History of the Four Spiritual Laws Booklet

This excerpt picks up with Bill Bright, the co-founder of Cru®, sharing how the Four Spiritual Laws booklet was created. You will find editor’s notes in brackets.

Prior to this summer training conference, something else happened—an event that would prove pivotal not only in the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ but eventually in the personal outreach of millions of Christians around the world. I must confess it began because I took personal offense at something a guest speaker said to the conferees—about me!

He was an outstanding Christian sales consultant and friend. In his talk he emphasized that a successful salesman must develop a clear, simple, understandable presentation that he can use over and over again. Salesmen call this the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. He warned us that when a salesman grows tired of hearing himself give the same message and develops “presentation fatigue,” he often changes the presentation and loses his effectiveness.

His next statement startled me. “In sharing Christ, we need to develop a simple, understandable, logical presentation just like the successful salesman does. We need to stick with that message and not yield to presentation fatigue.”

I did not agree with him. I felt that God honored spontaneity—sharing as the Holy Spirit leads instead of giving a prepared, “canned” approach. But if the speaker’s first statement startled me, the next remark almost knocked me from my chair.

“Your leader, Bill Bright, thinks he has a special message for each of the different groups to whom he speaks. He has ministered on skid row, in prisons, and now to college students and laypeople. I have never heard him speak, but I would be willing to wager that he has only one message for everyone. Basically, he tells them all the same thing.”

I squirmed in my seat and hoped that my resentment did not show on my face. How could I, or anyone else truly committed to serving God, not be led by Him to speak with originality in every situation? How could this speaker have the audacity to embarrass me like this in front of my fellow staff?

When the meeting was over, I was still feeling irritated over the speaker’s message. But as I began to reflect on exactly what I did say in various witnessing opportunities [or opportunities to share the gospel], I asked myself: Do I share the same basic message with everyone? Is my message really that simple?

I retreated to my quarters, asked the Lord what He wanted to teach me, and picked up a pen. For the next two hours, I wrote down my basic presentation and was amazed to discover that our guest speaker had been right. Without realizing it, I had been saying basically the same thing in every witnessing situation, whether to [. . .] men in business suits, university students, professors, or laypeople. With just a few variations to relate to their personal situations, the gospel message itself was basically the same every time I talked with someone. In most situations my approach was effective.

What I wrote that day was known as “God’s Plan for Your Life,” a positive, twenty-minute presentation which I asked the staff to memorize and use in their evangelistic speaking opportunities. Within one year, our combined effectiveness in sharing Christ dramatically multiplied. The salesman had been right!

Soon we felt the need for a shorter version of God’s Plan, so I prepared an outline, complete with key Scripture verses and diagrams. Again, we had the staff memorize it. For several years we actually wrote it out on the back of the Van Dusen Letter, a letter with an evangelistic emphasis that I wrote [now known as “A Great Adventure”]. We used these to share Christ with others. But as more students and Christian adults became involved in our training conferences, it became apparent that we needed to make the presentation available in printed form.

Thus, in a roundabout way, that one guest speaker’s remark (and my reaction to it) led to the birth of an evangelistic tract for which Campus Crusade may be best known today: the Four Spiritual Laws booklet. As of January 1, 1999, we estimate that approximately three billion copies have been printed in over 200 languages of the world.

Obviously, we had no idea back in the 1950s what kind of impact this simple publication would have. We simply wanted a brief, distilled essence of the gospel message to assist in our outreach among non-Christian students and adults, something that would also serve the layperson who may not have much training or confidence in personal evangelism.

The title of the booklet, Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?, came from our emphasis on four fundamental principles in the gospel. Just as there are physical “laws” governing the physical universe (such as the law of gravity), so there are spiritual laws that govern the spiritual universe. These four laws are:

1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.

2. Man is sinful and separated from God, thus he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.

3. Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.

4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.

Each principle is validated by key Scripture passages and further explanation.

The presentation then provides a suggested prayer by which readers can thoughtfully invite Jesus Christ into their lives according to our Lord’s promise in Revelation 3:20. A few final pages provide Scripture-supported information on the assurance of salvation, how to grow in one’s new relationship with Christ, and the importance of getting involved in a good church. [Because of the evolution of language and a desire for clear communication, slight edits have been made to the laws. Read the section “Today’s Impact” for more information.] 

I still rejoice as I reflect on the first printing of that booklet and how, at the last second and with God’s guiding hand, we avoided a critical mistake. Originally, our first principle emphasized man’s sinful nature; the second then underscored God’s love. I had completed my final edit and, tired from a great deal of traveling, went upstairs to bed while Vonette and some staff women finished the typing. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I sat straight up in bed. I thought, There’s something wrong about starting this written presentation with the negative note about man’s sinfulness. I flung the covers aside, got out of bed, and paced the carpet, repeating those words in my mind. Something’s not quite right . . . 

Why not start where God Himself starts, with His love? I remembered being drawn to Christ myself when I was overwhelmed with God’s love for me. Would other people want to know more if they first hear the positive affirmation that the Creator of the universe loves them personally? How could anyone say no to Christ if they truly understood how much He loves them?

We needed to start with the positive! I went to the head of the stairs and called down to Vonette and our associates to reverse the sequence of laws one and two, which they did. It seemed like a simple adjustment.

It was years before I learned how this change had traumatized one of the staff women working with Vonette that evening. “Bill,” she confided, “I was so distressed over your last-minute change that I cried that night. I was afraid you were beginning to dilute the gospel because you placed such a strong emphasis on God’s love instead of on man’s sin. Now, in retrospect, I realize that this is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the Campus Crusade ministry.”

Today’s Impact

The Four Spiritual Laws booklet continues to be widely distributed in the U.S. and abroad. It’s also available in digital format in the GodTools® app and has been contextualized to connect with specific audiences. Two of the most well-known contextualized versions are Would You Like to Know God Personally? — the version used by most U.S. Cru staff members — and The FOUR®, a version developed in Europe that uses four symbols (heart, division sign, cross, and question mark) to visually summarize the four points in the outline.

Because of the evolution of language and a desire for clear communication, slight edits have been made to the Four Spiritual Laws. The current version of the Four Spiritual Laws reads:

• God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.

• We are sinful and separated from God. Therefore, we cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.

• Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for our sin. Through Him alone we can know God personally and experience God’s love and plan.

• We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.

Next Steps

Learn more and check out the contextualized versions of The Four Spiritual Laws:

• Discover the History of the GodTools app or download the app to start your own spiritual conversation.

• Read Would You Like to Know God Personally?

• Visit The Four’s website to see how visual symbols can start gospel conversations. 

Celebrate the 75th anniversary of Cru with us. Check out cru.org/75 for a free prayer challenge, to share your story and get connected. There, you can also purchase the book once it is released.