POWER FOR WITNESSING by R. D. Quinn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 3, 1900

POWER FOR WITNESSING.

By R. D. Quinn

R. D. QUINN.

(Butte, Mont.)

“Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God.” We are witnesses for God when we reveal in our lives the working of a power that is divine. Paul was a powerful witness for God. Why?—Because he had something powerful to tell, and he told it wherever he went. He determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified, and he preached everywhere the mighty fact that God gave Christ as a ransom for sin, and that the whole world can be saved by trusting in him.

This kind of preaching, supported by the testimony of his own experience, was his most effectual way of drawing men to Christ. It was this testimony that confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, and proved to them that Jesus was the very Christ. It was the testimony of his own experience and conversion and the power that attended it, that silenced the clamoring mob who cried, “Away with him,” when all Jerusalem was in an uproar. It was the same testimony when at last the aged apostle was summoned before the highest earthly tribunal, to witness for God.

It was not with excellency of speech, or enticing words of man's wisdom, but the same simple story of his own experience, and how Christ was seen of him while on his way to Damascus, and the remarkable transformation wrought in his life, witnessed to by the Spirit and by power, that caused Felix to tremble, and Agrippa to say, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

Thus we see that the secret of Paul's power was in his telling the people what he had seen and heard and felt in his own life of the power of Christ. This is the witness for which our Lord calls, and for lack of which the world is now perishing. “Our confession of his faithfulness is Heaven’s chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world. We are to acknowledge his grace made known through the holy men of old; but that which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience.” This being true, it follows that what we need most of all just now is a rich experience,—something that we ourselves are enjoying and experiencing daily of the saving and keeping power of God.

Words alone can not tell it. The mere iteration and reiteration of doctrine along with logic and theory will not reach the heart of the sinner. It must be a positive, living testimony that we now bear to the world. “The gospel is to be presented, not as a lifeless theory, but as a living force to change the life. God desires that the receivers of his grace shall be witnesses to its power. Those whose course has been most offensive to him he freely accepts when they repent. He imparts to them his divine Spirit, places them in the highest positions of trust, and sends them forth into the camp of the disloyal to proclaim his boundless mercy.”

“These precious acknowledgments to the praise of the glory of his grace when supported by a Christlike life, have an irresistible power that works for the salvation of souls.” He who would be a witness for Christ must have Christ abiding within. So let no one try to communicate to others that which he has not received, but rather, “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life, . . . that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.” 1 John 1: 1–3.