How Important are Signs and Wonders to Evangelism?
“Jesus knew the greatest factor in persuasion was not logic, personality, or even acts of kindness.”
Everyone likes when God does miracles, but we have been made to feel like we should not seek signs and wonders. But Scripture shows us an early church that did seek and pray for signs and wonders.
Acts 4:29-31
“Grant that Your bondservants may speak Your word with all confidence, while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.”
The early church understood the purpose of signs was to reach the lost.
Acts 5:12
“ . . . many signs and wonders were taking place among the people . . . 14 And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number.”
Jesus himself understood that people need signs and wonders.
John 4:47, 48, 54
47 “When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was imploring Him to come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death.
48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.”
This verse is often used to criticize people who chase after signs as if Jesus was rebuking him. But then why did Jesus immediately heal the boy? The Scripture later said that Jesus did this as a sign.
54 This is again a second sign that Jesus performed when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.
So, Jesus just spoke the truth! People often do not believe unless they experience or see signs & wonders. Jesus was not discounting the need for signs he was pointing out that many people need them to come to faith. Signs are not ends in themselves but are designed to introduce people to a living Jesus and bring them to faith. In parts of the world where the gospel is exploding, the church does understand the purpose of signs and wonders. Churches grow by God’s presence in its meetings and by signs & wonders. Yet today many seem set on separating evangelism from supernatural things.
Jesus knew the greatest factor in persuasion was not logic, personality, or even acts of kindness. The greatest convincing factor of the gospel is the power of the Holy Spirit. This is why he warned His disciples not to go until they had power.
Luke 24:49
“Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
Acts 1:8
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses.”
Jesus didn’t just say, “Go out and make friends and build relationships and eventually they will want what you have found.” He said wait. You need my power to do this. But often the church separates healing from evangelism. Additionally, we have used prophecy almost exclusively inside the church. That misses the point and purpose of the gifts of the Spirit.
In the New Testament, we see healing and prophesy being exercised in the public outside meetings. For example, to the woman at the well, Jesus used the word of knowledge to open her heart to the gospel.
The gifts of the Spirit are power tools to be used for harvest. Yet, many have treated the gifts as meeting toys rather than power tools! Paul said this:
Romans 15:18, 19
“For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.”
Can we fully preach the gospel without signs and wonders? We can try but it will be less effective and incomplete! Scripture makes this clear after Paul had little fruit in Athens. He went to Corinth intentionally focusing on impacting people with the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s evident in Scripture that most people came to Jesus because of miracles or because they were invited by a friend who experienced a miracle. If you review conversion stories in Scripture, you’ll see what’s effective. Fifty percent of the conversions include an identifiable miracle. When someone brought someone else to Jesus, that person usually saw a miracle and wanted others to experience one too.
Only one percent of conversions in the New Testament can be attributed to friendship evangelism. Ninety-nine percent of the conversion stories are due to miracles.
John 10:37–38
Jesus said, “Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does . . . believe the miracles, that you may learn and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”
Ramsay MacMullan, a professor at Yale University, researched the oldest documents to see why Christianity grew to five million people in just three centuries. He noted repeated accounts of “mass conversions” in the early years, which were “directly attributed to the miracles performed by believers.” The famous history book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbins, said the primary reason why Christianity “obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth” was due to “the miraculous powers of the primitive church.” He was not a fan of Christianity, but he still said, “The supernatural gifts very frequently brought about the conviction of unbelievers.”
Most Western Christians have adopted what is called “Lifestyle Evangelism” The approach is that if we are friendly and people see how amazing we are, eventually they will ask us how to get saved or they will want to attend our church. While there is truth to this, it never really produces the church growth we see in the early church.
Of course, we should be friendly. But one assumption today is that lifestyle or friendship evangelism is both the biblical and most effective way to witness. Eighty percent of Christians today say this is the only way they approach evangelism. Yet rarely do people take the time to analyze if this is effective. Living a good life and being intentionally kind rarely cause conversions. Eighty percent of U.S. churches have plateaued or are declining. The nineteen percent that is growing, is growing by transfer and by having babies. Less than one percent of all churches in North America grow by conversions. Yet in other parts of the world, this is different because they evangelize with power. We tend to treat evangelism as a presentation instead of an experience.
To see the results that the early church experienced we need to use the methods they used which is a message of the Kingdom, validated by signs and wonders.
