Reprinted October 18, 2007 (first published July 30, 2003) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

The late James Alexander Stewart was an evangelist greatly used by God in the last generation. His evangelistic/revival crusades in Eastern Europe between the end of World War II and the fall of the Communist Iron Curtain were among the last truly Bible-based, citywide revivals in the last century. The challenging life story of James Stewart, I Must Tell, is available from Revival Literature, P.O. Box 6068, Asheville, NC 28816.

The following sermon is taken from a chapter of Stewart’s book entitled Evangelism. Many years ago we were given permission to reprint three chapters from this book.

The compromises of the gospel that James Stewart witnessed in evangelical Christianity were just beginning to bud during his lifetime. These messages were first written in the 1940s. Even so, the faithful evangelist did not forbear to lift his voice against them. He did not follow the New Evangelical philosophy that the evangelist should simply preach the gospel while avoiding any negative aspects of the preaching ministry such as rebuking error. Oh, that God would raise up a new generation of men with the spirit of the Charles Spurgeons and the James Stewarts of a bygone era.

The compromises that burdened the heart of Evangelist Stewart are in full bloom today. These messages are therefore more urgently needed now than when the writer was alive. May God give us ears to hear these important truths.

HOLLYWOOD EVANGELISM

By James Alexander Stewart, D.D.

This message is given in a spirit of humility and brotherly kindness. The writer longs for a true work of the Holy Spirit when the revival comes for which we all are praying. In the Book of Acts, the Church’s divinely inspired textbook on evangelism, there are three predominant truths: the fullness of the Spirit, aggressive evangelism, and satanic opposition; and these three can never be divorced. I believe that today Satan is giving us a false work of evangelism in order that we might be deceived and satisfied and no longer yearn for the real thing. Modern evangelism often depends on the psychology of the world instead of on the Holy Spirit. It cannot depend on both. “The old creation has no resources for new creation purposes.” May this booklet be used to spread over the land a deep desire for true, Scriptural evangelism.

PREACHING A POPULAR JESUS

There is a real danger of preaching a “popular Jesus.” In order to reach the unsaved, we have falsely, even if sincerely, presented only one side of the Christian life: the joy of salvation. As Dr. J. Gordon has said in his sermon on “The Repulsions of Christianity”:

“We dwell much upon the attraction of Christianity, but rarely stop to think it may also have repulsions, which are vitally necessary to its purity and permanence. If the Church of Christ draws to herself that which she cannot assimilate to herself, her life is at once imperiled; for the body of believers must be at one with itself, though it be at war with the world. Its purity and its power depend, first of all, upon its unity. So that if perchance the Church shall attract men without at the same time transforming them; if she shall attach them to her membership without assimilating them to her life--she has only weakened herself by her increase, and diminished herself by her additions.”

Is it a hard and ungracious saying, then, to declare that the Church of God in the world must be able to repel as well as to attract? Nature is an austere teacher on this point. She has given to the rose its exquisite fragrance; but she has also armed it with thorns, so that, while the delicious odors allure, these little sentinels stand guard, with their drawn bayonets, to defend the flower, which is endangered by its very beauty and sweetness.

My brethren, I know of no lesson concerning the growth and development of Christ’s Church that needs to be more thoughtfully pondered that this. The tendency of our times is to multiply the attractions of Christianity. These elements in doctrine, in worship, and in life which serve most strongly to win men’s interest, and to propitiate their prejudices, are sought with ever-increasing diligence. Never does it seem to occur to us that Christianity may be made too alluring for her own safety.

No attraction can be too powerful, no charm can be too alluring, that acts for the single end of drawing believers to Christ, and identifying them with His Body. But the appeals which win men without transforming them, which join them to the Church without bringing them into fellowship with Christ, are fatal to a pure Christianity, and in the end must put the very existence of the Church in jeopardy.

