Part 2. The Two Labors. An Introduction To The Necessity Of The Street Meeting

The street meeting is a necessary departure from that narrow and common notion which seeks to confine the movement of the Spirit within the walls of a building. It is a work of double grace for the benefit of souls: Firstly, the saints are gathered, under the canopy of heaven, together for edification and fellowship. Secondly, the Gospel is sounded in the midst of the public square. The entirety of the Holy Scriptures breathes with a missionary spirit (Psalm 119:176, Isaiah 40:11, Jeremiah 50:6, Ezekiel 34:11-12, 34:16, Zechariah 10:6, Mark 6:34, Luke 15:4, 15:8, 15:24, 19:10, John 10:11, 14, 27, Hebrews 13:20, James 5:19–20, 1 Peter 2:25, Revelation 7:17), revealing a God who is even now bringing to pass the glorious fulfillment of His Covenant: the bringing of a chosen people to Himself. In His sovereign mercy, He is pleased to redeem His elect unto Himself, not by the wisdom of men, but by the bold proclamation of the Gospel of Christ—a work most powerfully quickened by the operation of the Holy Spirit.

For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.

Ezekiel 34:11,12

In the days of the early Church, the brethren were compelled to seek the shelter of private dwellings. It was a perilous thing to be found gathering as an outlawed sect. Though the record does not detail the exact manner in which three thousand souls were brought to a saving knowledge in a single day (Acts 2:41), it is a safe assumption that such a multitude was not gathered regularly for a formal service within four walls as we do today. It may have been in one another's houses that the multitude converged that the Spirit moved with such mighty power as the church grew.

It is a lamentable truth that we have too often married our earthly comfort to our religion, and this at the bitter expense of the Great Commission. We have become a people who prefer the soft cushion of the pew to the hard soil of the harvest field, the air-conditioned halls to the humid air of the marketplace. To be sure, the meeting upon the open street is but one path in the service of the Master. There is also that noble labor of church planting—the establishing of a new lighthouse in a dark land. Yet, this, too, is but the fruit of a most intentional evangelism. No vine ever brought forth such grapes without the gardener first treading the soil with a heavy heart and a purposeful hand.

Crude though the street meeting may be deemed by the refined, it remains a piercing appeal to the lost, such as the comfortable religion of our day has seen fit to discard. No longer viewed as a mandated commission from the hand of the Lord, evangelism has been relegated to the status of a mere optional program. In a tragic exchange, the agony of the secret closet has been bartered for the organization of the committee; men have dared to lay their hands upon the Ark of God, seeking to drape it in the glittering trinkets of the world to entice the entitled and augment their numbers. Yet, though the land overflows with liturgy and hermeneutics—though well-prepared messages are delivered week after week and the professing church indulges in self-praise—Christ is continually scoffed at, and the nation remains darker than ever. Such empty ceremony was never the heartbeat of true, Biblical worship.

It is not my design to take the reader upon a mere historical journey, seeking therein a justification for drawing the light of the Gospel from beneath the modern bushel; rather, I stand to declare that the proclamation of the Word is the sole, divinely ordained instrument by which the Kingdom of God shall advance. Now I shall say that which stands as an observable and bitter truth: man corrupts all he touches, and that not even the purity of biblical Christianity is spared his defilement. Our lack is not found in a scarcity of students who learn about Christ; it is found in the scarcity of soldiers, who are prepared to bleed in His service. This glaring predicament is due to one cause alone: we do not know God, and therefore, we find ourselves utterly devoid of faith in His promises. We have Christianity, but have not its power. 

A holy necessity is laid upon us, for the hand of the Almighty constrains our very souls. When we look upon the sea of faces before us as we lift up the glorious Gospel, the weight of their eternal destiny presses heavily upon our hearts. For should we remain silent, might these not be the very souls who, on that great day of Judgment, would plead that no warning was ever sounded for them to heed? Oh, what sorrow. For God is robbed of His rightful honor wherever a lamp remains unlit, a believer keeps his silence, or a professor of religion plows on without the quickening power of the Holy Spirit.

Heaven forbid that we should think the silence of His children brings glory to the Most High. No, it is only those who know their God who shall wax valiant and do exploits, heeding that Great Commission laid upon us all. The assembly of the saints must be nurtured in the deep things of the Almighty, that they may be fitted to go forth into the celestial warfare for the souls of men. For while the Church is surely a nursery for new babes in Christ, it is likewise a mighty forge, where the soldiers of the Mighty God are tempered and clothed with that promised power—the power to advance against and withstand the hosts of darkness, over all the power of the enemy, of whom we are assured a final and glorious victory.

A Question

In the twilight of this present age, we must ask: Why do we no longer witness the mighty outworkings of YHWH’s hand as recorded in the Holy Scriptures? We no more behold parting of the Red Sea’s depths; no pillar of fire illuminates our midnight wanderings. We see no great deliverances from the hosts of the enemy, nor does the sun stays still in its place at the cry of a mortal man. Where are the Dagons that once fell prostrate before the Ark of the Covenant? Where are the Samsons who, by the Spirit’s might, laid low the temples of the heathen? Our eyes search in vain for the miraculous feeding of the multitudes, the leaping of the lame, or the opening of eyes long sealed in darkness.

Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, but if the LORD is with us, why has such disaster overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about?

Judges 6:13  

Tell me, dear soul, has the Ancient of Days grown weary? Has His arm become shortened that it cannot save, or His heart grown cold to the cries of His children? Or is it we who are slow of heart to believe? We have become a people content to boast of a hollow faith, cherishing the dry husks of outward religion while our souls remain strangers to the quickening power of the Living God. Ask yourself, what does the world need from a powerless Christianity?