more so I could give more because the missionaries, they need the money and the more money they can get, the more souls they can reach.
(27:41):
And on both levels, number one for eternity. But number two, helping them just here on earth. And so what he did was he signed 90% of the equity of the shares of his company over to the church. That way he could give 90% tax free. Now, yes, in America people can give tax free, but the limitation not many people know is that it’s at 60%. You can only give up to 60% of profits tax free. Above that you have to pay taxes because he wanted to give above the 60% threshold. He gave ownership to the ministry and then lived off the 10%. Well after he did that, God exploded his business. I forget the exact figures, but like a thousand fold type thing because God could trust him with the little God gave him much. So he did retire very, very wealthy. There’s a university at Tyler now called Larna University, but his entrepreneurial activities were in earth moving equipment. I think he built one of the first or had a patent for one of the first one ton moving Earth equipment a hundred years ago. But he had many patents in that area.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:03):
A lot of evangelists. Listen to this podcast. What advice would you give to evangelists?
Shane Degen (29:13):
I love Jesus. Everything. The number one thing that just has made the biggest difference in my life as it’s that first watch recently, this is what I’ve realized it is I spend the first three hours of the day just with the Lord and in the Bible from Hare culture, it’s called the first watch. But I think giving that first part of your day and your morning to Jesus, number one, you fall more in love with him. People want to not just know about God, they want to meet people who know God. We want to bring them into a relationship with God. We’ve got to know him. So kind of, I think I meet evangelists all over the world and I’m very blessed to be able to do that. But that’s the key to everything for me has just been that first few hours with the Lord in the morning.
(30:16):
From there, I get the ideas from there, I get the direction. He’s my CEO. When you work in a business, a lot of businesses, not every business starts with a staff meeting. People get delegated their tasks for the day. But so I get my instructions for what to do next or where to go for the ministry from that place. But David says this, he says this one thing I have desired that I will seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold his beauty, number one, to inquire in his temple. Number two. So I think when we come before the Lord, there’s got to be this place of letting go of your to-do list, and I need help with this, this. And it’s really just a place to worship, to praise, to behold his beauty and his goodness and to fall more and more in love with him.
(31:10):
And this ever number one pursuit to mine is this deeper intimacy with the Lord. And then from that place, half the questions actually get answered, that God just sorts ’em out for you. But we typically still have our questions. So he just starts to speak and then you can go about and do what he says. And I’ve found that’s the way to be the most fruitful. The days where I get busy, and I don’t do that because you’re pressured, because of some deadline. I get up and I start phone calling, emailing, you’re kind of hitting the target with 10% of the phone calls, 20% of the emails. But if I would be disciplined in setting that first part of my day apart, when I come out of that place, people are contacting me. I don’t have to ring them. The phone calls I’m making, it’s hit, hit, hit, hit. So I can actually be more fruitful, even though I’m working less, but I’m spending more time with him because he’s ordering my footsteps.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:18):
Let’s finish with a word of prayer for America. Would you pray that God would send revival to this nation?
Shane Degen (32:29):
Amen. Yes, Lord. Oh Lord God, there is 50 states, Lord here, 50 states, 50 states, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. We thank you Lord for what you did last Tuesday. God, there was a mighty breakthrough for this nation and just, I really believe the word of the Lord now is run. The doors are open, wider, wider than before. There was already so many people getting saved before, but for the evangelists, for the missionaries, for those in ministry, there is such a port says one Corinthians 15, A great effective door for the gospel has been opened for me. And so God, we just, I pray, Lord for the revivalists, the evangelists watching here, Lord, that you would mobilize, mobilize, run now with the vision, run, run, run, run, run. Now is the time to run. Go up your loins and run. Because we have this window, we have this window where things are going to rapidly accelerate.
(33:49):
There is going to be just I, just a massive advancing. I see just this rapid acceleration. The interesting thing about the harvest fields is once a seed goes into the ground, it grows for months. The Bible says a man sows seed to the ground, goes to sleep all by itself. The ground produces first the blade, then the head, then the seed in the head, then he puts the sickle in. It’s like there’s all this time of preparation, but in one moment the harvest comes. I really feel like this is that moment for America. Everything we’ve gone through for the last four years has just been ripening the harvest. But now is the time. Now put your sickle in, says the Lord. Hallelujah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:54):
Amen. Shane, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Shane Degen (34:59):
Thank you for having us. Daniel,
Evangelism Podcast Host (35:01):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:03):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you. For
Evangelism Podcast Host (37:23):
More information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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How to Minister at Schools
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, I talk to James Moore from Gift of Faith Ministries. He’s about to go on a mission trip to the nation of Brazil, and in Brazil he’s going to have the opportunity to share the gospel in a school setting. We talk about how to share the Gospel to school kids. If you’re interested in being effective at sharing the gospel to a group of school children, keep listening.
Subscribe to the Gift of Faith YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GiftofFaithMinistries
Transcript:
Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, I talked to James Moore from Gift of Faith Ministries. He’s about to go on a mission trip to the nation of Brazil, and in Brazil he’s going to have the opportunity to share the gospel in a school setting. So on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to share the gospel to school kids. If you’re interested in being effective at sharing the gospel to a group of school children, keep listening.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:43):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:07):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, James Moore. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast. Thank you, sir. Okay, so James, you have been coming over to my house about once a week for the last several weeks, and we’ve been talking about evangelism and God has really put it on your heart to preach the gospel. Tell me a little bit about your father, the ministry that he had and what God’s put on your heart.
James Moore (01:46):
Well, my dad always growing up was a missionary to Africa and India and the Philippines. And he had a pretty amazing miracle ministry and he was very into evangelism as well. He did pretty large crusades in Nigeria and Uganda, and many thousands of people would get saved and several hundred healed and it was always a really big influence on me. And he passed last year, but God has really been calling me to continue his work in the world.
Evangelist Daniel King (02:23):
And so how did you hear about me?
James Moore (02:27):
I was actually recommended to by one of my dad’s best friends, mark Swagger.
Evangelist Daniel King (02:34):
And so Mark Swagger is a great evangelist, good friend. He has been involved in evangelism for many years. He did some great evangelist events over in the nation of India and God actually gave Mark swagger a vision to train up evangelists in India. And he had the whole plan put together. He was going to send out two by two. He was going to give each one a truck and a little sound system. He had their uniforms designed everything, and right as he was about to put this into practice, he tried to get into India and they wouldn’t let ’em in, which happens kind of frequently for some evangelists just because of visa issues. And so he was never able to implement that vision for India. But I think that that was an idea that came from God and it shall surely come to pass. The idea is that God gave Mark swagger. We’re not giving up on them, they will come to pass. Okay. So James, mark swagger recommended that you came to me and talk to me about your motivation, why you wanted to learn about
James Moore (03:49):
Evangelism. Well, God has been calling me to do evangelism my entire life. Several times when I was young, God would give me a vision or a dream regarding that and very obvious call from the Lord about it. And in the last couple years especially, so the same thing, several dreams and visions regarding evangelism and really strong burning desire to help save the lost and set people free from illnesses and demonic possession and different things like that, but more especially about evangelism. And it’s something that I don’t have a lot of experience in. So I was really grateful when Mark recommended me to you.
Evangelist Daniel King (04:34):
And so as we’ve been talking, God gave you a name for your ministry. What’s the name that God gave you?
James Moore (04:40):
It’s Gift of Faith Ministry.
Evangelist Daniel King (04:41):
So Gift of Faith Ministries. And so we’ve been talking about what ministry looks like, what this evangelist, that calling upon your life could look like. And one of the very exciting things that’s happened is you started a YouTube channel and the videos that you’ve been putting up on there have been very successful. What have you seen happen with some of your teaching videos?
James Moore (05:09):
Well, the Lord’s gave me word specifically for certain videos and people responded to watched it. One man told me that it really convicted him when he watched it and he said God made him click on it. He saw that it was about the Lord and didn’t want click on it. God made him and he did. And then he ended up being really convicted by the Holy Spirit and got down on his knees and cried out to God for he actually received Jesus because of one of my videos. And that was really encouraging. And several other people have said similar things that just God drew them. Like Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I’ll draw all men unto me. And he was drawing their heart to him through some words that he told me to say, which I was really excited about. And I mean I’ve had that happen just one-on-one in person, but all this is really new to me with videos and groups of people.
Evangelist Daniel King (06:04):
Well, you’ve been doing a great job, you’re just pulling out your cell phone, giving a little message, whatever God put on your heart for that day. And some of those videos have really gone viral. What’s the most views that one of the videos has gotten so far?
James Moore (06:20):
I believe one of ’em was about 1600 views.
Evangelist Daniel King (06:24):
I mean that’s amazing because anyone would want to preach to a crowd of 1600 people. And so by putting this video up, having impact on 1600 people and then what’s the average number of people that are watching each video?
James Moore (06:40):
Right now it’s around 500.
Evangelist Daniel King (06:44):
Yeah, that’s great. So God’s already giving you an outlet for the calling that he has upon your life. And really that’s something that’s brand new. I mean you’ve just been doing it for a little while now, but God’s already giving you great fruit on YouTube. And so now something very exciting is happening. You are going on your very first gospel crusade and you are going with one of my evangelist friends, Adam Smith. He’s been working down in Brazil for many years now. How do you know Adam Smith?
James Moore (07:24):
He’s actually married to my sister.
Evangelist Daniel King (07:26):
Okay. Yeah. And so he married your sister. How long have they been married now?
James Moore (07:32):
About a year and a half I believe.
Evangelist Daniel King (07:34):
Okay. Because when I first met Adam years ago, he wasn’t married at that time. So it’s exciting that he met your sister and he invited you to come on this crusade. Yes sir. And so you’re going to go down and what are you expecting to happen? You told me that you’re going into the Brazilian state of Seattle,
Evangelism Podcast Host (07:56):
Which
Evangelist Daniel King (07:57):
I’ve been down there. And what are you expecting to happen while you’re there?
