Dear ACTS Friend,
In youthful days in Australia I was very involved with the gospel outreach organization Open Air Campaigners (OAC). All year long—spring, summer, fall and winter—we conducted beach meetings every Sunday afternoon at two very crowded beach areas. We held the meetings right on the beaches. We always had good crowds of both children and adults, and we always presented the gospel so the children as well as the adults could understand. On Sunday nights we held a street meeting in the heart of downtown Brisbane. In those days there wasn’t yet any TV there so we had excellent crowds of people on Sunday nights as well. Over several years we saw numerous decisions for Christ as we always gave an invitation for people to accept Christ as Savior at the close of every meeting.
The reality was that very few non-Christians were going to church, but they were going to the beaches in droves and so many were wandering around downtown on Sunday nights looking for something to do.
Our motto in OAC was: “You don’t catch fish in the bathtub—you go to where the fish are!”
Jesus said to His followers, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men!” He did make them fishers of men and they, too, went to where the “fish” were! John the Baptist preached to crowds in the open air. Jesus preached the greatest sermon ever preached, "The Sermon on the Mount," in the open air where the people were. Peter preached where the people were at Pentecost when some 3,000 souls accepted Christ as Savior. And Paul, the Apostle preached at Mars Hill—also where the people were!
We need to do the same. Non-Christians today as a whole are not gathering in churches to hear God’s message of life, so we need to take God’s message of life to them. And where are people today? Millions are on the Internet. As reported before, according to Tony Whittaker of Digital Evangelism Issues (DEI):
"Every single day more than two million people around the world search the Internet for spiritual hope, meaning and purpose."
What a God-given outstanding opportunity this is for every church and every Christian to be actively involved as “fishers of men” as all followers of Jesus Christ are called to be!
This is exactly what we are doing in ACTS. Our entire purpose is to reach people worldwide with the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ via one of the most powerful means of worldwide communications ever. On average, every month 40,000 people from 194 countries and territories visit the ACTS gospel webpages. Furthermore, well over a third-of-a-million ACTS Daily Encounter e-mail subscribers are receiving a message from God’s Word every weekday of the year! And almost every day we are receiving decisions for Christ from somewhere in the world. Since going online in 1998, over 44,000 decisions for Christ have come from 165 countries that we know about—all the way from Afghanistan, Austria and Australia to Vietnam, West Indies and Zimbabwe! See this exciting list at: http://www.actsweb.org/response_countries.php.
Furthermore, many of our Daily Encounter subscribers are forwarding copies and web articles to friends and contacts—which is a very simple way for people to help reach other people for Christ as fishers of men.
Art V., a Daily Encounter subscriber, wrote: “Dear Richard, thank you for your perseverance. I am a disabled Vietnam captain veteran and enjoy your website and, after reading your articles, I pass them on to a friend in Russia every night. People in Communist Russia and Ukraine are reading your words.”
People without Christ are lost forever. By the grace of God and with His help, let us continue to work together via your prayer and sacrificial support to reach as many people as we possibly can worldwide with the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ—the ONLY hope of our sin-sick world!
May we please hear from you today? And as you stand with us this month with your prayer and sacrificial financial support, may God richly bless and reward you in His own abundant way.
Gratefully in Christ,
Dick Innes
Dick Innes
International Director
P.S. "Our greatest legacy will be those who live eternally in heaven because of our efforts.”
Donations can be sent on the ACTS secure donor site at: http://www.actsweb.org/nz/donate.php. Donations can be sent via the mail/post to ACTS International at the address below.
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