Looking Down On Giants

Something terrifies me. For the past few nights, I’ve lost considerable amounts of sleep. Something is keeping me awake. It’s in my mind and in my heart. My mind is reeling in mental anguish and my heart won’t let me be. I’ve done all I could to suppress it, to fight it, to make sure that it doesn’t have to come to this but it has. I’ve a confession to make, and I know that it’s going to stir up conversations in many different churches. I know that it’s going to raise some eyebrows and that it will “rock the boat.” However, I must say what I must say, and lay it on the table. A confession needs to be made…

I confess that I’m absolutely terrified of how the Gospel is being shared these days.

That’s my fear. I fear that when I meet God face to face, He will say that I did not rightly divide the Word of Truth and that I am accountable for every word I've said while on Earth. And fear not just for myself but for many of my brothers and sisters who will stand before God one day and be confronted with such an accusation from the Holy One. But where did this all start? How did I come to such a place of torment?

A few weeks ago, I was observing how an altar call was done.
Here is the outline of the altar call:

1. Do you have a relationship with Jesus?
2. If you don’t, pray this prayer with me.
3. If you prayed that prayer sincerely, you’re now saved.
4. Rejoice!

There is something here that is not right. Not biblical. We can hide behind the excuses of being relational or being seeker-sensitive but these are just excuses. In absolutely no place in the Bible will we see that salvation comes from a prayer of asking Jesus to come into our hearts. And if you begin quoting Romans 10:9-10 or Revelations 3:20,  I could prove to you that the context has been so twisted just to make it fit into this new style of evangelism! The "sinner's prayer" should be an external expression of an inward reality. It is a MANIFESTATION of salvation and not the CAUSE of it. I have nothing against a person praying a prayer to God asking Him for forgiveness. What I am against is the effect that this practice has on people - giving people the impression that praying a prayer saves! In fact, I would even risk confrontation from people in churches whom I love dearly by going as far as saying that to follow such kind of evangelism is to teach a false gospel and give a false security to people who will end up in hell. I’m not scared of the confrontation. I fear God’s judgment more than I fear the displeasure of men towards me.

What is the Gospel? The Gospel is salvation from hell. Everything else: lordship, evangelism, ministry of reconciliation, holy lives, are all fruits of salvation. However, I fear that we have begun to preach another Gospel. It seems to me that the way we preach the Gospel these days give hell-bound sinners the notion that the goal of Christianity is to make bad people good, to make unhappy people fulfilled, and to make lonely people accepted. The goal of Christianity is to make damned people saved! So why am I so adamant about this topic? Why the heavy and harsh words? Well, it’s because the Gospel as presented today makes a mockery of Jesus’ purpose thousands of years ago. Peter, James and John were arguably the three men closest to Jesus. They obviously had a relationship with Him. However, Jesus never stopped telling them to believe in Him. He never said “Peter, James, John, and the rest of you, just apologize to me for your sins and accept me into your hearts and you will be saved.” Jesus continually told them to believe in Him. In fact, I must ask why we tell people to have a relationship with Jesus to be saved. Jesus already had relationships with His disciples yet He never stopped telling them that salvation is first and foremost believing in Him! I couldn’t imagine Jesus saying “My dear disciples, my dear FRIENDS, to be saved you need to have a relationship with Me… oh yeah, you already do.” Jesus called them friends and rightly so. However, salvation is putting your FAITH in Jesus! I have friends who I don't trust with my life, my soul... It's the same thing! Salvation is not from trusting Jesus as your friend! Salvation is trusting Jesus as your SAVIOR!

