Share the Gospel? A few thoughts...

Share the Gospel?

I received an e-mail from the ecumenical Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) on 28th December with the heading saying "Help Share The Gospel All Donations Matched-Now Through December 31st!"

Yes - today it is all about donations and financial chicanery!

But, is such phraseology as "share the Gospel" even biblical? Search for this phrase in the King James Version, and you will not find it written once. The closest perhaps is 1 Thess.2:8, where it reads So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the Gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. Some lesser, much later English versions have "share the Gospel" rather than having it imparted unto you. And this but once in the entire New Testament! But, surely, to have imparted unto you, means to have first had it preached unto you?

When this hitherto once great nation of ours was more biblically literate in the dim and distant past (i.e the post Reformation period of the puritans), Christians would not have talked about "sharing the Gospel", the clarion call would have been to PREACH THE GOSPEL! declare it LOUDLY and PROCLAIM it! this very phrase is used, (plus its various derivative forms such as preaching the Gospel, preached the Gospel, etc) some 41 times in the King James Version of the New Testament. Furthermore, it is written that God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Acts 17:30. There is an urgency in all of this, for a man's life is even a vapour, Jam.4:14. The Lord said compel them to come in, Luk.14:23, and behold, now is the day of salvation, 2 Cor.6:2. Hell has enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure, Is.5:14, hell fire is increasing in intensity, the flames are being fanned, yet people in this day and age talk of "sharing the Gospel!" as if they were sharing a bag of sweets! The sense of urgency in our gratuitous age of plenty has been all but silenced and stifled. Even the poorest among us seem to have everything; so why do we need God; and if we do become Christians, don't we have to give, donate, tithe and the like to the charlatans such as CBN and the rest?