… the truth of the GOSPEL which is come unto you as it is in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth in you also, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the GRACE of God in TRUTH  (Colossians 1:5-6).

It is commonly held today that the gospel needs to be preached by some preacher or evangelist in order that some may be saved. But is that the whole truth? For in our time, which is the ongoing dispensation of the grace of God first proclaimed in Ephesians 3:1-4, human preaching of the gospel appears to be seeing fewer souls saved.

The amazing fact is that even in Paul’s time nearly 2,000 years ago, and ongoing since then, the gospel of the grace of God is seen to be well able to effectively preach itself without help from preachers, evangelists or any other intermediary.

Today in 2026 human gospel preaching often falls on deaf ears which is why gospel rallies and revival meetings are now exceeding rare, and few are saved.

Now, you may well have a knee-jerk to the above asserted claim, that the gospel can preach itself. But stand by for a scriptural explanation.

In Colossians 1:5 the Apostle Paul clearly states that the gospel that the Colossian believers had heard had “COME UNTO YOU, as it is IN ALL THE WORLD and bringeth forth fruit as it does also in you, since the day ye heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth”.

Fact is Paul never visited Colosse to preach the gospel there; nor did he evangelise Laodicea or many other cities in the then Roman world. Nevertheless, without Paul’s ministry, the Colossians somehow heard the word of truth and were converted by God Himself.

So, who was the first to speak it to them? It wasn’t Paul, nor was it Epaphras since Colossians 1:7 says believers in that city ALSO learned the truth from him. The only logical conclusion is that it was God Himself.

Further biblical proof the gospel preached itself in those times is found in Colossians 1:23:

If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the HOPE of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was PREACHED TO EVERY CREATURE WHICH IS UNDER HEAVEN, whereof I Paul am made a minister.

If Bible words are true, and in my view they are, since they are spoken by God Himself, then the ‘’gospel of the grace of God’’ (Acts 20:24) was in Paul’s day preached worldwide to ‘every creature’.

What’s more, it continues to preach its truth to every person worldwide to this day. The next question, of course, is anybody listening? The answer is no-one unless God especially quickens them to do so.

                Ephesians 2: 1: And YOU hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.

It isn’t everybody who is quickened to hear the gospel of God’s grace. As Paul says, the gospel is hid to the vast majority of people who are ‘lost’ because Satan, ‘the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious GOSPEL of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them’.

You see, unless God gives us ‘ears to hear and eyes to see’ we remain in darkness. The truth of that, naturally speaking, was displayed when astrononauts circling the moon on their April ’26 mission, observed absolute blackness in space except where sunlight lit up the earth and moon.

In the same way in 2 Corinthians 4:6 we are told:

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath SHINED in our hearts, to give the LIGHT to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But it seems the gospel of the grace of God is unique among the Bible’s different gospels, in that it comes with a built-in power to SHINE through our darkness so that we see, and to OPEN our inner ears so that we hear.

It is true that in the Pentecostal dispensation of the Acts period the Lord’s appointed  apostles were commanded and empowered to preach the gospel. But what gospel was it? It was not the later proclaimed ‘gospel of the grace of God’; it was not the wonderful news later proclaimed through Paul in prison that through the death, burial and resurrection of Christ God had now reconciled all men unto Himself; it was not the amazing truth that before God those He has quickened are now are now made complete, acceptable and unblameable in Him (Christ).

No, the Acts period gospel was primarily that though Israel had crucified the Lord they could be forgiven it they repented of this murder and would receive the Holy Ghost. Later in Acts, after God called out some Gentiles ‘to provoke Israel to jealousy’, the good news men could be saved because ‘Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and rose again’ (1 Corinthians 15:1-3) was proclaimed.

But the ‘gospel of the grace of God’ which was brought in after the setting aside of Israel in Acts 28:28 needs no human assistance to effectively bring those the Lord quickens to conversion. Many will testify that suddenly a light shone in their heart, that suddenly God became real to them (just as He did to me), that suddenly they felt called to serve (as did Paul on the road to Damascus); that suddenly the scriptures became real to them and they couldn’t wait to daily read and study them.

Summing up, I conclude the following:

1 That the power of the gospel lies within itself. Didn’t Paul say it is ‘the power of God unto salvation’, not his or anybody’s preaching of it per se?

2 That as the world and mankind slides into deeper darkness it is only the light God sheds on his own word that breaks through the gloom. How can a person ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1) possibly be saved by hearing the gospel unless God first quickens him or her.

3 Earlier gospels in the Bible required repentance, being water baptised and obeying in order to be saved. The gospel of the grace of God, only proclaimed through the Apostle Paul from prison, requires no such procedures. Save holding fast to the hope it offers – that of being among the first to be resurrected to be with Christ in his kingdom.

John Dudley Aldworth

Can be reached at john.aldworth@hotmail.com