Acts 2:46

HOUSEHOLD PREACHING

46. “And they were daily persevering with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house; they received their food with gladness and purity of heart, praising God and having grace toward all the people.” Here we find that the hundred and twenty, augmented by the mighty force of the three thousand converts, turned loose on the metropolis and the surrounding country, preaching from house to house. This explains the reason why five thousand more were speedily converted, at once swelling the Pentecostal church to eight thousand. The great delinquency of the present age is this original policy of preaching to people in their homes. Here we see that they entered family circles indiscriminately, preaching and praying till they convert them to the Christhood of Jesus, the great salient truth and fact of apostolic preaching, then they seal their profession of discipleship by baptism and confirm them by the eucharist. This is the grand open field for the holiness people to win a crown of glory, evangelize the world and bring back our King. So let us go preaching from house to house as they did at Pentecost. When I was sanctified thirty years ago I at once became an indefatigable household preacher. I ran all over my circuit regardless of membership in my church or any other, entering every house and preaching the living Word. My conference soon fell into the habit of sending me to the hardest and deadest appointments in all the land. While I ran into every house, prayed and preached in every home, prevailing on them to come to my meeting, which I kept running the whole year, God came down, shook the whole country with the tread of a spiritual earthquake, mighty revivals swept like cyclones, and while all the churches in my boundary were signally blessed and received many additions to their membership, I used to go up to my annual conference at the end of the year and report in my own pastorate three times as many members as I began with. Sad to say, the apostolic household preaching in the church of the present day is a lost art. The preacher goes round calling on his own members only, talks to them a few minutes about “Vanity Fair” and does not so much as pray for them. He would better stay at home. Such pastoral visiting is an insult to the common salvation and a grief to the Holy Ghost.