James Moore (08:03):
Well, I know Adam has planned to set up a big stage in ua, the city there. And I know my sister and I are going to go into several schools, quite a few schools, I believe several schools a day for several days and preach a gospel message to the children there. And I’m so glad they’re so open to receiving us in all those schools. And it sounds like it’s going to be a pretty tight schedule with lots of schools. And we’re also going to be handing out some food to the needy in several areas.
Evangelist Daniel King (08:36):
Yeah, I’ve been down to Brazil quite a few times, love going into the schools down there. And so when you came to Knight, your question was basically about going into these schools and what to do in going into the schools. So let’s talk about that a little bit. When you go into a school, it’s a great opportunity. Like here in the United States, usually the schools would not allow you to preach the gospel
(09:12):
Because here in the United States there’s this idea, I don’t think it’s an idea actually found in the Constitution, but you’ve got separation between church and state. It’s kind of something that secularists have imposed upon government and trying to keep people away from God. And so they say there’s no religion, therefore only having their religion of secularism in the schools here in America. But in many countries it is possible to go into schools. And so the last few years I’ve been invited to teach for Christ for All Nations by Daniel Kalinda. They have their evangelism bootcamp and they’re training up their students to preach evangelistically. And in many countries, God has opened up doors for the students, the evangelism students from the bootcamp to present the gospel in youth crusades, often with school kids. So let’s kind of talk about the process. If you’re going to a school, first of all, you go in and hopefully they will give you the opportunity to speak to an assembly of all the students together.
(10:32):
So first you would go and meet with the principal of the school, they’d probably greet you and you can ask, can we gather all the kids together and an assembly? And in most schools, that’s something that they would probably do about once a day to say the national pledge and to have announcements for the day. So they’re used to coming together in assembly. And so you ask them where to go, you set up your equipment. If you’ve got a little sound system, you get everything set up and then you ask permission to start the meeting. And then the first thing you should do is to honor the principal and the teachers that have invited you there. And so you get all the students to clap for the teachers that, wow, it’s such an honor to be here. I want to say thank you to the headmaster and to the teachers for allowing us to speak.
(11:39):
Let’s give them a great round of applause for what a great job that they do. So you start out by honoring the teachers, and that’s good. That will make the teachers like you if you get the kids to honor them. And then you introduce yourself, Hey, my name is James, I’m from the United States. We’re so happy to be here, introduce any of the team members who are there with you. Then you would pray a short prayer. And so you encourage the kids to all be quiet, everybody quiet down and listen, I’m going to pray and invite God to this place. And so then you should pray a short prayer. And then what I would do is I would tell a story, right? Won’t you say amen with a prayer? Tell a story that grabs their attention and then use the story to present the gospel to them.
(12:44):
And so after you tell the story, then you connect the gospel to the story clearly by asking the kids to choose to believe in Jesus and then to repent. And so there’s many different things that we can talk about with kids, but the main purpose of being there is to share the gospel. And so the word gospel means good news, and it is the good news that even though every human has sinned and that there is a price that must be paid for sin, Jesus, the Son of God died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, but he didn’t stay dead. He rose from the dead. And today Jesus is alive and the Bible says that everyone who calls in the name of Jesus will be saved. And so do you want to call on Jesus right now? And so you bring the kids to a point of decision to where they have an opportunity to say yes to Jesus and to repent from their sins.
(13:53):
Then after you ask them to make that decision, then you lead them in a salvation prayer. And then you take an opportunity to explain to them what salvation is and what just happened in their life. Then you can mention the Holy Spirit, pray for them to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and then explain the power that comes from the Holy Spirit. You can pray for people to be healed. If the Lord leads you to do that, and then you say, thank you so much for having me, you ask them to clap for your translator, who’s there with you? And then you can finish up by singing a song or something. And so that’s how I would typically do a school assembly. But the key is to have some good stories that really help you to communicate the gospel. Now, when you think about Jesus, what are some of the stories that you think about that Jesus told
James Moore (15:01):
Being a good shepherd and how he would leave the 99 and go and help the one lost sheep? And I dunno, anytime that I’ve shared the gospel with someone, it’s been on a one-on-one basis, and it was something that the Lord would lead me in what to say. And so it’s kind of new for me to speak to a whole crowd, especially children about this sort of
Evangelist Daniel King (15:29):
Thing. And so are you a little bit nervous or how are you feeling about this opportunity? Well, I’m excited. It is
James Moore (15:38):
Not something I have a lot of experience in.
Evangelist Daniel King (15:42):
Alright, so let’s talk about some stories that you can potentially use to minister to the kids. Okay, so I’m going to talk loud because when I talk to kids, I talk loud. But the first thing I would do is I do something to grab the attention of the kids. Like, Hey boys and girls, I’m so excited to be here. If you’re happy today, I want you to wave your hand at me. Everyone wave your hand at me. And so the reason I do that is to get them to respond, to grab their attention, and then to get the audience to start acting. So if you’re happy today, just wave your hand at me. I’m so happy to be here. I want to tell you a story. How many of you like stories? If you like stories, I want you to wave your hand at me.
(16:32):
If you want to hear a story today, wave your hand at me. Alright? And so everyone, they’re waving their hands like, okay, I want to tell you a story. Once upon a time, right here in Brazil, there was a very smart teacher and this teacher was the smartest teacher in all of Brazil. And let me tell you about this teacher. This teacher was able to answer every single question he was ever asked. And so students would come up and ask the teacher a math question, and the teacher would always know the answer to the math question. They would come and ask the teacher questions about history. And no matter what period of time in history they’re asking about, the teacher always knew the right answer. Sometimes the kids would come up and ask a question about geometry or something that they were studying. In one of the classes, the teacher always knew the right answer.
(17:29):
And in that school there was a little boy and he was also very smart. He says, my teacher always knows the right answer, but I’m going to ask him a question that he can’t answer. And so this was his plan. He says, I’m going to go out into the garden behind the school and I’m going to catch a little butterfly and I’m going to run with the butterfly to the teacher, and I’m going to ask the teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher is the butterfly in my hand alive or dead? And this was his plan. If the teacher said The butterfly is alive, he was going to crush the butterfly in his hand and says, no, you’re wrong, it’s dead. But if the teacher said the butterfly is alive, or if the butterfly, if the teacher says the butterfly is dead, he was going to open his hand and let the butterfly fly away and prove that the teacher was wrong.
(18:33):
And so that’s what he did. He went out, he caught a butterfly, he went running into the classroom. He said, teacher, teacher, teacher, I have a question for you. Is the butterfly in my hand alive or dead? And the teacher stroked his beard like this and he said, Hmm, boys and girls, I want you to pretend like you have a long beard, stroke it right now and say, Hmm, how do you think the teacher is going to answer the question? And the teacher was a very wise teacher. And so he looked at the little boy, he says, little boy, he says, you are a very smart student. He says, the choice of life and death is in your hands, boys and girls. Today I want to talk to you about the choice between life and death in the Bible, which is God’s book, it gives us two choices, it gives us a choice that leads to life and it gives us a choice that leads to death, a choice that leads to blessing and a choice that leads to cursing.
(19:48):
It’s like a test. Boys and girls, how many of you like tests? Well, this is God’s test for each one of us. And God says, I give you life or death, blessing are cursing. And then God gives us the answer to the test. He gives us the answer key. He says, therefore choose life. Now, let me tell you about the two choices we face. You see, there is a way that leads to life in that way is through Jesus Christ. How many of you boys and girls know who Jesus Christ is? Jesus is the son of God. And if you choose Jesus, it leads to life. But there is another choice. And this choice leads to death. And that is the choice of sin. Who knows what sin is? Sin is when we do something wrong. Boys and girls who can give me some examples of things that are wrong to do, lying, cheating, stealing, disobeying our parents, killing someone.
(20:53):
All these things are sin. And the Bible says that if you choose sin, you choose the way that leads to death. Because the Bible says that there is a price that must be paid for sin, and the price for sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. And so every single one of us have sin. We’ve all done things that are wrong. We’ve all lied, we’ve all stolen, we’ve all cheated. We’ve done something wrong in our life and we deserve to be punished. But I have good news for you. Everyone say good news, come on, everyone say good news. The good news is that Jesus, the son of God, he came from heaven to earth and he paid the price for our sins. He died on a cross to pay the price for my sin and for your sin.
(21:46):
But Jesus didn’t stay dead after three days, Jesus rose from the dead. And today Jesus is alive. And the Bible says that everyone who calls on Jesus will be saved. If you will call on Jesus right now, he will lead you to God’s life. And so I have a question for each one of you, boys and girls, do you want life or do you want death? Do you want to choose the way of Jesus or do you want to choose to go the way of sin? Do you want God’s blessing or do you want cursing? If you want to choose life, if you want to follow Jesus, lift up your hand right now. Everyone who wants to follow the way of Jesus, everyone who wants to follow the way of life, lift up your hand right now. I see many of you are lifting up your hands. How many of you want life? If you want to follow the way of Jesus, lift up your hand. And usually a hundred percent of the audience is going to lift their hand because I’m presenting a very clear choice. I’m presenting the choice between life and death, blessing, cursing Jesus or following the way of sin. And so you can see, and so you want to present a very clear choice
(23:07):
That people can make. And then I want to make the choice of going towards Jesus to be as attractive as I possibly can because some people may choose to go the way of death. They may choose the way of sin, but I want to use everything I can to try to convince them to choose to follow Jesus. And so you use your words to build faith in their hearts that they can choose to follow Jesus. And so if you want to follow Jesus, if you want to follow the way of life, lift up your hand right now. And many people will lift up their hands and then say,
(23:46):
Okay, now we’re going to pray. And I want you to say this prayer after me. I’m going to say the prayer first and then my translator is going to repeat it. And then I want you to repeat this prayer after the translator. And I want everyone to say it loud enough so you can hear it with your own ears. Everyone say this prayer with me, say, dear God in heaven, the transfer says it, then they say it usually the first time they won’t be very loud. Say, I can’t hear you. I want you to pray this prayer and to mean it with all your heart. Everyone say this together. Say, dear God in heaven, come on, say it.