In our anxiety to catch the worldlings, we have given the impression that the gospel is almost a humorous, frivolous message. There is too much laughing in our meetings and not enough weeping. In our eagerness to tell the world that Christ satisfies, we have gone to the extreme of presenting a popular Christianity. When we laugh and joke and act the clown at the beginning of a service, and at the close become serious and warn the unsaved of their impending doom, it is difficult for them to realize that we are sincere.

We are not saved to have a jolly time. We are saved to sacrifice, to suffer and to serve. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.” “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.”

Our preaching produces little real appreciation of the Lord Jesus and of the Word in our young converts. There is too much singing and too little of the Word of God in our meetings. Our young people know all the songs in the hymnbooks but are grossly ignorant of the chapters of the Bible. One of the signs of these last days is the shallowness of our spirituality and the depth of our ignorance of the things of God. How often has my heart ached when young people, searching for the Bread of Life, have been given sawdust! We must teach them the doctrine of the Scriptures. Deep Bible study and intercessory prayer are the need of the hour.

This is no time for a frivolous Christianity. We are living in tragic days. Millions have never yet heard the glorious message of salvation. Let us indeed continue to tell the world that only Christ can satisfy, but let it see also that we are in earnest on behalf of its lost condition.

I preached, as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men --Richard Baxter.

HOLLYWOOD TECHNIQUE

There are many indications that we are living in the last days of the dispensation of grace. We are told that in the last days perilous times shall come, and I believe that some of these signs are now apparent. We have apostasy which has swept into the Church of God. Leaders of religion are denying the fundamentals of the faith.

But we have other signs of perilous times. One of these is a type of revival which is flooding America, a type that may be described briefly as “Hollywood Evangelism.” It comes, not from the apostate or modernistic quarters. Why do I call this type of revival “Hollywood Evangelism?” Because it uses the technique of Hollywood, of the world.

I have waited in vain for some man of God, some leader among the churches, to stand up and warn the people of this matter of evangelism. I believe such a one could turn the tide into deep spirituality. But churchmen have been silent. For this reason, and this alone, I am now delivering the message laid upon my heart.

I would not like to grieve the Holy Spirit in my life by failing to warn my fellow Christians concerning one of the perils of our day. If there is one thing that has broken my heart, one thing which has caused me to weep, it has been the shallowness of modern evangelism. Somehow or other, evangelists of today seem to ignore the truth of John 3:30, where John the Baptist says, “He must increase and I must decrease.” That is a spiritual truth.

The more I increase, the more my blessed Lord must decrease; but the more I decrease, thank God, the more He increases. Surely our fervent prayer should be Paul’s that Christ might be magnified in our bodies.

I was once told that I would never be a very popular evangelist because I did not sufficiently “sell my personality.”

Oh, the shame! Our business is to magnify the Christ of God and not to fling about our personalities. Dr. Herbert Lockyer, in pointing out the peril of man-worship in evangelism, says, “If a man is somewhat attractive, blessed with a fascinating personality and with power to influence multitudes, that man is often sought after rather than the Master.”

CROWDS OR CONVICTION?

What is revival? Are we having a genuine revival in America today? In one of the foremost evangelical magazines it was recently stated that “no longer do we need to pray for God to send a revival to good old U.S.A., because God already has sent the revival; what we see today happening in America is nothing else but a mighty spiritual revival.”

I submit that it is to be feared the writer of those words mistakes crowds for revivals. He gives instance after instance of the thousands of people at so many revival services. But crowds have nothing to do with revival.

The mightiest work the Holy Spirit did through Dwight L. Moody in Great Britain was in small groups of five or six hundred people, not in the large audiences of twenty and thirty thousand. One may well be afraid of crowds.

We cannot journey far with God unless we are saved from numbers. It is sadly possible to think more of numbers than of Christ, who in the days of His earthly ministry went, not only to the cities but to inconspicuous places, proclaiming the Word.

It is true in our work in Europe we have crowds. We have an average of four or five thousand people coming nightly for many months. On Sundays we sometimes have five meetings with about four thousand people at each one.