I am so terrified because of how we have changed the Gospel of God to a man-centered, easy-believism kind of gospel. Imagine your father or mother to be in the hospital. He or she is critically ill and is on the verge of death. You have shared the gospel to this person several times and he has always resisted. Now, the time for judgment is near. Your Christian friend is the hospital room with you and you’re hoping that maybe he would listen to your friend instead. Your friend now talks to him for a moment about how you know each other and then says “May I pray for you?” Then, he launches into a prayer for healing for your father. Surely, you appreciate that. But then, after praying for healing, he says “Sir, please repeat after me: Dear God…” and effectively leads your father in praying the sinner’s prayer. Then you look at your dad, and think of the possibility that he will go to hell. Would you feel relieved? Would you have peace regarding the destination of your father’s soul? Would you have the assurance that he would not go to hell just because he prayed a prayer? Or would you panic because you heard nothing about godly sorrow, repentance, confession of sins and sinfulness, and the like? Wouldn’t you want assurance? Wouldn’t you want to preach the full gospel of repentance to your dad even after the sinner’s prayer was prayed? In fact, wouldn’t you feel as though your Christian friend betrayed you by risking your father's soul? I shudder at the thought. If only salvation was as easy as parroting a prayer, I would hold a campus at gunpoint and force every student to pray this prayer! If salvation were indeed as easy as praying a prayer, I would have every person I know pray this prayer and then leave them to go back to their wicked and rebellious ways! My God, this is not the Gospel that made the people crucify You!

Today, I ask, how far have we fallen? Are we filling the church with false converts? We preach on the 3 biblical principles on how to overcome loneliness and end with an altar call telling them that relationship with Jesus will take away the loneliness. Yes, this is true. However, to say this to hell-bound sinners and make them believe that this is the Gospel is sheer treachery! Why? Because (1) sinners don’t understand what it means to have a relationship with Jesus because the world today practices disposable relationships! In addition, (2) the Gospel’s demand is for one to believe in Jesus for the salvation of his soul as opposed to the lure of happiness in this life! And (3) lastly, we are telling them that it's okay to seek the gifts instead of the Giver!

Let me be honest and transparent. As of the moment, I’m writing this with great difficulty because the weight I feel in my heart is unbearable. How many people today are in churches, thinking that they are saved because they invited Jesus into their hearts without realizing that they have believed in a false gospel… Jesus is NOT in their hearts! Jesus is up in heaven, seated in the right hand of the Father! This is more than just biblical illiteracy! This is about hell-bound sinners skipping joyfully into the lake of fire because they think they are saved! And we ask why such people don’t share their faith with others?! Why such people seem to have difficulty reading their Bibles??! The answer is staring us in the face! THEY ARE NOT YET SAVED! Praying a sinner’s prayer of some kind is not how a person is saved! A person is saved when he understands that he is bound for hell for sinning against God and that the ONLY way to be saved is to put his full trust in Christ for his salvation, and actually does so! A person who knows the anguish of hell that he was saved from won’t be able to stop himself from evangelizing and reading the Bible! The eternal anguish of hell and eternal magnificence of heaven and the mind-transcending love of God, when experienced by a person, will compel him to read his Bible and share the Gospel to others! For a person to claim that he has experienced such love, so great salvation, and yet remains passive about it is unthinkable! Such person is lying or is deceived. Jesus said that many will come to Him on the day of judgment calling Him “Lord” and He will command them to leave His sight for He NEVER knew them. They literally used their mouths to confess that Jesus is their Lord, honoring Jesus with their lips. But Jesus on the day of judgment will say to them “Indeed you have honored me with your lips but your hearts have always been far from me!” But what do we do these days? We tell hell-bound sinners that they have nothing to fear because they are saved due to praying the sinner’s prayer. Then we tell them to stop questioning their salvation. What salvation? The reason why they question their salvation is because they don't FEEL peace, because THEY DON'T HAVE PEACE because THEY ARE NOT SAVED!  Then, their spiritual authority tells them “You should know deep, deep down in your heart of hearts that you are saved.” Where’s that in the Bible??! The Bible tells us that our hearts are deceptive and wicked and beyond cure! Jeremiah 17:9! So how do we know we are saved? Read the epistle 1John!

A.W. Tozer says of the altar call:

The "coming forward" part started to be more important than the "sorrow, confession, repentance, and instruction" parts. Eventually, anyone who would "come down the aisle" was excitedly proclaimed "a new believer in Christ!" No matter how they felt, they still were told, "Your sins are forgiven, brother! Rejoice in Christ!" How many a miserable, defeated, and confused person has come away from a meeting like this? (Jer. 6:14).