James Moore (24:25):
Dear God in heaven,
Evangelist Daniel King (24:26):
I cry out to Jesus,
James Moore (24:28):
Cry out to Jesus.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:30):
Jesus saved me.
James Moore (24:32):
Jesus saved me.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:33):
I believe Jesus died for my sins.
James Moore (24:36):
I believe Jesus died for my sins.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:38):
I believe Jesus rose from the dead.
James Moore (24:41):
I believe he rose from the dead.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:42):
And today I choose to follow Jesus.
James Moore (24:45):
Today I choose to follow Jesus.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:47):
Today I choose the way of life.
James Moore (24:50):
I choose the way of life.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:51):
I turn away from sin. I
James Moore (24:53):
Turn away from sin.
Evangelist Daniel King (24:54):
I repent of every wrong thing I’ve done.
James Moore (24:58):
I repent of every wrong thing I’ve done
Evangelist Daniel King (25:00):
And I turn to Jesus
James Moore (25:02):
And I turn to Jesus.
Evangelist Daniel King (25:03):
Jesus
James Moore (25:04):
Jesus, I want to follow you. I want to follow you
Evangelist Daniel King (25:08):
All the days of my life.
James Moore (25:09):
All the days of my life.
Evangelist Daniel King (25:11):
Amen.
James Moore (25:12):
Amen.
Evangelist Daniel King (25:13):
Everyone say hallelujah, say amen. And so you would bring them to a point
(25:24):
Of praying, the prayer of salvation, and then you can take them into talking about the Holy Spirit. Right before Jesus went up into heaven, he promised to send a helper, someone to help you every day. And his name is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit wants to come and dwell inside you. He wants to walk with you and talk with you every day. If you want God to give you the gift of the Holy Spirit, wave your hand at me. I’m going to pray for you. And when I pray, if you will receive this gift from God, God will fill you with the Holy Spirit. Dear God in heaven, I pray that you would fill every boy and every girl with the gift of the Holy Spirit. I pray that you would walk with them and talk with them every single day. Lord, I pray that they would have all the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives, that they would have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, self-control. And Lord, I pray that every single person here would have the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their life. And I pray that they would follow Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit every single day in Jesus name. Amen. And I want you to clap your hands for my translator. He’s done a very good job. And now let’s sing a song together to celebrate what God has done. Alright, so talk to me, James, what do you think about that story and how do you think kids would react to that story?
James Moore (27:08):
Well, I’m sure it’s age dependent, depending how old they are, depending how you would present it. I know when I got saved when I was six, it was a real turning moment. It wasn’t just like somebody had me repeat some stuff and that was it. I remember that day to this day when I was six in a Reinhardt Bonky meeting and I was so excited and I ended up prophesying some. So I know that that’s a very valid moment for those people and it’s just something I need to work on and learn about all those aspects of what you were talking about.
Evangelist Daniel King (27:43):
I tell another story about a little monkey. So once upon a time there was a big jungle. And in that jungle there were lots of monkeys. And in the jungle there were also some monkey hunters. And so what the monkey hunters would do is they would get a box and they would cut a hole in the box. The hole was big enough for the monkey to stick his hand in. But it was small enough that once the monkey grabbed the bait, the monkey couldn’t escape from the box. And so the monkey hunters would put something in the box that monkeys love. Boys and girls, what do monkeys like to eat? And what do you think the answer is? What do monkeys like to eat? Banana bananas. That’s right. The monkey hunters would get some bananas, some yummy delicious bananas, and they’d put those bananas inside the box.
(28:45):
Now the smart monkeys, they knew that that box was a trap. But boys and girls, there was always a stupid monkey. That’s right. There was always a stupid monkey. And that stupid monkey would come out and he would smell the banana and he would look at the banana and he would want that banana so much. And so he would look around. He didn’t see the monkey hunters, so he reached his hand into the box and he grabbed the banana and then he couldn’t pull his hand out. He was trapped by that box. And boys and girls, did you know that monkey was stupid? He would sit there with his hand inside of the monkey trap until the monkey hunters come and trap him. Now, boys and girls, that monkey trap is not just a monkey trap, it’s also a sin trap. See, sin works exactly the same way.
(29:49):
Sometimes sin might look attractive, sin might even smell good, but if you grab a hold of sin, you’ll be trapped. Now boys and girls, what does the monkey have to do to get out of the monkey trap? All he has to do is let go of the banana. What does he have to do? Say let go of the banana, let go. All he has to do is let go of the banana. But boys and girls, that monkey will hold onto the banana until the monkey hunters come and trap him. And boys and girls, sin works exactly the same way. If you hold on to sin, you’ll be trapped by the devil. But if you’ll cry out to Jesus, if Jesus will set you free from the trap of sin. And so right now, if you want Jesus to set you free from the trap of sin, I want to pray together. If you want Jesus to set you free from the trap of sin, just lift up your hand to heaven and let’s pray together. And the kids lift up their hands and then you lead them in a prayer of salvation.
(30:58):
And then you can explain concepts of repentance. What does it mean to repent? It means to turn away from your sin. And so you turn away a life of doing things that are wrong and turn towards Jesus. And Jesus sets you free. So the gospel can be broken down into several different points. And so there’s different ideas that you can communicate. And you probably in one school setting, you wouldn’t communicate every idea, but the components of the gospel are, sin is bad. We can’t save ourselves the idea that your valuable to God, that Jesus took our place, that we need to put our faith in Jesus, that we need to come to a point of making a decision that Jesus has power over the devil. Will you become a Christian? And then the urgency of salvation. So each one of those is a concept that you could build a message for children. And so you look for a story. So the first concept that I mentioned is that sin is bad. Okay? How do we establish the idea that sin is bad? Explain what sin is and then give the good news that you can turn away from sin. Can you think of a good story to talk about how sin is bad?
James Moore (32:49):
Well, I mean there’s lots of stories in the Bible you could choose, but kind of the wise man building his house on a rock rather than on saying you’re placing your life on shaky ground rather than Jesus.
Evangelist Daniel King (33:02):
Yeah, so that’s a great story. I mean, you could build an entire sermon around the story of the wise man who built on the rock and the foolish man who built on sand. And so you would tell it as a story When Jesus communicated truth, he always communicated through stories.
(33:19):
And it’s because stories are more memorable than just facts. Like in the West, we kind of always have point a, point B, point C, point D, and that’s kind of how we think. But in a lot of cultures they often communicate truth through stories and then people can discover the truth hidden within the story. And so if I was talking about the concept of sin is bad, I might tell a story about my son Caleb, when he was younger, when he was about six years old, one day my wife made some chocolate chip cookies and it’s filled the entire house with the smell of chocolate chip cookies. And do you like chocolate chip cookies? I mean, everyone loves chocolate chip cookies just to smell them. And so if you like chocolate chip cookies, boys and girls just rub your stomach say. And so I am interacting with them, getting them to respond to think and imagine these chocolate chip cookies.
(34:21):
And of course my son at the age of six, he wanted to eat a chocolate chip. So he came into the kitchen and says, mommy, mommy, it smells so good. Can I have a chocolate chip cookie? And my wife said, no, Caleb, these are for dessert after dinner, we’re going to leave them here to cool on the stove and we’re not going to eat them until after dinner, so don’t touch the chocolate chip cookies. And so then she went in the other room, and before long here comes my son, six years old, and he’s crawling on his knees into the kitchen and he is going to sneak a cookie. And so he crawls in and then he reaches his hand up to the top of the stove, he grabs himself a cookie and then quickly stuffs it in his mouth and he eats it. And then that first cookie was so good, he went and grabbed a second cookie, stuffed it in his mouth, and right then my wife came back in the room and he’s got crumbs coming out of his mouth, a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie, just Caleb, I told you not to eat the chocolate chip cookies.
(35:39):
Did you eat one of the cookies? And he’s still chewing crus going like, no mommy, I didn’t eat any cookies. And she’s like, no, you are sinning. First you disobeyed your mother, I told you not to eat the chocolate chip cookies. And now you’re lying. You’re saying you didn’t. When the evidence is clear, you’ve got crumbs on the floor all over your mouth and chocolate chip cookie in your mouth. Not only did you disobey your mother, you also lied to your mother and see boys and girls that day, my son Caleb was sinning. He disobeyed his mother and he lied to her and because of that he was punished. And the same is true when we do things that are wrong, when we sin, it separates us from God and we deserve eternal punishment. We deserve to. The Bible says the price for sin is death.
(36:41):
We deserve to pay the ultimate price for doing things wrong. And so by telling a story like that, you get people to think about the concept of sin and then to think about it in their own lives. And then from thinking about the concept of sin, you can bring them into a place where you’re talking about how Jesus sets us free from sin. Alright, so another gospel concept would be the idea that we can’t save selves. So there’s another great story about a monkey. One time there was this monkey in the forest and his mother says, you can play anywhere in the forest but don’t play near the quicksand. If you fall into the quicksand, it’s going to pull you down and you’re going to die. So one day, guess what the little monkey did? He decided to go play in the quicksand. And sure enough, he got stuck and he knew that if he called for help, his mother would come, but then he’d be in big trouble for disobeying her and falling into the quicksand.
(37:48):
And so the little monkey, he says, I can pull myself out. And so he grabbed a hold of his ear and he started to pull on his ear as hard as he could and he is pulling on his ear. But boys and girls, no matter how much he pulled on his ear, did you know that he was not able to pull himself out of the quicksand? You see, sometimes we think that we can save ourselves. We think if we can make enough money, we can buy our way into heaven. We think that if we’re good, if we do enough good things, that God will let us into heaven. But the truth is that no matter how hard we try to save ourselves, there’s no way for us to pull ourselves out of a place of sin. The only way to get out of the quicksand is if Jesus comes and throws us a lifeline.
