The Evangelist and His Work
Some Introductory Matters

Understanding Bible terms is essential to understanding the message of divine revelation, because one's practice can be no better than one's grasp of the Lord's will relative to any matter (Eph. 5:17). Such an understanding will help to correct any discrepancy in practice. An evangelist is one who bears the gospel message, whether to the lost or to the saved. The gospel is the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, of salvation that is in Christ, and of what relates to that salvation, according to Thayer and other lexicographers.

The Scope of Gospel Preaching

The point is made by some that there is a sharp distinction between the gospel and the doctrine. They insist that the gospel includes what one must know and do to become a Christian, while the doctrine involves what the saint must know and do to serve God as his child. The distinction is further carried out as they maintain that we can only teach the doctrine to the church and that we preach the gospel to aliens (non-Christians). Is the distinction really correct? Does it bear the scrutiny of a close examination of the New Testament? It is this writer's strong conviction that such distinction is unscriptural, being in the same category as that which says there is a difference between the Moral Law and the Ceremonial Law of the Old Testament. Both of them were hatched in fertile minds seeking some way to prop up ideas and notions which their proponents were determined to hold to.

This distinction is not a Biblical. These passages prove that doctrine can be taught to aliens: Acts 5:28, (Jerusalem was filled with the apostles' doctrine of Christ); Acts 13:12, (Paul preached doctrine to the alien Sergius Paulus); Acts 17:18,19 (Paul spoke doctrine when he preached Jesus); Rom. 6:17, (Paul said that the Roman saints, while aliens, obeyed the form of doctrine delivered them). It can also be demonstrated that purity of doctrine is essential, in contrast to the loose view that there can be much latitude in doctrine. In Romans 16:17, 18 the apostle taught God's people to mark and turn away from those teaching contrary to the doctrine. John said that those remaining in the doctrine of Christ have both the Father and the Son, while any going onward and failing to abide in it do not have them. Paul instructed Timothy to teach certain ones to teach no other doctrine (I Tim. 1:3). The doctrines of the Nicolaitans and of Balaam were strongly denounced in Revelation 2:14, 15 and 24.

The same misuse and misrepresentation shown in regard to doctrine will now be proved in regard to gospel preaching. Study the passages that follow: Acts 20:25, in which Paul said he preached the kingdom to the church at Ephesus; Rom. 1:15, which shows Paul ready to preach the gospel to the saints at Rome; and Rom. 16:25, where Paul said saints can be established by the gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. In each passage gospel preaching, which some maintain cannot be done to saints, is seen as directed toward saints. The distinction already referred to, then, appears human, arbitrary, and unscriptural. It can also be learned from Gal. 1:6-8 and 2:12-14 that perversion of the gospel can take place when teaching detrimental to that system of doctrine revealed in Jesus Christ is done. Indeed, the false teaching considered in the Galatian letter did not relate directly to what is usually associated with the gospel (Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection). In fact, the conduct of Peter when he acted the hypocrite is what Paul described as not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. Evidently no teaching was referred to in this instance, only his conduct; yet his conduct was not according to the gospel. How could this be if the gospel relates only to the non-Christian? It could not be!