“Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Nathanael asked. "Come and see," said Philip. “John 1:46

There probably is not a better chapter on personal evangelism, which is one person talking to another person about Christ, than there is in the first chapter of John’s Gospel.

Andrew was one of two disciples of John the Baptist who had heard John say, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John encourages Andrew to leave him and follow Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother, Simon, and bring him to Jesus. “We have found the Messiah!” he said. Jesus then bumps into Philip and says to him, “Follow me.” Philip then sought out Nathanael. “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets also wrote…Come and see,” Philip said to him.

In our witness for Christ, we often think we have to persuade people of who Jesus is and what He can do in their lives. This intimidates many of us because we feel we do not know enough and are ill-equipped. These early believers simply invited people to “Come and see,” and left any convincing to Jesus Himself. Our responsibility is to introduce people to Jesus, but we cannot convince them of the truth about Jesus. That is the task of the Holy Spirit who works in the willing heart so people come to know Jesus for themselves, not because of our persuasion, but because we have introduced them to a living Christ who will do His own work in their lives.

It was word of mouth that created a great following for Jesus by people who heard a life-giving message and passed it on. The following is something to consider: If just one person in the world would tell one other person about Christ every six months, then at the end of six months there would be two people in the world who know about Christ. If each of those two people told one person in the next six months, by the end of the year there would be four people who know about Christ. In a year and a half, eight people. Continue to do the math and at the end of five years there would be 1,024 people who know about Christ.

Take a leap from five years to 16 ½ years and there would be exactly 8,589,934,592 who know about Christ, except for the fact that figure presently exceeds the world’s population. This procedure is known as “evangelism by multiplication.” Amazing to think that in just 16 ½ years, the whole world could be evangelized with the first person having brought 33 people to Christ. And our invitation is simply to say, “Come and see!”

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PRAYER: Grant me a heart for evangelism, Lord, and help me introduce You to people so they may discover for themselves the wonderful blessing there is in knowing You. Thank You, Lord.