http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=11&article=5292
Helping Souls Find the Truth
| by | Eric Lyons, M.Min. |
Nothing will ever replace personal, face-to-face evangelism and Bible study. For thousands of years, God’s people have taught the lost and edified the saved while looking deeply into the eyes of precious souls, helping them see what God says is most important and pressing in life, and challenging them to become real and serious servants of the Savior. Simply put, the church of God’s dear Son should always invest a great amount of time, energy, and money in the teaching and preaching of the will of God in a fervent and personal way.
At the same time, the church of Christ must also realize the amazing opportunity that awaits her on the World Wide Web. According to InternetLiveStats.com, more than 3.2 billion people around the world have access to the Internet. That number represents 40% of the world’s population, including 280 million users in the United States. Similar to how the Lord spoke to Paul saying, “I have many people” (potentially) in Corinth (Acts 18:10), He has even “many more people” who will potentially be open to the Truth that they find by the grace of God on the Internet.
Are you and the local congregation that you are a part of involved in an effective, active outreach and edifying ministry on the Internet? Have you considered helping those who have a long history of helping millions of souls that you or I will never personally be able to meet, much less teach? What would you think about helping a group of Christians who are involved in disseminating over 22 million electronic pages of biblically sound material a year? Would you like to be a part of a work that is freely “passing out” the equivalent of 62,671 Bible articles, books, and media selections every day? If so, then I humbly ask you to consider supporting the nonprofit work of Apologetics Press.
By the grace of God, in 2015 the Apologetics Press Web site received over 22,875,000 page views from individuals located in some 235 countries and territories worldwide. Only five years ago, the yearly page views at AP stood at just under five million. Though in that same time period (2010-2015), the number of Internet users worldwide increased by nearly 40%, the amount of Web traffic that ApologeticsPress.org received increased by 460%. Every minute 43.5 pages of electronic soul-enriching Bible material on the AP Web site is viewed. In other words, one electronic page on the AP site is seen somewhere around the world every 1.4 seconds. For this, we thank God and give Him all the glory.
We are humbled and overjoyed that God is providentially providing millions of people around the world opportunities to access the AP Web site and to receive logically and biblically sound answers to their questions. Consider the individual who has never heard of the AP site, but googles the Bible phrase “calling on the name of the Lord.” The very first item that appears (out of 68.6 million results) is an article on the AP Web site explaining the true, biblical meaning of the phrase (as of January 2016).
WILL YOU HELP US?
For many years, the staff of Apologetics Press has prayed that God would providentially put our materials into the hands of open, honest-hearted souls who are searching for serious answers to serious questions. Whether non-Christians investigating the Truth or Christians in search of faith-building materials, we pray that, if the Lord wills, He will use us and those who support us in this work to lead lost souls to Christ and to strengthen the Lord’s church.
So how can you help us in this cause? What could you do to assist us in this work? Below are a few ideas that we pray you will consider:
- Bookmark our Web site and visit us when searching for answers to questions about God, Creation, the Bible, Jesus, Islam, evolution, the culture war, various doctrinal matters, etc.
- Link to us on your personal Web site or blog.
- Tell your friends about us.
- Share relevant AP articles, audio, videos, etc. on your social media pages.
- Ask the elders of your local congregation if they will link to us on your church Web site.
- Pray that the Lord would use the AP site to His glory in helping others.
- Last but not least, would you consider supporting us monthly or yearly in this work? With the financial help of faithful Christians, we believe we could do more and more work through apologeticspress.org. We would be honored and extremely grateful if you would consider assisting us in disseminating tens of thousands of Web pages of material everyday to individuals around the world. For more information, see http://www.apologeticspress.org/Donation.aspx or call 334-272-8558.