In this way we preach to a great many thousands. But I am still afraid of crowds. I want to know why they are coming. It is well known that a crowd brings a crowd. Is that the only reason why the people are coming? I want to know what is the center of attraction. Is it, after all, my own personality? Am I a novelty because I am a foreigner? Or am I humorous and entertaining? I also want to know if Christ is the center of attraction. I could have thousands of professions of conversion, but if Christ be not the center of attraction for the multitudes, then the campaign is a spurious work of the devil and not a genuine work of God.

There is a real difference between spiritual evangelism and what may be called “soulish” evangelism. Paul says in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, “I serve my God with my spirit in the gospel of His Son.” Not with his soul he served, but with his spirit. So much of what we see today is nothing else but “soulish” evangelism and not spiritual evangelism. No, we must not be deceived by crowds.

DEALING IN GLAMOUR

Part of the “Hollywood technique” employed in evangelism today has to do with methods of advertising. Gospel preachers who used to be merely humble servants of God, exalting a great and mighty Lord Jesus, are now glamorized into celebrities. They are advertised as “colossal,” and “famous,” and “terrific,” and “charming,” and even as “gospel artists.” A gospel singer was recently featured as he who had performed at a famous film star’s birthday party. Yes, preachers and singers alike are so glamorized that Christ is not the center of attraction.

I believe the Spirit of God is grieved by this type of advertising. There is no reverence or reticence in it. For example, a man of God was advertised recently as “a voice the like of which the world has not heard for centuries!” Think of that! No wonder the newspapers took it up as a joke. Did not that local pastor know what the word century means? Here was a man coming to preach in his church whose voice was supposed to be such as had not been heard for a hundred years. He was “the new prophet raised up by God!” That is bordering on blasphemy. And was there no humility in the mind of the evangelist? What about all the holy men whom God has given to the world during the past century? This man, by his own testimony, was evidently far superior to Finney, far superior to Moody, to Billy Sunday, to Whitefield, to Wesley, to Jonathan Edwards, and so on!

Harry Moorehouse was an English boy-preacher who greatly blessed the soul of D.L. Moody. While still a young man, Moorehouse was conducting evangelistic services in a certain city in the United States, but there was no revival. God had given him precious revivals both in America and in Britain, but in this city it was as though he were up against a stone wall.

Day and night he was on his knees, searching his heart and crying out, “Oh, God, why is there no revival?”

One day, as he was walking along a street of the city, the Holy Spirit showed him a large placard on which was written, “Harry Moorehouse, the Most Famous of All British Preachers!” At once he said to himself, “That’s why there’s no revival!” He went at once to the campaign committee and said, “Brethren, now I know why there is no revival. See how you have advertised me, as the greatest of this and the greatest of that! No wonder the Holy Spirit couldn’t work! He is grieved and quenched because you haven’t magnified the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the wonderful One. I’m just a poor, simple, humble servant, preaching the glorious gospel and saying, `Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!’“

St. Paul said, “I am less than the least of all saints.” That is how Paul thought of himself, Paul, the mightiest man of God in the history of the Christian Church, the greatest Apostle the Lord Jesus ever had to proclaim His glorious message of salvation. Think of these words, “Less than the least of all saints,”  and then think of some of the evangelistic advertising of today.

When I was a boy, evangelists were humble and modest. This is the way we advertised our special meetings: “Dearly beloved friends in the neighborhood, we are commencing a series of evangelistic services in our church. We have a wonderful Saviour to proclaim to you!” Then the leaflet went on to tell about the glories and the beauties which are to be found in the Lord Jesus. Because Christ was everything to the church, the members wanted Him become everything to the neighborhood, so we advertised a wonderful, glorious Saviour. Then we added that Brother So-and-so from Such-and-such would preach about this wonderful, majestic Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, it was the Lord Jesus who was the center of attraction and He was the One who was magnified. An insignificant, humble man of God was coming to talk about this wonderful Saviour.

