“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” Mark 1:15
Fifth Indictment: An Unbiblical Gospel Invitation – Part One
And now, just as it was in the time of the Wesleys and Whitefield, it is the same today! What do we face? It is not necessarily a sort of infant baptism most of the time; it is not a High-Church confirmation by an ecclesiastical authority. What we face now is the “sinner’s prayer.” And I am here to tell you, if there is anything I have declared war on, it is the sinner’s prayer.
Yes, in the same way that dependence upon infant baptism for salvation, in my opinion, was the golden calf of the Reformation, the sinner’s prayer is the golden calf of today for the Baptists, the Evangelicals, and everyone else who has followed them. The sinner’s prayer has sent more people to hell than anything on the face of the earth!
You say, “How can you say such a thing?” I answer: Go with me to Scripture and show me, please! I would love for you to show me where anyone evangelized that way. The Scripture does not tell us that Jesus Christ came to the nation of Israel and said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, now who would like to ask me into their hearts? I see that hand.” That is not what it says. He said, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mar 1:15)!
Men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer, and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes I am, because I am looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.”No!—they say instead, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.” Now they live like devils, but they prayed a prayer! I heard of one evangelist who was coaxing a man to do that thing. Finally, the man felt so uncomfortable, the evangelist said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. I will pray to God for you and if it is what you want to say to God, squeeze my hands. Behold the power of God.”
Decisionism, the idolatry of decisionism. Men think they are going to heaven because they have judged the sincerity of their own decision. When Paul came to the church in Corinth, he did not say to them, “Look, you are not living like Christians, so let’s go back to that one moment in your life when you prayed that prayer, and let’s see if you were sincere.” No, he said this, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves” (2Co 13:5).
I want you to know, my friends, salvation is by faith alone! It is a work of God. It is a grace upon grace upon grace. But the evidence of conversion is not just your examination of your sincerity at the moment of your conversion. It is the on-going fruit in your life.
Oh, my dear friends, look at what we have done! Isn’t a tree known by its fruit (Mat7:20)? Today 60% or 70% of Americans think they are converted, born again. But we kill how many thousands of babies a day? And we are hated around the world for our immorality. Yet we think we are Christian!
And I lay the blame for this squarely at the feet of the preachers. I have seen this everywhere. The Calvinist, the Arminian, a lot of them share something in common. It is this: the same superficial invitation. They talk a lot about a lot of things and then they come to the invitation, and it is almost as though everyone loses their minds.
Walk up to someone and say, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”Can you imagine telling that to an American?
“Sir, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”
“What? God loves me? Well, that’s great because I love me, too. Oh, this is wonderful. And God’s got a wonderful plan? I’ve got a wonderful plan for my life, too. And if I accept Him into my life, I’ll have my best life now. This is absolutely wonderful.”
But this is not biblical evangelism. Let me give you something in its place. God comes to Moses, and He says, “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation” (Exo 34:6-7). What was the reaction of Moses?—“Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped” (Exo 34:8).
Evangelism begins with the nature of God. Who is God? Can a man recognize anything about his sin if he has no standard by which to compare himself? If we tell him nothing but trivial things about God that tickle the carnal mind, will he ever be brought to genuine repentance and faith?
1. We do not begin with, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan.” We must begin with a discourse of the full counsel of who God is. And we must tell the person from the start it may cost him his life (Mat 16:24)!
2. And then, after that beginning, we have exploratory questions. “Hey, you know you are a sinner, don’t you?” That’s like years ago, when my mother was dying of cancer, the doctor walking in and saying, “Hey, Barb, you know you’ve got cancer, don’t you?” We treat it so superficially. There is no weight; no solemnity.
Instead, we must tell them: “Sir, there is a terrible malady upon you and a judgment coming.” Because if you just tell a man, “Sir, you know, you are a sinner?” you do not touch heart conviction at all. Go ask the devil if he knows he is a sinner. He will say, “Well, yes, I am. A mighty good one at that, or a mighty bad one depending on how you look at it. But, yes. I know I am a sinner.”
The question is not “do you know you are a sinner?” The question is: Is the Holy Spirit so at work in your heart through the preaching of the Gospel, that a change been wrought, so that the sin you once loved you now hate, and the sin you once desired to embrace, you are wanting to run from it as though you were running from a dragon?
3. And then people today ask the question: “Do you want to go to heaven?” This is the reason I would not let my children go to 98% of the Sunday schools and vacation Bible schools in evangelical churches, because some well-meaning person stands up and says, “Isn’t Jesus wonderful,” after showing the Jesus film. “Yes,” the children respond.
“How many of you little children love Jesus?” “Oh, I do.”
“Who wants to accept Jesus into their little heart?” “Oh, I do.”
And they get baptized. And they may walk like Christians for a little bit because they have been taught well. They are being raised in a Christian culture, sort of, a church culture anyway. But when they turn 15 or 16, when they have a strength of will, they begin to break the bonds. They begin to live in wickedness. And then we go after them saying, “You are Christians; you are just not living like it. Stop your backsliding.”
Instead, we must go to them biblically and say, “You made a confession of faith in Christ. You professed Him even in baptism, but now it seems as though you have turned away from Him. Examine yourself. Test yourself. There is little evidence of any true conversion in you!”
And then after college, when they are 24 or 25, or maybe 30, they come back to church and rededicate their life. They join right in with that pseudo Christian morality that encompasses “churchianity” in America. And in the last great Day, they hear this: “Depart from me you worker of iniquity. I never knew you” (Mat 7:23).
You say, “Brother Paul, you are so angry.” Have I not a right to be? Somebody must be crying out for revival. But we haven’t even got the foundations straight. Oh, that revival would come and straighten our foundations! But while we have open eyes and ears, and have Scripture in front of us, should we not correct these things about the Gospel invitation?
So why do we ask this question, “Would you like to go to heaven?” My dear friend, everybody wants to go to heaven—they just don’t want God to be there when they get there! The question is not, “do you want to go to heaven?” The question is this: “Do you want God? Have you stopped being a hater of God? Has Christ become precious to you? Do you desire Him?
”That is what political theory is all about, my dear friend. Everybody wants to go to heaven; but men are haters of God. So the question is not do you want to go to a special place where you will no longer hurt and you will get everything you want. The question is: Do you want God? Has Christ become precious to you?