Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations, which means every Christian has an obligation to evangelize. But is that really so different from what other religions do? In this episode, we compare Christianity’s evangelism to the spread of Buddhism and Islam, and make the case that only one of them comes without coercion. Islam spread largely by the sword and a tax on those who refused to convert, while Christianity has always come with an invitation, not a threat.
We trace the roots of evangelism all the way back to Genesis 12 and Abraham being “a light unto the Gentiles,” through Jonah’s reluctant mission to Nineveh, to Acts 1:8 and the book of Acts, where “witness” appears again and again. Dr. Abidan Shah tackles the real fear a lot of Christians carry about sharing their faith, with a simple reframe: you’re not the lead defense attorney responsible for someone’s eternity, you’re a witness. Just tell what you’ve seen. The episode closes with a direct response to skeptical scholars like Bart Ehrman, and the historical case that something happened two thousand years ago that changed the entire trajectory of the world.