A friend of mine sent this to me just a little bit ago. Is this old news??? or current? Sam, do you know anything about it?? Just curious.............
Revival IN Dayton OH – Pastor Brad Smith
As I attempt to write this news letter I can verily believe what happened this week my self! I have asked my self many times if I was dreaming or it was real!
On Sunday night of last week we finished up with revival in Dayton OH with Pastor Roberts and his family which is the ALJC church. For the evening service we headed over to the UPCI church with Pastor Brad Smith. Brother Smith was having a tent revival with an evangelist out of Texas. Over the last year I have become good friends with Brother Smith and was excited to see how his revival was going.
Upon arriving at the tent meeting we were excited to see many friends. After service my family along with Pastor Smith, Brother Channell, Evangelist Granger and their families went out to eat. As we sat in the restaurant talking about the service we started talking about my favorite subject which is soul winning! The more we talked the more I challenged them all to win souls and told them how easy it is to reach someone. At one point I challenged them all to go leave the restaurant and go out with us in our van to win souls.
Now keep in mind this was about 11:30 p.m. As we all crowded into our van we began driving the streets of Dayton to prove how easy it is to win souls. After talking to our first person we headed around the corner seen a man walking down the street. I pulled into a parking lot and waited for him to walk close enough to our van so I could talk to him. As he approached I began talking to him about God and asked him if he wanted to go to heaven or hell. As we talked about this we finally were able to agree he needed to get right with God and repent and be baptized! We all headed to the church with our soul!
After a great time in repentance we baptized this man in Jesus name! We then brought him back to the altar to seek the Holy Ghost. After a few minutes of prayer he was filled without doubt with a baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost! This was the first time in years I had seen someone get so filled with the Holy Ghost that they were obviously drunk in the spirit! This guy couldn’t even stand up for a long time! Thank God for a soul!
After seeing how easy it is to reach people Brother Smith felt he really wanted us to stay for a week helping his church! Our schedule is very full and we were scheduled to be in Dallas TX this week so I was sure there was no way to work this out. I called Brother Foster and began talking to him about this and he also felt it was good that we stay here and help Brother Smith! Every thing worked out just as God had already planned!
On Tuesday night I felt that the Lord would have me ask the congregation if there was anyone who would be willing to donate their car to give away to reach the lost by giving it away. I was a little surprised that two families stood to say they would give their cars! One of the cars was a Chevy Blazer 4x4 and the other was a Dodge Durango. What a spirit of giving!
I knew if we could break the fear of giving we could have a mighty break through in reaching the lost. I had no idea that it would break like it did! We hit the streets Wednesday night after service in full force! Over 100 of the Saints went out in full force reaching the lost! In my message I showed them how easy it is to compel someone to repent and be baptized. They really caught it! We went out and it was no time before each van of people called having 3 & 4 people ready to come and repent and be baptized! In the first 48 hours we had baptized 40 people!
As the week went on we worked hard every night reaching the lost. Each night many of the Saints went out until late in the morning hours winning souls! I believe it was somewhere around 30 people had won their first soul! By Saturday night we had baptized 94 people in Jesus name just by going out into the highways and byways compelling people into the kingdom!
One family told me they are planning on buying a 15 passenger van to reach the lost right away! Others told how they are changed for life and never imagined how easy it is to reach the lost!
No one could have guessed what would have happened Sunday morning! What an amazing site as busses and vans and cars began filling the parking lot of the church! Adults and children were everywhere! You could feel the excitement from the Saints and guest! We had an incredible service what a powerful move of God!
We calculated the first time guest cards that we were given and were amazed to find out that over 500 first time guest attended the service! You cannot imagine how exciting it was for all who worked so hard to reach the lost in Dayton! Hours later I received a call from Pastor Smith, he called to tell me they had found the other registration cards from the children who were in the Sunday School department that we had not counted. After counting the first time guest cards we determined their were actually over 700 first time guest instead of 500!
Can you imagine 700 first time guest attending a Sunday morning service in an Apostolic church! Words could never give credit to how powerful it all was! In the service we baptized 73 people! We had a total count of 700 plus first time guest and baptized 167 people in one week!
I have never been in such an awesome service in all of my life. I am changed! God has once again opened my eyes to see people want this Gospel so bad! We must get busy reaching them!
We are headed to Tampa this week to attend the UPCI General Conference! I have been feeling very burdened over the TV vote coming up this week. I have heard both sides of the issue and I can truly say I do not personally think we should use TV for advertising our churches or putting our services on TV.
No matter what way the vote goes I will not be affected in my ministry. I do have a concern that we are suggesting that the TV issue is all about outreach and reaching the gated communities and high rise buildings. I personally do not buy into this theory. First of all I would like to ask anyone who is contemplating voting yes when is the last time you have used what we already approve of to reach the lost? Do you currently use the news paper, radio, flyers, US Mail? How much time are you personally spending in the streets reaching for souls? The Bible is clear, “In all Labor there is profit” this tells me there is no miracle method, its going to take work! TV Commercials are not considered work! What we need is an old fashioned revival of passion for reaching the lost!
If the community is gated have we considered mailing a DVD of our services? Have we mailed invitations? Are we doing everything we can to reach the lost with the tools we already approve of? If we are not willing to use the tools we have now why in the world would we claim TV is going to do it all?
Since January of this year we have seen well over 6000 first time guest attend Apostolic churches, we have seen over 1400 now baptized in Jesus name through this ministry. Not one commercial was needed! We did as the Bible says, go into the highways and byways and compel people to come in! I took the time to call one of the largest of the ALJC churches last week who approve of TV commercials and services. I asked, how many people do they see come in from these ads, I was surprised at the answer, I was told that very few if any came in from these ads! Then I was told that the web site was the biggest draw for visitors!
I personally would not have an issue with anyone either way. I am going to do all I can to reach the lost. I just pray this will not give a false hope that we can reach our world without personally going out into our communities and compelling souls into the kingdom!
I do pray that anyone who has the opportunity to vote on this issue would carefully consider praying until there is a clear answer from God.
Let’s have revival, we must reach the lost world!
We have included a dialog of what I say to people in the streets to get them to be baptized and repent of their sins. You can download this on our web site
http://www.gowinsouls.com/ by clicking on DOWNLOAD RESOURCES and then OUTREACH MATERIALS and then the file HOW TO TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT REPENTING AND BEING BAPTIZED. I know this will help you in a great way to win souls!
Also please take advantage of the other tools we offer!
We pray God will bless you and encourage you this week!
God Bless
Evangelist Tim Downs
Gowinsouls.com
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and
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