Today, all the advertising is centered around the preachers and the singers, and they are so glamorized that their own families would never know them. The obvious result is that the people come to hear and see a preacher or a singer and not to hear and see the Saviour. They leave the meeting saying, “What a wonderful preacher! What a wonderful singer! What a wonderful man!” instead of leaving the place saying, “What a wonderful Saviour!” James Denney was right when he said, “In preaching you cannot produce at the same time the impression that you are clever and that Christ is wonderful.”

It was the custom when there were mighty preachers in London for people to go “sermon-tasting”. A man and his wife once heard two great preachers, one on Sunday morning and the other on Sunday evening. The whole day long the man kept saying of the morning preacher, “What a wonderful preacher, what a wonderful preacher! In the evening, he and his wife went to hear Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Down the steps of the Metropolitan Tabernacle they came, the tears rolling down their cheeks, and saying, “Oh, what a wonderful Saviour! Oh, what a wonderful Saviour I have!”

Dr. D.H. Dolman says, “I am only a wick. With many of us it takes a long time to learn this lesson. It is only when the wick is soaked in oil that it can burn. If you wish for the fullness of the Spirit in order that your church should be crowded or people flock to hear you, the Holy Spirit cannot work through you. If people begin to talk about the wick, there is generally something wrong with the burning.”

ENTERTAINING OR THUNDERING?

Further, I believe that because the motive of these meetings is wrong, the atmosphere is wrong. Sometimes they are advertised as “bright gospel meetings.” I hope that my meetings are never merely bright. Sometimes meetings are advertised as “entertaining and instructive.” For my part, I absolutely refuse to entertain, either older believers who are often cold and carnal, or young believers who have no depth, and no spirituality, and no desire to go on in the deep things of God. Above all, I refuse to entertain sinners on their way to hell. I preach, as Richard Baxter did, as a dying man to dying men and women. I want to preach every time as though it were my last chance. I do not want souls to curse my name in the lake of fire and say, “Yes, I went to such-and-such a gospel meeting, but then preacher Stewart only entertained and joked. He made Christianity a farce!”

The old-fashioned method of evangelism was to make people weep, but the modern “Hollywood” way is to make people laugh. Everybody has to have a jolly good time. “Everybody happy? Well, say Amen!” And so our hymns and choruses must have jazzy tunes or we cannot enjoy ourselves. We must have plenty of jokes or it would not be a good meeting. That is why there is such a woeful lack of conviction of sin in modern evangelism. The Holy Spirit cannot work in a frivolous atmosphere.

The atmosphere of these modern meetings is so much like Hollywood that one might almost expect some comedian or film star to rush on to the platform.

I believe that what we need is Finney’s method. Finney believed in plowing the soil of the human heart until it was broken up. Nowadays we soft-pedal the truth because we dislike to hurt people’s feelings and because we may lose the crowds. Crowds are the greatest snare of modern evangelism. It is high time that some people’s feelings should be hurt. We call them butterflies today; John the Baptist in his day called them vipers, a “generation of vipers”! We must thunder forth God’s message.

Here is a solemn truth that very few of God’s people seem to see: Everything depends on the atmosphere of a meeting. If you had known my father, you would soon understand me. We all resemble our parents in one way or another. I believe that we all resemble our spiritual parentage.

Thus the atmosphere of the meeting where you were saved has a great deal to do with the type of Christian you will turn out to be.

For example, if you were saved in the Hollywood sort of atmosphere, light and frivolous, with the song leader more like a clown and the preacher merely glorifying himself and using fleshly effort, you also will turn out to be a jazzy, frivolous Christian with no depth in your spiritual life. You will have no appetite and no real appreciation for the things of God.

But if you were saved in an atmosphere of real conviction of sin, if the song leader was in earnest and the preacher was a man of God who relied, not on worldly methods, but only on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to produce results; if he had a burden for lost souls while he preached, and if he preached in the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit; then you who were saved in that atmosphere, and under that preaching and singing will be deep and real and sincere. You will have a strong desire for the things of God.

SLANGY OR SUBLIME?

