Has the Gospel Changed?

No, it hasn’t!

But the culture has!

And the method by which we present the gospel today needs to be such that the culture will listen and understand.

I call it “gospel reset.” And that’s also the title of my new book.

As I was completing the book, Billy Graham passed away. As many news items paid tribute to this great evangelist, one headline really stood out to me:

There will never be another Billy Graham, because the world that made him possible is gone.”1

Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson made a similar comment. During a short tribute to Billy Graham on his TV broadcast, he stated, “He basically just preached the Bible. In the America of the time, that was enough.”2

I decided to include these news items in the beginning of my new book to help outline the significant changes that have occurred in our Western culture—plus to share why those changes have happened and by which means we should be presenting the saving gospel message today.

This book presents a “strategy” for more effective evangelism and life-changing discipleship that God is using to great effect! I trust this new easy-to-read resource will be blessed by God and will become a classic for our ministry, as is our book The Lie. Other than the Bible, which is the textbook of our ministry, I would say The Lie features the basic messages of Answers in Genesis’ entire apologetics/evangelistic ministry.

Gospel Reset will be another textbook for AiG regarding effective evangelism, which is the heart of what we do at our ministry. We want to reach the world with the saving gospel message.

I tell people that I have a very radical way to present the gospel.

I tell people that I have a very radical way to present the gospel. So radical, in fact, that I’m sure most Christians would never think of it. Let me summarize my method for evangelizing today:

How about we begin sharing the gospel the way God does in the Bible? By starting at the beginning!

It’s the same approach when you read a murder mystery: start the novel at the beginning so you will grasp the plot’s essentials. You’ll better understand what unfolds from that knowledge, and then you’ll see how the conclusion brings it all together.

Gospel Reset is our most cutting-edge resource tool to help teach an approach we’ve always followed: to present the message of the Bible chronologically! We recognize that we live in a time when generations have been increasingly inoculated against even listening to the words from The Book, for they’ve been told The Book is not true!

So in this era, we increasingly need to deal with objections to the Bible. By using apologetics to give solid answers, we can help people listen and learn about the most important historical document of all—the whole Bible.

Now, I have to admit something to you! I didn’t come up with this method of gospel presentation on my own to put in this new book! I actually learned this approach from God’s Word. The Apostle Paul used this method in Acts chapter 17 when he talked to the Greeks, starting in Genesis.

One problem with most evangelistic efforts today is that whether by preaching or using resources like tracts and books, they employ a basic Acts chapter 2 method, similar to what the Apostle Peter used when preaching to the Jews. The Jews of Acts 2 already knew about creation and God the Creator.

I suggest, however, that our culture has changed to be more like an Acts 17 society. And if we continue using the Acts 2 method, we will be increasingly ineffective in reaching our very secularized world.

Those are the reasons we gave Gospel Reset the subtitle of Salvation Made Relevant.

In other words, we need to present the vital message of salvation in a way that people (and particularly the millennials and Generation Z) will truly understand.

The “Great Commission” has never changed: “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation’” (Mark 16:15).

The gospel message has never changed. In fact, God warns us about altering it: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). But the culture has changed!

Paul’s Acts 17 approach works effectively in reaching our Greek-like, secularized culture.

I urge the church to understand this massive change in the culture and learn how to present the never-changing gospel message in a way that people today will truly understand! This new book explains why Paul’s Acts 17 approach works effectively in reaching our Greek-like, secularized culture.

After all, at AiG we, like God, are “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).