Preaching To Pagans | The Institute for Creation Research

Preaching To Pagans

“And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein” (Acts 14:15).

When Paul and Barnabas set out from Antioch on their first missionary journey, their first recorded preaching points were at Salamis and Paphos on the Isle of Cyprus, then Perga, Antioch of Pisidia, and Iconium, in what is now Turkey. At all of these, so far as the record goes, they began their witnessing in the local synagogues (Acts 13:5,14; 14:1) where the people already knew and believed the Old Testament Scriptures, including the Genesis record of creation. They could begin with this premise and proceed to show from Old Testament prophecy that Jesus was the Messiah, climaxing it with the evidence of His resurrection.

But when they came to nearby Lystra, their first audience was a street crowd of pagan worshipers of Roman gods. These had no knowledge of the Bible and only the vaguest knowledge, if any, of the long-forgotten true God of creation. Paul, therefore, centered his message, first of all, around the latter, as indicated in our text. He later followed a similar procedure with the Athenian philosophers (Acts 17:22–31).

His pragmatic approach to soul-winning was the following: “I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. . . . To them that are without [the] law, as without law. . . . I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (I Corinthians 9:19,21,22).

Christians today would do well to follow his example, stressing the message of creation to modern-day pagans, whether to those brought up in modern ethnic religions, or to the Biblically illiterate pagans of our pseudo-intellectual American culture. HMM

The Latest
NEWS
Bone, Skin, Claw Lasted…150 Million Years?
Experts and educators have long assumed Archaeopteryx represents a transition from theropod dinosaurs to modern birds. All of this speculation depends...

NEWS
How Did Earth Get Its Water?
Earth’s oceans contain 321 million cubic miles (1.335 billion cubic kilometers) of water. The moon causes ebb and flow of tides twice in a 24-hour...

NEWS
New Fossil Discovery Upends Animal Evolution...Again
Reptiles belong to a group of animals called amniotes that also include birds and mammals. A new Australian fossil discovery of a clawed amniote demonstrates...

NEWS
100% Cicada Fossil
Cicadas are an unusual-looking insect belonging to the order Hemiptera (the true bugs, including bed bugs and aphids). If you live in the eastern United...

CREATION PODCAST
Earth’s Origins: Science, Theology, and a New Geology Textbook...
Since the late eighteenth century, most scientists have argued for a uniformitarian view of Earth’s history. They claim the world...

NEWS
June 2025 ICR Wallpaper
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from...

CREATION.LIVE PODCAST
Getting the Gospel into People's Hands | Creation.Live Podcast:...
Can God use an atheist airline pilot to reach other nations with the truth of the Gospel? The answer, obviously, is yes.   Host...

NEWS
Chimp Genome Markedly Different from Human
An oft-repeated claim of evolutionary propaganda is that chimpanzee and human DNA are 98.5% identical. This high level of DNA similarity, which has...

NEWS
''73-Million-Year-Old'' Alaskan Salmon
Fish evolution remains an enigma. Evolutionists can only say fish first “appeared” over a half-billion years ago.1 Creationists...

NEWS
God's Memorial Day
“And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of...