Further, in order to streamline the gospel to this modern age, many of the “Hollywood evangelists” have taken to using slang. When I think of the majestic way in which the Apostles spoke of the blessed Lord Jesus and of His precious blood and His atoning death, it breaks my heart to hear our modern evangelists use the terms they do. Recently a well-known radio preacher said, “When Jesus died on Calvary, salvation was in the bag!” Think of it! “In the bag!” Oh, what blasphemy!

Read what the Apostles said about the death of the Lord Jesus and how gloriously they wrote. They presented a majestic Saviour. Today the presentation of that majestic Lord Jesus Christ in His royal robes of glory is reduced to the cheapness and vulgarity of a modern swing chorus. Think of those old-fashioned hymns our grandparents sang, such as “Majestic sweetness sits enthroned upon the Saviour’s brow,” and compare them with the frivolous, shallow choruses we sing today.

Our greatest need is for a real vision of our Lord Jesus Christ in all His beauty, dignity and majesty.

In a true revival, a real work of God, there is a burden. The prophets of old called their messages burdens. In the old-fashioned evangelism, God’s people had an agony over lost souls. One could feel it in the very atmosphere. In our revival meetings in Europe, the people are groaning and weeping before the service had even started. Before I can begin preaching I  myself am weeping. Oh yes, that is the true way of revival. Jeremiah was the weeping prophet. “Oh, that my head were waters,” he cried, “and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” David the Psalmist says, in the 119th Psalm, “Rivers of water run down my eyes because they kept not Thy Word.”

Oh, that God would give us weeping prophets once again! Oh, that He would give us a generation of young men and women who have this agony and this burden for lost souls! I think of Paul who, in saying farewell to the elders of Ephesus, could remind his hearers that day and night, for many a long month, he had been weeping in their midst. As Mr. Whitefield used to say to his great congregations, “If you won’t weep for yourselves, dear sinners on the way to hell, then I’ll have to weep for you!” Then he would break out into uncontrollable weeping, both in his preaching and during the meeting.

Think of Robert Murray McCheyne of my own country of Scotland. He was a human skeleton when he died at about twenty-nine years of age. He wept in the vestry before he ever went to his pulpit. Hardly a morning and hardly an evening would pass that he did not break down in weeping, weeping over lost souls going to hell and over the poor spiritual condition of his congregation.

“I fill up that is behind of the sufferings of Christ,” wrote Paul.

Commenting on these words in his book The Passion for Souls, Dr. John Henry Jowett observed:

“That is not the presumptuous boast of perilous pride; it is the quiet, awed aspiration of privileged fellowship with the Lord. Here, then, is a principle. The gospel of a broken heart demands the ministry of bleeding hearts. If that succession be broken we lose our fellowship with the King. As soon as we cease to bleed we cease to bless. When our sympathy loses its pang we can no longer be the servants of the passion. We no longer “fill up the sufferings of Christ,” and not to “fill up” is to paralyze, and to make the cross of Christ of none effect.

“The ministers of Calvary must supplicate in bloody sweat, and their intercession must often touch the point of agony. If we pray in cold blood we are no longer the ministers of the Cross. True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice, a perpetuation of Calvary, a “filling up” of the suffering of Christ.

“My brethren, this is the ministry which the Master owns, the agonized yearnings which perfect the sufferings of His own intercession. Are we in the succession? Do our prayers bleed? Have we felt the painful fellowship of the pierced hand? I am so often ashamed of my prayers. They so frequently cost me nothing; they shed no blood. I am amazed at the grace and condescension of my Lord that He confers any fruitfulness upon my superficial pains.”

FALSE FIRE OR HOLY SPIRIT POWER?

What is the solution to our problem?

The solution is to honor the Holy Spirit and to put away all the nonsense of modern evangelism. May God deliver us from “false fire”! It is impossible to be a man and a woman filled with the Holy Spirit and at the same time to ignore Him.

If you want to be a God-used, God-blessed man or woman, you must honor the Holy Spirit. This means that you will use no method which is contrary to His will. If you are going to honor Him, you will rely upon Him alone for conviction of sin and the salvation of lost souls. Then He will magnify the Lord Jesus Christ in your meetings.