(38:40):
And so today, Jesus is here, and you might be stuck in the quicksand of sin, but Jesus is here to throw you a lifeline. Everyone reach up at your hand and grab a hold of the salvation rope, the rope that Jesus is throwing to you. Do you want Jesus to pull you out of a life of sin? And if you want Jesus to set you free from a life of sin, say yes and let’s pray. So you bring them to a place of salvation. Like another concept is the idea that you are valuable to God. And so I tell a story about this one time, and by the way, all these stories, you’re welcome. I give them to you, you’re welcome to use them. You’re adapt them to yourself and use them to communicate the truth of the gospel. So one time I went on a mission trip with a friend and my friend, this was his first mission trip and he was so excited about going on the mission trip before we left, he went to the store and he bought an expensive camera and he loved this camera so much.
(39:51):
He also bought a nice pouch that he could hang on his belt to put the camera into. And so as we were traveling through the country, everywhere we would stop, he would jump out and he’d pull out his camera and he’d start taking pictures. And then when we’re in the car, he kept saying, stop the car. Stop the car. I said, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? He says, look at that beautiful mountain. I want to take a picture. So he’d jump out of the car, go and take a picture of the mountain, and then we drive a little bit farther. Stop the car, stop the car. I said, what’s going on? He says, look at those beautiful flowers. And he’d jump out and he’d pull out his camera and he’d take a picture of the flowers. And so that camera was so valuable to him. He took lots of pictures.
(40:36):
But then we went to this little village. And in that village there were no restrooms. And so he had to use the restroom and all they had was an outhouse. And so he went into the outhouse. And as he was using the outhouse, guess what happened? The camera that was in the case on his belt, it fell out of the case and into the hole. He’s like, oh no, my camera, my valuable camera. What’s happened? His heart was broken. Here is beautiful, valuable camera is there way down below. And you know what my friend did? He loved his camera so much. He thought his camera was so valuable with one hand he held his nose and with his other hand, he reached down into the hole. He reached down as far as he could all the way down into the filthy mess. And he was just able to reach the string on the edge of the camera.
(41:48):
And he pulled it up and he was so happy he had rescued his camera and he said, got lots of baby wipes and wiped it all off. And soon it was as good as new. And he was willing to reach down into the mess to rescue his camera because his camera was valuable to him. Now, boys and girls, I want you to know that you are valuable to God. God loves you. God cares for each one of you, and God made you in his image. And because of that, you are valuable in the eyes of God. And so it doesn’t matter what situation you’re living in, maybe you are living in a life of sin. Maybe you are living in a family where there’s lots of abuse. Maybe you’re in a situation where everyone around you is doing things that are wrong. But I want you to know that you are so valuable to God that God is reaching down from heaven into the filthiness of our sinful lives and is reaching down to rescue you because God believes that you are valuable and he wants to save you.
(43:11):
Everyone lift up your hand to heaven and say, I am valuable. Everyone say God wants to rescue me from a life of sin. And boys and girls, no matter what type of life you’re living, God wants to reach down from heaven and rescue you right now. If you want God to rescue you, just lift up your hand to heaven and let’s pray together that God would rescue you. And you take the so. So you have this big concept that you are valuable to God. And then you go and you look for a story and you start to ask the Holy Spirit, holy Spirit, give me some good stories. Give me some good ways of communicating truth through stories. And it can be a Bible story. It can be a story that you made up a story like one of these stories I’ve told you today. But you tell the story and then use the story to bring them to a point of praying to Jesus. What do you think?
James Moore (44:17):
Yeah, I think that’s a great thought process. I can definitely see what you’re saying about Jesus speaking in parables and telling people from stories and it’s very effective. And especially for children. I could see that. Yes sir.
Evangelist Daniel King (44:34):
Yeah. So you have another concept like the need for faith. Like what is faith? Faith is a big word. There’s a lot of meaning in the word faith. So how do you communicate faith to a child? Well, you could ask a child to come forward and have him sit down in a chair, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down and say, boys and girls, when this young man sits down on the chair, he puts his trust in the chair. He believes that the chair is going to be able to hold his weight because he has faith that the chair is not going to break. Now, the word faith means trust. It means to put your trust in God. And so when you put your trust in God, you’re saying, God, I believe that when I rest in you that you will hold me up, that you will hold me.
(45:41):
And so the boy has faith when he sits in the chair. And you can put your faith in Jesus today. You can know that he will hold you up, that you can trust him to do what his word says that he will do. And so when I ask you, do you want Jesus to save you, you need to put your faith in Jesus. Do you believe that Jesus can actually save you? If you believe that Jesus can actually save you, lift up your hand and we’re going to put our trust in Jesus and ask him to save us today. And so you look for a little illustrations and stuff. So, alright, so you’re going next week, you’re preaching at some schools. I believe God will lead you and guide you and help you to do that effectively and give you some messages that will be effective for the children that you’re ministering to. And let’s just finish up the podcast today by praying for your trip.
James Moore (46:40):
Yes sir.
Evangelist Daniel King (46:40):
Thank
(46:41):
You. Alright, give me your hand, James. Let’s pray together. Dear heavenly Father, I pray for James as he heads down to the nation of Brazil. Lord, I pray that you would be with him as he ministers in the schools that he’s going to, and as he sees this great gospel crusade with evangelist Adam Smith. Lord, I pray that you would be with him, that you would speak through him. And Lord, I pray that many young people would come to know you as their Lord and Savior because of the ministry that he’s doing in the schools. Lord, I pray that you would open up great doors for him to be able to share the gospel, both one-on-one with people and in the schools and everywhere he goes, Lord, I pray that he’d be a shining light in the midst of great darkness. And Lord I that during this trip that you would deposit something significant into his life and that he would be able to lead many people to you. And Lord, I pray for you to begin to mold him and help him to be the very best evangelist he possibly can be. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. Amen. Alright, James, be blessed. I’m excited to hear. Maybe we’ll have to record another podcast after you get back. You can tell us what God did
James Moore (48:04):
In
Evangelist Daniel King (48:05):
The nation of Brazil. Amen. Thanks for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Thank you, sir.
Evangelism Podcast Host (48:10):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Evangelist Daniel King (49:12):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (50:32):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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The Call of the Evangelist | Global Evangelist Alliance Mentorship Call
The Global Evangelist Alliance hosts a monthly mentorship call for evangelists. During a recent call, Evangelist Rubens Cunha introduced Evangelist Daniel King, who has led over 1 million people to Christ through his worldwide evangelistic ministry. Daniel discussed the biblical role and calling of the evangelist, highlighting the examples of the evangelist Philip in the book of Acts. Key points include:
- Evangelists are called to preach the gospel to large crowds and see miracles, but also to equip and train others in evangelism.
- Evangelists must remain humble and focused on glorifying God, not themselves.
- Teenagers and young people can be effectively trained and deployed as evangelists.
- Evangelists should develop a strong support base through consistent communication and vision-casting to partners and supporters.
This insightful mentorship call provides valuable guidance for those called to the evangelistic ministry.
Join the Global Evangelist Alliance: https://globalevangelistalliance.com/
Transcript:
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:00:00):
The Global Evangelist Alliance has a monthly mentorship call for evangelists, and recently I was invited to teach on the mentorship call. It consists of about 20 minutes of teaching on what is an evangelist, and then we opened it up for a question and answer session. I thought that you would be interested in hearing this mentorship call. If you want to sign up for future mentorship calls, you can do so at the Global Evangelist Alliance.com. So I encourage you to go there today and become a member of the GEA, the Global Evangelist Alliance and start participating in the mentorship in how to become a better evangelist. Let’s listen to this month’s mentorship call.
(00:01:10):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.
Eleanor Curran (00:01:36):
So I just want to welcome you all as everybody’s jumping on, make sure that our room is getting filled up with all these amazing people from around the world. And I’m going to introduce our host today, which is Evangelist Rubens Cunha. He is a very powerful evangelist that the Lord has called to reach the nations and it’s a privilege to work with you, sir, handing the microphone over to you.
Rubens Cunha (00:02:04):
Thank you so much Eleanor Curran. It’s a great joy to be here. Hello everyone. I hope you feel as blessed as I do to participate in these calls. I am calling you guys now from the mission field
(00:02:21):
In the city of in northeast Brazil battlefield for the gospel. So I was talking to Daniel King earlier. It is great that we are doing this as real evangelists. We are doing the work of evangelism as we elaborate these calls, as we do the mentorship projects. And I want to ask all of you to kindly mute your microphones so that no environment noise where you are disrupts the teaching and the mentorship call. Again, I am very glad that you are here. I want to welcome you and let you know that you are in for a treat today. Today we have with us Evangelist Daniel King, Dr. Daniel King, an evangelist that is being used by God in many, many nations. Daniel King is a missionary evangelist who has traveled to over 70 nations in his quest for souls. His goal is to lead 1 million people to Jesus every year through massive crusades distribution of literature and also by training leaders.
(00:03:43):
Daniel was called to the ministry when he was five years old and begun to preach when he was six. That’s a great blessing. Dr. Daniel’s parents became missionaries to Mexico when he was 10, and then you spent the next 13 years ministering in Mexico alongside his parents. When he was 14, he started the children’s ministry that gave him the opportunity to minister in some of America’s largest churches while he was still a teenager. Daniel is also the host of the Evangelism podcast. I hope Daniel will tell us a little bit about this podcast today because it’s great. He has already interviewed over 250 evangelists. I have had the honor to be featured in one of these podcasts. He has interviewed evangelists, pastors, missionaries, church growth experts. Daniel has also offered over 20 books and appeared on numerous TV and radio programs. He has planted six church overseas and is the father and president of King Ministries International. He’s married to Jessica, have two children, Caleb and Grace and Katie Grace, and I’m honored to call Daniel King a friend. We live in the same city though we usually meet in different parts of the world. Last time I believe was in Congo in Africa before that South Korea and before that Colombia. How are you doing, Dr. Daniel?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:05:20):
It is so wonderful to be with you today. Yes, Rubens is a good friend. We meet all over the world and we are excited about telling people about Jesus.
