Ye Are My Witnesses

Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. ISAIAH 43:10

Catherine Booth preached to large and often sophisticated audiences, and she was a formidable reasoner. Yet she believed that the world would not be won chiefly by sermons, books or arguments. It would be won by witnesses. In the address Witnessing for Christ she set out why, and it is in that same address that she told, for once, the story of her own first public words at Gateshead. The two belonged together. She had become a preacher by becoming a witness.

A world in revolt

Her starting point was that the world is in rebellion against God. It denies His existence, misunderstands His character and contradicts His testimony. If God is to keep any hold on it, He must be represented within it, as a sovereign must have loyal officers in a province in revolt. He has always had such witnesses, from Enoch and Noah onward, sometimes one solitary figure in a whole generation. Christ was the Faithful and True Witness above all. And when He went back to the Father, He left His people to take His place.

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. JOHN 17:18

Facts, not theories

Her model was a witness in a court of law. If a witness begins to say what he thinks or has heard, the judge stops him: we want to know what you have seen. “Witnesses, you know, must deal with facts, not theories,” she said. God wants people who can stand up and say, I know. Not what they have read in books, not a fine-spun theory, but what they have seen, heard and handled of the truth of God.

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. 1 JOHN 1:3

She was sure this was what the world was starving for. She listed what it was not dying for: sermons, periodicals, religious stories, creeds — all of which it had in abundance. What was it dying for? “Downright, straightforward, honest, loving, earnest testimony about what God can do for souls.” Men in shops, on Oxford Street, in the theatres and music halls, were waiting, she said, for someone to tell them that God is God and that He can save them. One word like He has saved me, and He can save you, was worth more than a sermon.

For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. ACTS 4:20

Good witnesses

She was just as insistent that witnesses must be good ones. A court will discount testimony if the witness’s character can be impeached, and the world does the same. A Christian who lives badly and professes loudly is, in effect, telling people that this is what the religion of Jesus Christ looks like. She thought such a person did more harm than a thousand open enemies. “A false witness on behalf of Jesus Christ is the most mischievous traitor on the face of the earth,” she said.

Faithful witnesses must also tell the whole truth: the convicting truth as well as the healing truth, the knife as well as the oil. They must give it personally. A rich man might pay for a hundred and fifty evangelists, and ought to, she said; but he could not witness by proxy. And they must speak out. She had no patience with what people called an unobtrusive religion. There is no such thing, she said. David danced before the ark and called on the hills to clap their hands.

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy. PSALM 107:2

Naturally

How was this to be done? In How to Work for God with Success she gave her answer in a word. The greatest obstacle to the success of divine truth, she said, even from sincere people, was stiffness: the way people put on a different voice and manner the moment religion is mentioned. Speak to your friend about his soul as you would speak to him about a cough you feared was serious, or a debt he could not pay. Come straight to the point, with your hand on his arm. “We want sanctified humanity, not sanctimoniousness,” she said.

Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. MARK 5:19

Her own witness

Then she told her story, which the chapter on her life has already followed: the ten years of disobedience, the vow in the sickroom, the Sunday at Gateshead, the walk down the aisle to confess that she had not been obeying God. The effect of that confession, she said, did what twenty years of talk would never have done. And she ended with a word to the women in her audience who had written to her of their fear. “Never mind trembling. I trembled.” She had gone many times from her bed to the pulpit and back to her bed. It is not by might, she reminded them, but by My Spirit.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. REVELATION 12:11

Weighing it

Her emphasis on personal testimony has been one of her greatest gifts to the church. It freed countless ordinary believers, many of them poor and unlettered, to speak of Christ without waiting for a pulpit or a degree. The rapid spread of the church among the poor of the world owes much to exactly this conviction.

It needs its balance, however. Testimony is not a substitute for teaching; the church needs those who can open the Scriptures carefully as well as those who can say what God has done for them. Her own preaching was full of careful argument from the Bible, whatever she said about sermons. And testimony can drift into exaggeration or self-display, or into making one’s own experience the pattern for everyone else’s. The safeguard is the one she gave: witnesses deal in facts. Say what Christ has actually done, no more and no less, and let Him do the rest.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down, in plain words and in a few sentences, what Christ has actually done for you. Avoid religious jargon.

2. Is there anything in your life that would impeach your testimony if a sceptic knew it? Deal with it.

3. Notice when your voice and manner change around religious subjects. Practise speaking of Christ as naturally as you speak of anything else you care about.

4. Tell one person this week, simply and without pressure, what God has done for you.

5. If you are afraid, remember her words: never mind trembling. Ask for the Spirit, and speak anyway.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have chosen me to be Your witness, and I have often been a silent one, and sometimes a false one.

Make my life consistent with what I say, so that no one is turned away from You by me.

Take away my stiffness and my fear. Let me speak of You as naturally as I speak of the people I love.

I tremble, Lord. So did she. Give me Your Spirit, and let me say what I have seen and heard. Amen.