Billy Wilson called on Evangelicals to open their hearts to being “accelerated” by the Holy Spirit to witness for Christ to maintain pace with a fast-changing world grappling with speedy developments in areas of general knowledge, technology, inventions and science.
The fourth president of Oral Roberts University and a key leader within the contemporary Pentecostal movement, serving within the Empowered21 global relational network for believers, Wilson spoke on “The work of the Holy Spirit” as a morning plenary speaker on the Fourth Lausanne Global Congress on World Evangelism.
As the worldwide population surges upwards, with latest figures showing 8 billion people on the planet in 2022, the expansion of Christianity stays “stagnant” and that is a significant concern, he said.
Wilson calculates that Christianity makes up for 31% of the world population and, despite a lift within the nineteenth century, there was a drop within the variety of Christians within the twentieth century, as a percentage of the entire population. “Now, during this time of world acceleration, we also will need to have an acceleration of our mission and evangelistic effectiveness,” Wilson says.
The first believers didn’t have access to the technology tools of mass communication today, akin to social media and cell phones, and yet the Holy Spirit “accelerated” through them and turned the traditional world, from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond, the wrong way up with the Gospel.
For Wilson, this “wildfire of resurrection energy” got here from five qualities for supernatural acceleration, because the Holy Spirit carried the early followers of Jesus “to the ends of the Earth with amazing effect and speed.” He believes that Evangelicals need those self same qualities for effective witnessing within the twenty first century, to experience the identical “Holy Spirit acceleration.”
Firstly, the primary believers were utterly convinced that Jesus was alive after the crucifixion. They believed within the exclusivity of Jesus because the only way, truth and life — and salvation lay with Him and nobody else.
“There was no optional way, no alternative root,” says Wilson. “Jesus was absolutely the answer, and so they were completely committed to declaring that excellent news to the world. They lived and died with this conviction, which fueled the spread of the Gospel.”
Secondly, a level of flexibility allowed the primary Church to maneuver forward “aggressively” but in unexpected ways. Wilson opines that as the primary Church was the brand new wineskin for the fresh experience of God, there was a necessity for flexibility and making the most of difficult situations.
Persecution was seen as giving opportunities to evangelize by preaching the Gospel. Trials, for instance, gave space for believers to provide public testimony to the saving power of Jesus Christ.
“Christian killers became Christian missionaries,” says Wilson. “Deacons became evangelists, shipwrecks became salvation. Campaigns, visions, dreams, and impressions — all moved them forward. The unexpected got here to be expected, and in only one generation, a predominantly Jewish church became a predominantly gentile church.
“They were in a position to experience supernatural acceleration because they were flexible and expandable. New flexibility shall be required within the twenty first century if we’ll experience an acceleration of our mission.”
Thirdly, the primary disciples were obedient to “quite a few unusual directives” because the Gospel advanced in the traditional world. Various protocols were broken repeatedly to obey the calling of God. Wilson offered examples of paradigms with a Jewish temple becoming a spot for Christian healing and a jailhouse being reworked as a prayer house. He cites the instance of Phillip the evangelist leaving a revival in Samaria to “enter the desert of private evangelism, simply because God said so.”
Wilson calls this an “Obed obedience,” positioning Phillip for supernatural acceleration as he’s transported by the Holy Spirit from his desert to his next evangelism task.
Wilson compares this instance of paradigm shifting to what David Yonggi Cho achieved by constructing his renowned 900,000-member Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, just 20 miles away from the Seoul-Incheon 2024 Congress. When Cho was asked how such a big church was built, he replied simply: “I pray and I obey.”
Fourth, the primary disciples had a radical dependence on the Holy Spirit: “His guidance, his empowerment, and his strength simply put, they refused to do God’s work without God’s presence. They discovered that the Holy Spirit was God’s best evangelist and that He is moving each minute, each second, to succeed in the lost.”
As the primary followers were joined to the Holy Spirit and relied on Him, the outcomes were each “history making and world changing,” based on Wilson.
Fifthly, the earliest disciples had supernatural synergy from having fun with spiritual unity. Wilson uses an analogy that one person could chase a thousand, but two people working together can chase 10,000.
“Their unity brought God’s favor and positioned them for supernatural acceleration. In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, he prayed that we could be one, as he and the Father are one, that we might have relational unity, but it surely would have a missional intent that the world might consider that God had sent him. Unity, then, should be relational, missional and spiritual.”
Wilson believes that Evangelical Christians stand on the tipping point of a historic Holy Spirit empowered moment, with the potential of being probably the most significant effort in fulfilling the Great Commission in your complete history of Christianity.
“Could or not it’s on the two,000th anniversary of the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus; and the two,000-year anniversary of the giving of the Great Commission; and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost on the birth of the Church, that together we’d do what has never been done in human history, and that’s assure that one and all on Earth has a chance to know Jesus Christ?” Wilson asked.
At the very least, by 2033, Wilson hopes Evangelicals shall be participating within the “most pervasive missional and evangelistic thrust” because the first century. “The everlasting destiny of hundreds of thousands is dependent upon it,” he adds solemnly, pointing to a stark statistic that day-after-day 150,000 or more die on the planet. If a 3rd are Christian, it signifies that 100,000 people die day-after-day without knowing Christ. That calculation means 4,000 people per hour, or 37 million per yr, facing a Christless eternity.
“God’s Word says that God shouldn’t be willing that any should perish, but that everybody involves repentance,” says Wilson. “Personally, I think that the best injustice of the twenty first century is that God’s Church now has the technology, the manpower, the cash, and the potential to succeed in one and all on Earth with the Gospel. And yet, hundreds of thousands haven’t heard the excellent news or had an authentic encounter with Jesus.”
Wilson believes that God is now calling the Church to unite together to rectify this injustice in our generation. The Holy Spirit is moving a fresh vision for reaching the lost, he says. The Great Commission is “emerging” within the Body of Christ.
“Nothing is as necessary as this,” Wilson added. “The major thing should be the major thing. None of us can do that alone. We need one another, and most significantly, we want a fresh encounter with the Holy Spirit that may speed up the Gospel to the ends of the Earth.”
Wilson finishes by expressing hope that delegates will “rise from here” on the Lausanne Congress and “take the excellent news of our Savior Jesus, the Son of the living God, to everyone.”