Rubens Cunha (00:05:32):
Amen. Amen. We are going to have now a time of teaching. Dr. Daniel King is going to share with us about the call of the evangelist. I want you to pay attention and to make notes. And remember, you get to participate in these mentorship calls. Make sure you send your questions through the Zoom chat. And after Dr. Daniel King finishes his teaching, we are going to be selecting as many questions as possible, as many questions as time allows. And then we are going to be talking about those questions here live. So Dr. Daniel King, it’s an honor and privilege to have you today and you can go ahead with what the Lord has put in your heart for today.
Evangelist Daniel King (00:06:19):
Thank you Brother Rubens. It is such a wonderful privilege to be able to spend time with each one of you today. Thank you for making time in your busy schedule to be mentored in evangelism. Today I am going to be talking about the question, what is an evangelist? And this is a question that I have been exploring my entire life. When I was five years old, my father pastored a small church in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. And one Sunday he invited a prophetess to come and minister at the church. And God woke her up the night before and said, tomorrow there will be someone wearing a blue shirt. You are to prophesy that this person wearing a blue shirt is called to be an evangelist. And so she came to church. None of the adults in the adult service were wearing a blue shirt. And so she invited the kids workers up hoping one of them would have a blue shirt on and they didn’t have a blue shirt on, but there is this long line of kids.
(00:07:18):
And at the end of the line was a cute little five-year old boy wearing a blue shirt. And that cute little boy was me and she prophesied over me that day that I was called to be an evangelist. Of course, at the age of five, you don’t really know what an evangelist is. It seems like a big word, but I didn’t waste any time. I jumped right into the calling that God had in my life and I preached my first sermon at the age of six. And my mother and father still have the cassette tape from that first sermon. And one of the things I say is, if you are saved, stay saved. If you’re not saved, you need to get saved. So even at the age of six, I sounded like an evangelist. And then as I was growing up, my favorite books were by TL Osborne, the great missionary evangelist from here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, oral Roberts, Reinhard Bonky, Billy Graham.
(00:08:12):
I’d read the books and look at the pictures of all of the people that they minister to. And so God planted that in my heart. And when I was 15 years old, I was reading a success book. It said, if you want to be successful, you need to write down your goals. And one of the goals they’d say would be good for young people is to try to become a millionaire by the age of 30. But when I was 10 years old, my parents had become missionaries in the country of Mexico. And I realized that because of my upbringing as a missionary in Mexico, that money was not what was important to me. What was important was souls. And so at the age of 15, I wrote down, hi Daniel King, want to lead 1 million people to Jesus Before I turn 30 years of age, instead of becoming a millionaire, I wanted to lead a million heirs into the kingdom of God, become a soul millionaire.
(00:08:57):
And so God started opening up doors in different nations. I did my first gospel crusade in the nation of Honduras while I was still a student at Oral Roberts University and studying New Testament there. And then the next year I did two crusades and the next year I did four crusades. And by the time I was 30 years of age, I had led face-to-face over a million people to Jesus. And I was praying and say, God, what comes next? And I felt like God say, go for a million souls every single year. And so in the natural that’s impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And so I’m excited about evangelism and this entire story of my life has been searching for this question, what is an evangelist? Because I want to be the very best evangelist I kept possibly can be to fulfill the calling that God has put on my life.
(00:09:50):
And so eventually I ended up doing my doctorate of ministry at Oral Roberts University and studying the question about what is evangelism and is mass evangelism effective? And for my doctoral project, I actually did a project researching one of Ruben’s Una’s crusades down in the nation of Brazil. And so he’s there right now. I want everyone to offer up a prayer for the ministry that he is doing this very week in Brazil. And so I’ve been studying this question, what is an evangelist? And so I want to go to God’s word to answer the question. The word evangelist is mentioned three times throughout scripture. And so the first time it’s mentioned is in Ephesians chapter four, it says it was Jesus who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service.
(00:10:51):
And so the job of an evangelist is to prepare the body of Christ to do the work of an evangelist. And so the evangelist, of course, preaches the gospel. We want to fulfill the great commission. Jesus said, Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all nations. Mark 16, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Luke 24, forgiveness of sins will we preach in his name to all nations. John 20, as the Father sent me, I am sending you Acts one, eight, you’ll receive power from the Holy Spirit to be a witness to the uttermost ends of the earth. So Matthew, mark, Luke, John, and Acts. We have this great commission. And the great commission is given not just to evangelists but to every believer. Every single one of us are called to share our faith. But the evangelist is especially gifted by God to do evangelists but then to equip God’s people to do evangelism.
(00:11:50):
And so as an evangelist, you are equipped to inspire the body of Christ and to motivate the body of Christ to go out and to share their faith with others. And so our job as evangelist is to activate the entire body of Christ to go and to do evangelism. And so then the second time that we find the word evangelist is in second Timothy chapter four, verse five. Paul the apostle is a writing to his protege Timothy. And at the time Timothy is serving as a pastor in the church of Ephesus. It was a very significant church. Mary, the mother of Jesus actually moved to Ephesus. And so you can imagine this young man preaching with Mary sitting there on the front row. It was a significant place that he was ministering at. But this is what Paul says to Timothy. He says, but you keep your head in all situations and do her hardship, do the work of an evangelist.
(00:12:51):
And so even though Timothy is serving as a pastor, Paul tells him to do the work of an evangelist. And so every single member of the body of Christ can do the work of an evangelist and to share our faith. And then the Bible mentions the word evangelist for a third time over in Acts chapter 21. There is a man named Philip who is living in Caea. And Paul the apostle stops there and he meets Philip in. Philip has four virgin daughters who all prophesy. And this passage specifically calls him Philip the evangelist. And so of all the characters in the Bibles, we got lots of prophets, we got apostles, we got disciples. But the only person in the entire New Testament who is specifically called an evangelist is this man whose name is Philip. And so I believe that God gave us Philip as a model for evangelists to follow.
(00:13:59):
So we got to ask this question, who was Philip the evangelist? His story starts all the way back in Acts chapter six. In Acts chapter six. There was a great increase in the number of the disciples and they were feeding the disciples every day and the apostles were getting worn out because they were serving food to all of the different groups of people that were newly saved. And so there was one group of widows that started to complain that they didn’t have enough food and the apostles didn’t have enough time to spend time in God’s word. And so they decided to name seven deacons who would serve as servants to help wait on the tables for all of the people that they were trying to feed. And so in Acts chapter six, it says they proposed the proposal, please the whole group. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit and also Philip.
(00:15:04):
And so the first time we see Philip, he is being named as one of the seven deacons who are going to serve food to the widows. And so in the beginning of his ministry, he wasn’t an evangelist, he was simply someone who had a heart to serve. And I really believe that that is where every evangelistic ministry should begin. We should begin with the heart of a servant. Jesus said, I did not come to be served but to serve. Jesus said, the greatest in the kingdom is the servant of all. And so Philip the evangelist started his ministry out simply by being willing to help out. And then a time of persecution comes and Philip the evangelist, he scatters along with all the other people who were fleeing persecution. And we come to Acts chapter eight and Acts chapter eight, I believe is the greatest chapter in the entire Bible for the evangelist to read in order to understand the calling of the evangelist.
(00:16:14):
And so in Acts chapter eight verse four, it says, those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went, Philip went down to a city in Samaria and he proclaimed the Christ there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many and many paralytics and cripples were healed. So there was great joy in the city. And so we can learn a lot about the calling of an evangelist from what Philip did here in the city in Samaria. If you’ll look at that passage in your Bible, you’ll notice that as Philip begins to preach, there are multitudes and there are miracles. And so those are two signs of the evangelists. Evangelists have the ability to pull multitudes together. Just last week I was ministering at an organization up in Moline, Illinois, and it’s this organization that reaches out to children in their community.
(00:17:20):
And so they’ve been serving the Lord there since 1936. And I went in and they invited me to help them with their fall outreach. I said, let’s go to the local schools, let’s pass out flyers. And we packed out the entire building and many of the staff members that had been there for 20 years said, this is the most kids that we’ve ever seen packed into our building. And there’s something about the evangelistic gift that just pulls crowds of people together. And so we packed out the building, that’s part of the anointing of the evangelist is to bring multitudes together. And then it says that there were miracles. This is another sign of the evangelist. The evangelist is especially anointed by God with faith to believe God for miracles and miracles are the dinner bell that call people to the banqueting table of heaven. And so when people see a miracle that happens on the platform, then it opens their heart to Jesus.
(00:18:25):
I’ve preached the gospel in many different nations, Hindu nations, Muslim nations, Buddhist nations, and I’ve noticed that people, when they see the miracles that Jesus does for the people, it attracts them. They are drawn towards God. Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men onto me. And so Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He did miracles 2000 years ago. He can still do miracles today. And the evangelist is especially anointed by God to believe God for healing miracles. And then you’ll notice his message. It says that Philip preached Christ. Christ is the main message that the evangelist is supposed to preach. And so there are a lot of different traveling ministers in the body of Christ. Some traveling ministers talk about how to have a happy marriage, how to be successful in business, and sometimes they call themselves evangelists.
(00:19:24):
But really I can very quickly identify who is called by God to be an evangelist because the evangelist will preach about Jesus Christ. And so a true evangelist, it doesn’t matter where he starts in scripture, he can preach on any subject at all, but just as quickly as possible, he will get to the good news about Jesus Christ. And so an evangelist, he or she will preach good news. The Bible says that all have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God. The price for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, the son of God. He died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, but he didn’t stay dead. After three days, Jesus rose from the dead. And today Jesus is alive. And the Bible says that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.