Paul, the greatest evangelist of all, says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “For Christ sent me ... to preach the gospel; not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but to us which are saved it is the power of God” (1:17,18). Modern evangelists try to make the gospel palatable to the unconverted. They try to brighten it up a bit, streamline it a bit, and hand it out to the unsaved in a popular way. But Paul says that the preaching of the Cross is to them that perish “foolishness.” Yes, the preaching of the Cross always will be foolishness to the mind of the unconverted, unregenerate man, and we must not try to make it more attractive in order to get the appreciation of men and women going to hell. No, we must hold to the Old Book and say, “Thus saith the Lord...”

In the second chapter of the same Epistle, Paul goes on to say, “And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (2:1,2).

That ought to be the central message of every evangelistic meeting: “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”

Paul says further, “And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.”  Think of the mighty Apostle Paul saying this! Not so the modern evangelist. No, he does not need to come that way. He is a celebrity!

Paul has something more to say: “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

A certain preacher was advertised recently as the “greatest orator in the United States.” Paul was no orator; he had said that he was not going to preach with the wisdom of words lest the Cross of Christ should be made of no effect. Now he says that his preaching is not in enticing, or attractive words of man’s wisdom, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, and he tells of his condition of mind before his preaching began. Why did Paul come to Corinth with weakness and fear and in much trembling? Was he afraid for his life? No. Was he afraid of the people? No. But he was afraid. He came in that spirit of weakness and fear and humility and trembling lest he should preach with man’s wisdom with the result that the faith of the people would stand in that and not in the power of God. In a word, Paul was afraid of sham converts.

Every true man of God, every zealous evangelist, and every faithful pastor must be afraid of sham converts. We have such people in modern evangelism because Hollywood technique has been used and sensational methods have been followed. Evangelists are using enticing words of man’s wisdom and giving a great show.

In God’s harvest field there has to be chaff along with the wheat, but the tragedy is that today we often have more chaff than wheat. Hundreds profess to be born again and yet, the week after the campaign is over, it is often difficult to find the converts. I believe that if men and women are genuinely convicted of sin and truly born of the Holy Spirit, they will go on with the Lord. “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” I know that verse concerns those saved during the Great Tribulation, but I believe that it is also applicable to the present day. If a person is truly born again he will endure to the end; he will go on with the Lord. Hundreds of those who come forward to the altar and profess to be saved, and then go back to the Devil next night, or next week, were never born again. The Word of God says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Yes, Paul was afraid of sham converts. He knew that there was something wrong when there was more chaff than wheat.

In our own day, Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer has sounded a similar warning in his book True Evangelism:

“It should be observed that, apart from the power of God, superficial decisions may be easily secured, and apparently greater results accomplished, for some minds are so dependent on the opinion of others that the earnest and dominating appeal of the evangelist, with the obvious value of a religious life, is sufficient to move them to follow almost any plan that is made to appear to be expedient. The experience of thousands of churches has proved that such have not met the conditions of grace in the “believing with the heart”; for the multitudes of advertised converts have often failed; and these churches have had to face the problem of dealing with a class of disinterested people who possess no new dynamic, nor any of the blessings of the truly regenerate life.

“A few genuine decisions may occur among the many, and these have always justified the wholesale evangelizing method. There is, however, a very grave harm done to any who are thus superficially affected, and this harm might sometimes outweigh the good that is done. In reply to this it is argued that nothing can outweigh the value of one soul that is saved; yet, when the harm of a false decision is analyzed, it will be seen that the afterstate of bewilderment that is almost unapproachable and hopeless, has its unmeasured results as well.”

I make a plea for sincerity, for true evangelism, for the old-fashioned way. In the old days, we got down on our knees before God, and we wept, and we prayed for the lost souls. Then we preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe that God is able, He can and does use many different means for the working out of His will in the salvation of men and women.

But I believe also that the only way a sinner can be saved is by Holy Spirit conviction through the precious Word of God.