I repent of such a wicked sin! My God forgive me!

We have reduced the Gospel to a man-centered marketing tool to get people to come to church. We have forgotten that we are supposed to share a Christ-centered Gospel to get people to come to Christ! WHY??! It’s because we fear rejection. We fear men. What other people say and think and feel about us has become more important than what God has commanded us to do – which is to rightly divide the Word of Truth. In fact, we no longer talk about hell when we share the Gospel… and when we do, it’s talked about hesitantly. We don’t even say the word. We instead use phrases like “that place that’s not heaven and there’s no purgatory” or “the place down there” or “that hot place” while Jesus said that sinners will go to “hell where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” Some might say that I’m offensive. The Gospel, is by nature, offensive! Who are we to change it so that it becomes more palattable??! Have we not become those false teachers who the sinners will gather to themselves so that they can hear things that their itching ears want to hear??! “But it is the goodness of God that leads men to repentance!!” some may fire back. And indeed this is true! When we talk about the torment they deserve and the goodness and mercy of God to save souls, is this not the goodness of God that leads men to repentance? How could they understand the goodness and love of Christ if they do not first understand the Wrath of God that they deserve and the hell that they are headed for?? And please don’t tell me that I need to be more “seeker-sensitive” because that’s not my goal. My goal is to be more like Jesus – and Jesus was NOT at all seeker-sensitive… if He were, they would not have crucified Him! Paul was not seeker-sensitive. The disciples were not seeker-sensitive. Seeker-sensitive, inoffensive approaches, to me, sounds more like man-pleasing approaches to pretentiously share the gospel. And don't you even begin to tell me that I'm biased and lop-sided for talking about only the ANGER of God and SIN of man because if you do then I will prove to you that YOU are the one who is biased and lop-sided. How? I bet that if I preach about nothing else except the love of God you wouldn't complain one bit! You would applaud the preaching profusely because you heard what your itching ears want to hear! I do not wish to go too far, but I would dare say that maybe, just maybe, all the seeker-sensitive programs we have COULD be evidence of two facts: (1) our great love for people and (2) our great lack of confidence in the power of the Gospel and the magnificence of Jesus that He can keep His people.

WHY? Why are we so caught up in a gospel that has been so romanticized to the point of it becoming nothing more than emotional dribble? Because we like being comfortable. We hate rocking the boat. We don’t want to be persecuted. We count it pure joy when we are liked and applauded. We value our comfort more than we do the souls of hell-bound sinners! I’m not saying we should deliberately be offensive and obnoxious! Rather, I’m saying we should not compromise the Truth! Have we indeed become false teachers? Have we indeed become man-pleasers and compromisers of Truth? My God, may it not be so! May Your courage and boldness and love compel us to hold to the Truth come what may!

Don’t get me wrong. I love sinners. I love them so much! And because I love them, I must deliberately make a stand for the Truth and share the Gospel as it is clearly presented in the Bible. To give a hell-bound sinner false security would be the darkest sin! If you truly love them, then you will tell them how to be saved instead of telling them what they want to hear so that they will come to church, hoping that they will “grow in Christ.” The worst part is that they will come to church and learn the religious activities and learn the traditions of the church and learn the lifestyle and become religious, all the while believing they are saved, all the while bound for an eternity in the Wrath of the Almighty. They have a form of godliness but they deny the POWER. For you to allow this to happen to someone you claim you love is a betrayal of the worst kind. I pray that if what I have written now has stirred you, has convicted you, that you would repent and from now on decide to be bold to share the true Gospel. We are not in the business of teaching people how to act like Christians; we are in the business of teaching people how to BECOME Christians.

Can't you see what fools we are? We preach a man-made, plastic gospel. We get people to come forward to "the altar" by bringing psychological pressures that have nothing to do with God. We "lead them" in a prayer that they are not yet convinced they need to say. And then to top it all off, we give them "counseling," telling them it is a sin to doubt that they're really saved!

- A.W. Tozer

2Corinthians 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you--unless indeed you fail the test?

Galatians 1:6-10 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

- Apostle Paul

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Way of the Master Ministries

Willow Creek Church