(00:20:17):
Will you call on the name of Jesus today? This is your opportunity. If you want to call on Jesus, lift up your hand to heaven and let’s call on Jesus right now. The evangelist is going to take people straight to Jesus. And so Philip the evangelist preached Christ. There were multitudes, there were miracles. He cast out evil spirits. God gives us the evangelists, the ability to take authority over every evil spirit. And then it says that there was great joy in the city. And I have seen this hundreds of times in different cities across the world where you go and it could be a city that’s struggling economically. It could be a city that has religious persecution. It could be a city where one tribe is fighting against another tribe. I’ve seen it all. But when you begin to preach the gospel, we find that great joy fills the city as people come to Jesus.
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And so some of those things that we see are the signs of the evangelist. And so Luke tells us the story about Philip the evangelist. So it is a model for us to follow as an evangelist. The evangelist is called by God to preach to massive crowds of people. But what’s very interesting is that in the second part of the chapter, we see Philip begin to operate in a different manner. He’s having a very successful meeting there in Samaria. And then it says, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. You can imagine Philip complaining a little bit to God and saying, God, why do I have to go down to the desert road? No one is on the desert road. I don’t know if you’ve noticed God, but here in Samaria, we’ve been having some really good meetings.
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I’ve been getting some really good pictures for my newsletter here in Samaria. Why do I have to go down on the hot desert road to Samaria? But he is an evangelist who is obedient to the voice of God. And so he goes down there. And so it says he started out and on his way, he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasuries of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah, the prophet. The spirit told Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it. Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet, do you understand what you’re reading? Philip asked, how can I? He said, unless someone explains it to me. So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
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So this man, this Ethiopian eunuch had come all the way from Ethiopia, a very long distance to Jerusalem, to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel. And when he got to the temple in Jerusalem, he discovered that in the law of Moses, that there were certain people that were forbidden to enter into the temple. And so we find that in Deuteronomy chapter 23 verse one, it says that no foreigners are allowed to go into the inner court of the temple. And it says, no eunuch, no one who has been maimed or who is imperfect is allowed to go in. And so you can imagine this Ethiopian eunuchs disappointment. He’s come from this long distance away. He wanted to worship Yahweh. The people of Ethiopia had knowledge of Yahweh going all the way back to the queen of Sheba who had come and met Solomon. And she had taken the news about Yahweh back to Ethiopia.
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So he came to worship and he discovers that the people who are foreigners and the people who are eunuchs are not allowed into the temple. So he’s very disappointed, but he spends a huge sum of money. The scroll of Isaiah would’ve cost one year’s wages. So he spends this huge sum of money to buy this book of Isaiah the prophet, but he doesn’t understand it. So God sends Philip the evangelist to the desert road in order to explain the scripture to him. And so Philip begins to minister one-on-one to the Ethiopian eunuch. And so in Acts chapter eight, we see Philip ministering to multitudes and we also see Philip ministering one-on-one to this Ethiopian. And so as an evangelist, sometimes you’ll preach to big crowds and then sometimes God will put you on an airplane sitting next to someone for eight hours and you’ll have the opportunity to share the gospel with that person that you’re sitting next to.
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And so if you’re an evangelist, you should be ready to preach the gospel to the multitudes, to big crowds of people. But then you should ask the Holy Spirit to lead you to those individuals, one-on-one to minister to people whose hearts are ready to come to Jesus. The Ethiopian eunuch, he reads Isaiah chapter 53, which is the beautiful passage about what Jesus accomplished on the cross about how Jesus became a lamb who was slaughtered for the sins of the whole world. And I don’t think he’s ended there. I think they kept reading and they came to Isaiah chapter 56 verses three through seven. And in Isaiah 56, there’s a beautiful prophecy that says that the day will come where foreigners will be allowed into the temple of God and where even the eunuchs will no longer be cut off from worshiping Yahweh. And so the Ethiopian euch begins to ask, he says, what’s the difference between what happened in the law of Moses where eunuchs and foreigners are forbidden to enter the temple?
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And now in Isaiah 56, this beautiful prophecy where there will come a time where God’s house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. And so it says that Philip beginning with that very passage of scripture, told him the good news about Jesus. And Philip says, the difference is that Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God came to earth, he died on the cross to pay the price for our sins. And now no one is excluded. Everyone is included. There is a place for everyone to come to Jesus. Isaiah the prophet made the prophecy that there is a day coming where everyone will included even the people who come from a long distance. And so the Ethiopian Munich is super excited about this good news. He says, stop the chariot. He says, is anything preventing me from being baptized? And Philip says, no.
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He jumps right out of the chariot, he baptizes him. And then immediately the spirit catches Philip away and he begins ministering in other places. And so one of the questions that an evangelist often gets is, what do you do about follow-up? Well, what did Philip do about follow-up for this Ethiopian eunuch? He’s actually caught away by the spirit, but the Ethiopian union, he goes back to Ethiopia. He tells everyone about Jesus. And to this day, there are Christians in Ethiopia who trace their spiritual heritage back to this encounter that Philip the evangelist had on the desert road. And so this tells me that if you can reach the one person for Jesus, you potentially could impact an entire nation. And I’ve preached many times in Ethiopia, and it’s so beautiful to see the people of Ethiopia stretch out their hands towards Jesus. They’re ready and willing to come to Jesus.
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And it’s because of the seeds that Philip the evangelist preached. Philip the evangelist, he becomes a model for us to imitate. We should be ready to preach to multitudes and we should be ready to preach to the individual. But what’s very interesting is that in both of these cases, what does Philip preach about? He preaches about Jesus. And so that is the message of the evangelist. It’s all about Jesus. Jesus changed the city of Samaria. Jesus changed this Ethiopian eunuch and Jesus will change the lives of the people that you minister to as an evangelist. Hallelujah. Yeah. Let’s go into a time of questions. I hope that blessed you guys. Did you guys enjoy hearing that?
Rubens Cunha (00:28:42):
Great, great time. Thank you so much Dr. Daniel King. I was really blessed about the teaching here, you really brought of an evangelist. And I want to invite all of you now that heard this teaching, send your questions to Dr. Daniel King. Use the chat in the zoom call and send your questions. It’s a very unique opportunity for you to ask an evangelist who has so much experience, so much Bible knowledge, questions that are in your heart. And we already have some questions here, Daniel. And I want to start with a question from Timothy. Timothy, from France. He is asking, when do we know we’ve crossed the line from sharing humbly what the Lord has done through us to look how great of an evangelist I am and see crowds I have preached to someone said, don’t impress express. So what do you say about this?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:29:47):
Well, I think as an evangelist we need to stay very humble. And I’ve had the opportunity to be with some of the greatest evangelists of our generation. And I’ve found that the greatest evangelists often are very humble. And it’s because we realize we can’t do anything through our own power. I can’t heal anyone. It’s Jesus that heals someone. And so personally, I think we remain very humble, but we walk in great boldness in knowing who Jesus is and what Jesus can do. And so I think you should personally remain humble, but then be very bold in telling people this is what Jesus did and this is what Jesus can do for you. And so as an evangelist, we do walk that line. We like to take pictures of the big crowds of people to show people what God is doing. But one time TL Osborne, he told me, he says, you always take pictures.
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He says, when you take a picture of a miracle, a miracle happens twice, once in the life of the people who receive the miracle. And then again, the miracle happens when you show people what Jesus is doing. And so the reason that you show pictures of the crowds of people coming to Jesus and the pictures of the miracles is not to inflate your own ministry or your own sense of self-worth it is to show people look at this amazing thing that Jesus is doing in the world today. And I think when people see that they will get excited and they will want to be a part of it. But of course, we must always examine our own arts and make sure that we are preaching the gospel for the right motive, the right reason. And really it comes down to asking God to give you compassion for people.
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You’re not there for a photo op, you’re not there as an influencer. You are there because you care about people. You have the same compassion that Jesus felt when he saw the crowds of people who were harassed and helpless. And if we keep our hearts broken before God and realize that you are rescuing people from hell and taking them with you to heaven, that you are actually standing in the gap. And if you don’t preach the gospel, people could be in danger of spending eternity separated from God. And so I think that actually gives us great humbleness to know that God would choose to use us, and it also gives us great boldness to preach the good news with authority and power.
Rubens Cunha (00:32:34):
I love what you said Daniel. And the Bible verse comes to mind in Matthew chapter five, verse 16. In the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus said in the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. So I think you made a great point there. So it’s so much about the motivation of our hearts and each evangelist must seek his or her own heart. If you are showing the pictures, if you are showing the miracle so that God gets the glory, that’s the right way of doing it. But if you are doing it for the sake of self-promotion, that’s a wrong motivation that does not honor God and he’s not going to bless it. How do you think, Daniel, we should watch our hearts. What are the questions we need to ask ourselves when dealing with this issue?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:33:34):
One of the things that God asked me one time, I had my camera out and I was trying to capture a good photo of a crusade I was doing. And God asked me, he says, Daniel, would you preach to these people if you didn’t have a camera with you, would you be willing to preach to them even if you weren’t able to take a picture or tell anyone what had happened? And immediately I said, yes, I want to preach to them. I want to rescue people from hell. It is rescuing people from hell that creates joy in heaven. It is rescuing people from hell that creates joy in my heart as an evangelist. I celebrate the victories, but it is all about leading people to Jesus, and that has to remain the motives of our hearts. And so from time to time, I just examine my own heart and say, God, help me to always have the right motive and to do things for the right reasons.
Rubens Cunha (00:34:41):
Amen. I love this. And I think just being very honest, here we are among evangelists. I think this needs to be a constant pursuit in our hearts as we preach to crowds. And sometimes we come to places where we receive the applause of people. We need to constantly give glory to God to make sure our hearts remain pure and the Holy Spirit can flow through us and bless the people. Now I have another question here from James. James is asking, can you train teenagers to become evangelists?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:35:14):
Absolutely. Teenagers are some of the best evangelists there are because teenagers are very influenced by their peer group. And so if you can get a couple of teenagers excited about sharing Jesus, they can start a revival, a revolution in a nation as people turn to Jesus. And so absolutely we need to look for teenagers who have a heart for God and begin to develop their ministry gifts. And so one of the things that I do in my crusades is I often take a younger evangelist with me. And sometimes I’ve had teenagers, sometimes early twenties, and I give them an opportunity to speak on the platform. The platform costs a lot of money for our ministry to be able to invite people, and sometimes a teenager would never have the capacity to be able to do a crusade of that size on his own, but I give them the platform to preach and they get excited about that.
