Go Find Nathanael Series

Brother and sisters as I was thumbing through the archives of the scriptures I am held all struck, over the growth, the rapid growth and the extreme growth of the early church because the early church grew by leaps and bounds. The early church could not be compared to by our church of today’s time. The early church was an awesome role model for church growth, and church development, and I want to reintegrate that I am still held in amazement over the growth of the early church.

I am even more amazed when I think about what they didn’t have, compared to what we in our modern day do have. We have in our day and time television, radio, billboards, we have in our day and time, internet, satellite and computers whereas the early church of the scriptures did not have. And I am disturb because even though the early church didn’t have all of these perks that we now have, yet the early church, out grew us, they grew much faster than us, without any of the modern day technology.

What is so amazing about this is that Peter preached only one sermon, and the size of the church was increased by 3,000. John only preached one sermon (repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand), and not only did the church grow on the occasions of sermons and preaching, but between the church services and between the sermons the church continued to grow.

As a matter of fact the church grew so much that the scriptures tells us that it astonish the Roman authorities, and the Sanhedrin counsel, because the church was on the move, and the church kept on growing. And let me just through this in and that is whenever the church is on the move the devil will stick his head up. Whenever the church is on the move Satan himself is upset and maddddd!!!!!

The church of the early era grew with an amazing amount in numbers in spite of major persecution. In our day when we face one little harassment, maltreatment, singling out, hounding, and with one problem we are ready to just give up and throw in the towel. When the members of the early church were being, crucified, ostracize, monopolize and persecuted on every side, just because they love the Lord.

And we can’t take anyone looking at us funny. Whispering about us or pointing a finger. You know what you ought to do when people are blatantly lying on you; you ought to just laugh yourself to sleep. Do you know what you ought to do when people constantly lie on you and keep your name in their mouth? You ought to thank them, thank them? Yes because don’t you know that most advertising company will charge you a lot of money for advertisement and here you are getting for free.

What we must understand is that you could get killed in the days of the early church just for going to church. You could be killed just for owning up to Jesus, or just for calling on the name of Jesus, but in spite of mortal danger, in spite of the things that placed one live in jeopardy, the early church kept on growing. We live in a day and time in the U.S where dangers like this really don’t exist, we can come to church and worship freely without the fear of the lost of lives, without the fear of retribution. But what I am concerned about is why we are not growing at the rate as the early church did.

I ask the question what was the cause of the early church growth? And what I found out is that people care about the spiritual welfare of their neighbor. There cared about their family members, they wouldn’t run off and leave them at home. It was not each one would past up one, or each one would deny one, each one would lie on one, each one would discriminate one, differentiate, separate or alienate one but each one would reach one, each one was committed to reaching another with the good news of Jesus Christ. This is why the church kept doubling, and tripling in size. Yes neighbors would talk to neighbors about Jesus, workers would talk to co-workers about Jesus, and scripture tells us that people found themselves obsess, preoccupy, gripped, an consumed with sharing their faith with others and the church kept on growing.

They didn’t wait for the lost to come to them, but instead they went looking, and seeking to save those that were lost and that’s another reason why the church kept on growing. It used to be a time when we would be concerned about my four and no more but that time seems to be gone, on every hand we need to seek and to save.