The Greatest Hindrance to Evangelism:

The Corruption of The Gospel Message

Only a small fraction of believers grasp of the power of multiplication.  Far fewer understand how multiplication is undermined over time.  Entropy undoes the progress of multiplication.

Information theory is body of mathematics that developed along with the computer age.  It mathematically quantifies the corruption of information when transmitted over various distances and through various corridors of transmission under various conditions.  As a signal loses power, it must be amplified to avoid the loss of information.  If it is not repeatedly amplified back to its original signal strength through "repeaters," it will eventually become overwhelmed by noise.  As information is progressively corrupted, it eventually becomes meaningless.

And the Gospel message is information.  One can even digitally encode 1^st Cor. 15:1-4, or the Gospel of John or the Epistle to the Romans through basic word processor software, and store it in a computer.  For this reason, the mathematical principles of information theory relate every bit as much to the corruption of the gospel message as they do to the transmission of any other body of information.

As evangelism typically takes place, the gospel message is gradually corrupted.  Each new "generation" of believers may add a small error here, or a large error there.  As the Gospel Message becomes distorted or corrupted, multiplication slows.  A church preaching a false gospel may grow in numbers.  But the spread of The Gospel slowly grinds to a halt.  The local church becomes a confused mix of saved and unsaved persons joined in a common commitment to real estate development out of the earnest belief that the erecting of church buildings somehow advances the kingdom of God.

The Gospel Message is distorted over time, not because it is stored on imperfect disk drives, processed by imperfect microprocessors or transmitted over imperfect fiber optical lines.  It becomes distorted because it has been entrusted to imperfect descendents of Adams fallen race, and is transmitted through fallen men to a lost and dying world.  But the principles of information theory are virtually identical in computer and information transmission, and in the progressive corruption of the gospel.

Water flows downhill.  And, if not vigilantly guarded, the gospel message also flows "downhill," corrupting into any number of false gospels over time.

Chapter 7: The Greatest Hindrance to Evangelism