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And that really is the launch to their evangelistic calling. And so if you are going out to do evangelism, take some teenagers with you, have them go out and help pass out flyers, give them opportunities to share their testimony, help them to develop in their ability to talk about Jesus. And teenagers will become some of the most effective evangelists that we can train. And also kids. Kids make great evangelists. And so when my two kids were young, 10 and eight years old, we took them on the mission field and they weren’t ready to preach yet, but they helped to pass out flyers and to invite people to come to the crusade. And now my daughter, Katie Grace, she’s 12 years old, she comes to me, she says, daddy, I feel like God’s calling me to be a missionary. I say, good, we will develop that in you and you will be a great missionary.
Rubens Cunha (00:37:16):
Amen. I love what you said. And sometimes we have the impression that Jesus’ disciples we’re like this old man, maybe because of some artwork. We have seen some paintings, they are depicted as older people, but the evidence is that they were all very young. Peter is the one that complains about paying the tax. And you all know the story. Jesus gave him a miraculous fishing. A coin was in the mouth of the fish for him to pay tax. And only people 20 and older had to pay the tax. And Peter’s the only one reported to have to pay the tax. So most likely the disciples were all under 20. Think about that. And also in that culture, typically a rabbi met his disciples or the disciples for the rabbi when they were very young. So even though we have this idea of the disciples as older men, it’s very much possible that they started as teenagers following Jesus, which is an amazing thing to think.
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I agree with Dr. Daniel King in our experience as well, the teenage evangelists are the ones who are the most on fire. They are bold, they are courageous. So I want to encourage you all to train and empower and give opportunity to teenagers and children to share the gospel. And as I’m saying that, I see some people like India, she’s just nodding with her head, looks like she has had some experience training teenagers as well. Now Pedro from Brazil, Daniel is asking how to develop discernment to take bigger steps of faith, developing the call of an evangelist.
Evangelist Daniel King (00:39:11):
When I first started out in doing evangelism, I started small. My parents were missionaries in Mexico. And so we went out on the dirt streets of Juarez, Mexico and we invited kids to come to the church. And so sometimes we would have 50 kids come. And then one day we decided we would have more kids if we dressed up as clowns. And so I dressed up as a clown and went out and waved at the kids and invited them to come to the church. And then suddenly we had a thousand kids show up at the church. And then God opened the door for me to go on a mission trip to another place. And it wasn’t a very big budget, but for a teenager it was a lot of money. So I asked God to provide. And so God provided that small budget God provided then that gave me faith to believe for a bigger budget.
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Then it gave me faith to believe God for a bigger budget. One of the principles of God’s kingdom is faithfulness. You stay faithful with what God gives you right now. And then as you’re faithful, God will give you greater and greater opportunities. And so just with whatever tools and gifts and budget that God has given you right now, look for opportunities to do evangelism. If it’s one-on-one, do one-on-one evangelism. If it’s teaching on evangelism at a local church, do that whatever opportunity God gives you, throw yourself a hundred percent into it. And then as you’re faithful with the opportunities that God gives you, God will begin to give you greater and greater and greater opportunities. And so that’s kind of how our faith develops too. Faith is a little bit like a muscle. You start small and you lift one set of weights and then after a while that set of weights is easy and you can build to a bigger set of weights.
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And so over time in your evangelistic ministry, God will increase your faith to believe God for bigger and better things. But you start small, you start where you are and you walk in the fullness of the calling that God has placed on your life and then God will build your faith and eventually you’ll be doing huge things for the kingdom of God. One time said that which is considered great, today will be normal tomorrow. And so of course Reinhard bonky one time he got to lead over a million people to Jesus in a single salvation prayer. And so I think that God is accelerating what’s happening in the world today and that what used to take 10 years to accomplish God now will allow the evangelist of the GA to accomplish in one year what used to take some people a lifetime ministering. Now we’re going to see evangelists accomplish that very quickly. And so Jesus is accelerating things. I think Jesus is coming back very soon. And so if you will stay faithful, even in doing the small things, God will test you. And then as you prove yourself faithful, God will very rapidly begin to give you greater and greater opportunities.
Rubens Cunha (00:42:36):
I love your answer, Daniel and I feel the same in our ministry this year we preached to crowds in excess of 80,000 people in Congo and we met in Congo. You also had an amazing large crusade there, but this has been 30 years in the making. Most of my ministry, in the beginning especially, we were preaching bus stops and in the streets praying for multiplication. And this has been a gradual process. Nowadays. We have our own PA system here in Brazil. We do several crusades a year, but it didn’t happen overnight. I really like what you said about taking steps by faith and then God will stretch you and then you take that step and then God brings increase. But I do have a question for you in the same subject here. How can you discern between a step of faith and a foolish action?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:43:37):
Well, first of all, I don’t think that the devil will ever tell you to go get someone saved. And so if you are taking an action of faith where it is going to lead to people getting saved, even if you make a mistake, I think God will back you up because he’s excited about people being saved. Even in our ministry, we continually take steps of faith for the crusades that we do. Some have big budgets, some have small budgets, but we almost never have the money in the bank. When we make the commitment to do a crusade, we put it on the calendar and then we start to trust God and we begin to look for the money. I begin to share the vision with our partners and friends and ask people to invest in what we are doing. And then God brings the provision and often it doesn’t come from the people that I think it should come from.
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Like I say, he’s a rich businessman. He could give me a lot and then he doesn’t give me anything, but then someone else will step up and be very generous and help us. And so even this year, I’ve seen God stretch our faith and we’ve seen God provide in tremendous ways. And I think that the vision of the evangelist is always bigger than the resources that the evangelist has. Every evangelist I’ve ever met, they always ask me, well, how do you raise money to do crusades or how do you raise money to be an evangelist? I am sure that’s true for many of us here on the phone call that you have bigger vision than what you have in your hands to be able to do right now. And I think that’s good because I think God gives us big vision so that we have to rely upon his provision.
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God wants us to stretch our faith. I do think that faithfulness is what leads to bigger faith though. So if you have nothing and you say, next week I’m going to do a massive crusade like a Reinhardt Bonky crusade, I would say that will probably not happen because it took Reinhard Bonky 40 years of faithfulness in ministry in Africa to build to the point where his ministry was able to do these massive crusades. And so sometimes people think I’ll start doing crusades and then immediately I’ll be able to do what took Reinhard Bonnke 40 years to accomplish. And that’s just not going to happen. But if you stretch your faith by 10% or 20% and say, I’m doing something at this level and I’m going to trust God for an additional 20% to increase 20% every year, I think over time you’ll be able to build to the level where you are doing amazing things for the kingdom of God. And so we prove our faithfulness by staying faithful. And then as we’re faithful, year by year, by year, God gives us greater capacity, greater relationships, greater resources to be able to do things for the kingdom of God.
Rubens Cunha (00:47:11):
Very, very insightful. So the heart here is continue expanding, but be patient. Many ministries took decades for them to accomplish the amazing things they are doing, and God will take you all in a process that is similar. Now I have a question here from Jean from France. What are the things you wish you knew earlier as an evangelist?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:47:40):
One of the things that I think is very important is building up your support base. When I first started in the ministry, I scraped together all of my money to put into crusades, and I did some really wonderful crusades where we spent lots of money on full color posters, plastered the entire city, and we had great crusades, great healings. And then when I got back home, I didn’t have enough money to be able to send out a nice newsletter. So I just took some of the pictures from the crusade and went and made a black and white photocopy and sent that picture out. And it was so grainy, you could barely see anything that had happened. And if I could change anything, I would go back and I would say, you need to work in the ministry. But then also you can work on your ministry and make sure that as you’re developing the great things that God’s doing, because the opportunities for ministry are endless, you’ll always have opportunities to do ministry. But along with the ministry, make sure that your support base is built along with the ministry that God has given you. And so that involves putting time into calling your friends and partners and telling them this is what God has done. It involves printing material to share the vision of what God is calling you to do and make it look good, make it look professional.
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You can make a nice website for your ministry and put time into doing that because if you get too far out with the ministry side, that’s where sometimes then you run out of funding. So you kind of develop your support base at the same time as you’re developing in the ministry opportunities that God gives you.
Rubens Cunha (00:49:50):
I really love what you said, Daniel. And we have a question here from Etel since you talked about that and you have a book on raising funds. Can you give the people here today some ideas on how they could raise funds to support their ministry, how to find sponsors, how to work on the ministry?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:50:14):
Fundraising is driven by vision. And so people don’t want to give to a need. They want to give to a vision and they want to be a part of what God is doing. And so it’s very important to continually be communicating what God is doing, not just for the motive of asking for money, but also to ask people to pray for you and to participate and to volunteer. And so I think it’s very important to tell the story of what God is doing as you’re doing it, and then to invite people to participate because people want to be a part of something that is successful, that something that God is doing. And so if whatever level of evangelism that you’re at, tell the stories of what God is doing. If you’re on a bus and you have the opportunity to share the gospel with someone on that bus, make a post on Facebook.
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Hey, today I got an opportunity to share the gospel on the bus. The guy rejected me, he spit at me and he said, I don’t want to have anything to do with your Jesus. That’s okay. You got rejected. It’s not a problem. Just tell the story and say, Hey, can you help me share Jesus with more people? I know that next time I’m going to find someone who’s not going to spit at me. You just tell the story and then people will be intrigued and they will want to be a part of it. And so I think that’s the biggest thing about fundraising, is communicating with people what God is doing and then asking them, inviting them to participate in the work of God. And so you can use Facebook to do that. You can do it by text message, you can do it by calling people. But the more you share the vision and invite people to participate, not everyone will participate, but God has people who he is specifically talking to that will step up and be a part of what God has called you to do.
Rubens Cunha (00:52:26):
Very, very insightful as you say that a Bible verse comes to mind. Matthew 1344 says, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. It’s interesting here that the men wanted the treasure, but he bought the field that came with the treasure. Sometimes we want the treasure, but we don’t want the dirt that comes with it. And the ministry, we want to preach the gospel, but sometimes we don’t want to deal with all the administrative work that comes with the ministry. You said something powerful. We have to work not just in the ministry but on the ministry. And it’s so important that as evangelists, we study the Bible, we preach the gospel, but we are also doing a good job like you preparing newsletters, communicating with partners, with prayer partners, letting people know about what we are doing.
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And many years ago, Dr. Daniel King helped me. Our ministry was just beginning. We are doing crusades. And I asked Dr. Daniel King at the time, he wasn’t a doctor yet, but it’s good to call him like that because he earned a degree. I study a lot for that. He said, what do you do when you are raising funds? And he said, well, when I’m not traveling and preaching, I’m home calling people, talking to people. And that was life changing. I really integrated that in my personal ministry. In the way I do it is I spend time with personal contacts. I call people, let them know what’s going on, what happened. I give them reports, I tell them what’s coming up. And then like you said, the people got called to participate in your ministry, be stirred in their hearts and they will start to give. I really believe that we need to pay attention to those things.
(00:54:33):
I was running the numbers a few years ago and realized that I spent 3% of my time preaching and 97% of my time working on the ministry, studying, writing books, taking care of legal issues and documents and updating partners and raising funds and writing newsletters. So as we are building a team now, I am able to dedicate more time to the ministry, but still it’s a consideration. Everyone that is called to evangelism, especially to be full-time needs to have, there will be a lot of work involved around the preaching of the gospel. Would you like to add anything to that?
Evangelist Daniel King (00:55:15):
Well, Paul tells Timothy do the work of an evangelist, and part of the work of an evangelist is telling people what God is doing and inviting them to participate. And so it’s actually a lot of work. It’s not an easy job to be an evangelist, but we do the work of an evangelist. Also, you mentioned the book that I wrote about fundraising, and I’ve written several books about soul winning and I would like to give those books to the people who are participating on this call. And so if you will go to my website, king ministries.com, KING King ministries.com and enter in your email. There’s a box where you can put your email. I will send you as a free gift, the fundraising book that I wrote, how to Raise Money for your Ministry. And then I’ll send you a couple of my soul winning books that I’ve written on how to preach the gospel and some books that will inspire you to be a better soul winner. And so I just want to give those as a free gift to each of you. I’ll send them to you as an ebook where you can click on it and download and read, but especially that book on fundraising has some really great ideas that will help you to raise money for your ministry. So go to king ministries.com and sign up for my email list and I will send you the book on fundraising as my gift to you.
Rubens Cunha (00:56:41):
What a wonderful gift I want to recommend to everyone on this couch. Go there, get your books. I personally have been greatly blessed by Daniel’s books. He’s a great writer. Well, and we are coming to the end of this call. It’s very good, but we need to come to a conclusion here. But before we finish, Daniel, please tell people here how can they find you on social media, on the internet, your website, your podcast, which is a must for every one with a calling for evangelism.
Evangelist Daniel King (00:57:16):
Yeah. You can find my podcast by typing into any search engine, the Evangelism podcast, and wherever you listen to podcasts, it’ll pop up. And so now I’ve interviewed over 330 different evangelists and missionaries and pastors from around the world. And so I have talked to a lot of different people about how they’re doing evangelism in their local context. And so just this last week we did an episode talking about evangelism in francophone countries that the countries where they speak French. And we did another episode on evangelism to children, whatever context of evangelism that you’re in, just go through some of those episodes and you’ll find something that will be a big blessing to you. You can find the Evangelism podcast just by typing in the Evangelism podcast with Daniel King in any search engine. And then my website, king ministries.com. You can find links to my YouTube and a lot of videos of different crusades that we’ve done. I find those very encouraging for people to go and to watch, to see what God has done to build your faith for what God can do through your ministry. We also have a lot of training resources there. And again, if you want some of my books on evangelism, go to the website king ministries.com, give me your email address and I will send an email out to you later today so that you can download those books as my gift to you.
Rubens Cunha (00:58:56):
Wow. Wow. This was a wonderful call. Thank you so much, Dr. Daniel King, for taking time to pour into the lives of so many evangelists. I believe we were blessed here. I believe I’m speaking for everyone. We are really grateful that you took the time to be here with us today. And I want to remind everyone on this call that we will have our next mentorship call on December the third, December the third at the same time. And our guest will be a dear friend, Desmond Henry. Desmond Henry is involved in different networks of evangelism around the world. He is an academic, he’s a professor of missiology. He serves as the international director of the Global Network of Evangelists led by the Palau Ministries. Desmond Henry is also the chairman of an academic journal, the Conspectus from South Africa, and he serves as the catalyst for the Zen Proclamation Evangelism Network.
(01:00:08):
So on December the third, we are in for a treat again with a great men of God who has tremendous insights in the area of global evangelism. So I count on you, make sure to invite other evangelists, friends, so many evangelists. I know I have prayed for something like that for many years. I wish when I was starting, we had a call like that, that we have direct access to evangelists who are making a difference in our generation. This is a privilege. Let’s not keep this mentorship a secret for ourselves. Please invite other evangelists to be on the call, tell your friends, invite them to join, and let’s build a strong community of people who love Jesus and love evangelism. So thank you all for being part of the call today. Thank you so much AOR Kern for mediating and organizing all the technology for the call. Thank thanks to all the interpreters that translated to other language today. And again, thank you, Dr. Daniel King. Please say your final considerations before we end the call.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:01:20):
Yeah, let’s finish with a word of prayer. And I especially want to pray for Reubens. He’s in Brazil right now. He is team is in the schools this morning preaching the gospel, telling people about Jesus, and they’re going to be doing a crusade this week. And so everyone just stretch out your hands towards Reubens and let’s pray for him. And I want to pray for each one of you. Dear heavenly Father, Lord, I lift up Reuben’s to you, Lord. I pray that this would be a mighty harvest in the nation of Brazil, that this week they would see God do great miracles. And Lord, I pray for each evangelist, every man, every woman who has joined us on the call. Lord, I thank you that they will walk in the fullness of their calling as evangelists. Lord, I pray for great opportunities, great resources, great relationships, great abundance. Lord, I pray that from the people on this call that millions of people will come into the kingdom of God through their efforts. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would anoint them. I pray for a greater release of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of healing, the gifts of faith. Lord, I pray that you would increase our gift of faith to believe you for greater things than we’ve ever seen before. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Evangelism Podcast Host (01:02:44):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out that Daniel King’s School of Evangelism learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more if you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where To start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:03:46):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review By giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (01:05:06):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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Happy Veteran’s Day
My grandfather was a veteran, my father is a veteran, I have two uncles who are veterans, and my sister serves in the military. I am thankful for their service to our nation.
Veteran’s Day is a time to honor those who have served in the military, sacrificing their comfort, safety, and sometimes even their lives to protect and defend our freed
om. As we reflect on their courage and commitment, we’re called to remember that they have demonstrated some of the greatest virtues—strength, resilience, and a readiness to serve others, all values close to the heart of God. On this day, we honor our Veterans, but today is also an opportunity to think about what it means to find ultimate peace, hope, and salvation.
Veterans know what it means to Sacrifice
We celebrate our veterans because they are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our nation. As Christians, we believe that sacrifice is at the very core of the Gospel. Jesus Christ, who laid down His life for us, is the ultimate model of selflessness. John 15:13 reads, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Our veterans have lived this principle, putting their lives on the line to ensure the safety and freedom of people they may never meet. This remarkable act of courage mirrors Christ’s sacrificial love, and it’s a reminder of how deeply God values those who serve.
Veterans know the meaning of Courage
As we honor our veterans, we see their courage as a reflection of God’s heart. Many veterans have experienced battles and hardships that have deeply impacted them. They’ve faced challenges that require not only physical strength but mental and emotional resilience. Jesus offers comfort to all who are weary, including veterans who may be carrying unseen wounds. His promise in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” is an invitation for everyone—especially those who have been on the front lines.
Veterans often look for the Peace of God
One of the deepest struggles many veterans face is finding inner peace. After witnessing and experiencing the harsh realities of war, it can be hard to find solace in everyday life. But true peace is something that only God can provide. Jesus offers us a peace that transcends understanding, a peace not based on circumstances but on His eternal love. In John 14:27, He assures us, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” As we celebrate our veterans, we pray that they find peace in Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
The Hope of Salvation
While Veteran’s Day is a time to reflect on the sacrifices of our military, it’s also an opportunity to share the hope of salvation. Just as these brave men and women fought for our earthly freedom, Jesus fought for our eternal freedom. The Bible tells us that He bore our sins on the cross, defeated death, and now offers us the gift of eternal life if we believe in Him. The freedom they fought for is a reminder of the freedom Jesus offers to every soul—a freedom from sin, guilt, and shame, and the chance to live forever with God.
If you’re a veteran, know that God loves you deeply and has a purpose for your life beyond your service. If you’ve never experienced the peace that comes from knowing Jesus, today could be the day that changes everything. We invite you to open your heart to Him, to allow His healing love to fill any wounds that life may have left. Whether you’re a veteran or someone who loves one, Jesus is ready to welcome you, to provide peace beyond understanding, and to grant you the gift of eternal life.
This Veteran’s Day, let’s thank God for our veterans and pray that they find healing, hope, and peace in Jesus. May their sacrifices remind us of the One who sacrificed it all to give us freedom from sin and the promise of eternal life.