So here I am with this poor man who lost his son and is now trying to share his story but has jumbled it all together into some kind of evangelism tool. It's an odd blend of American patriotism mixed with gospel...Bible verses and all the rest with flags and what not.
How odd
I thought? For the past 18 months I've written a couple of thousand pages of
material directed largely at...people just like him. And here I am minding my
own business and suddenly he's sitting next to me handing me a mish-mash of
theological heresy and nationalist propaganda. The muscles around my eyes grew
tight.
The
gospel tract (and many of you know these well) present the gospel in a very
reductionistic fashion. I spent some time explaining this to my kids a bit
later. Of course toward the end of our conversation they came out of the store
with my wife...they go in to look at the craft stuff...and everyone was
standing there wondering who is this man talking to dad?
Usually
after taking the reader through the Romans Road, the tract urges you to make a
decision and accept Christ as your saviour. Usually they provide a little
prayer for you and sometimes even ask you to write your name down and the
date...so that you can look to it and remember you were 'saved' on that day. Doctrinally
this can be labeled as Decisional Regeneration. Just say the little prayer and
at that instant you're a Christian. These churches all teach Eternal Security
as well...as opposed to the more Biblical idea of Perseverance of the Saints.
The formula is nothing less than destructive. Many people are convinced in 10
minutes that they've become a Christian and then with Eternal Security they can
return to their life of sin and still have assurance. The corollary to this
Easy-Believism is the very destructive doctrine of the Carnal Christian. I
don't mean to get into all of this right now.
I guess for me I looked at these issues in my early days as a Christian
and they seem so patent and clear to me I don't really revisit them all that
often. I might write a piece touching on them at some point. For many years
prior to my conversion I was deceived by this system. I was a muddled,
confused, and still quite unrepentant and wicked person, but I thought because
of this system and its tactics, that I was a Christian. I was the product of
Dispensational Baptist theology and American Christian schools.
Basically
this set of doctrines and methods of conversion go back to the days of Charles
Finney. His anxious bench later became the altar call. DL Moody, Billy Sunday,
and of course Billy Graham are all adherents of this system, and today this
same theological impulse has manifested itself in the Willow Creek/Rick Warren
Seeker movement.
I'm
afraid the end result often echoes Christ's words to the Pharisees:
Matthew
23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea
and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more
the child of hell than yourselves.
People
are 'converted' without understanding what they've done. Occasionally people
are genuinely regenerated and persevere, but the numbers are quite low. Billy
Graham admits this but believes the 90-something percent of false converts are
worth the tiny portion who end up believing. Of course the multitudes of false
converts now are harder than ever to reach, as I was and subsequent to my
conversion, I've encountered this grave error more than once with regard to
others. They either shut down over time and walk away from it all, or are
convinced they're Christians while they live a life of unrepentant sin. Many of
these folks believe Repentance is not an essential component of the Gospel. You
can and should REPENT, but all that really matters is that you ACCEPT Jesus as
Saviour. Later you can embrace Him as Lord.
John
MacArthur is a Dispensationalist so I can't recommend him without qualification
but he wrote some excellent books on this topic back in the late 1980’s and
early 1990's. The Lordship Controversy he battled ties in with this greater
range of issues. (* see note)
Iain
Murray's tract 'The Invitation System' is also quite helpful. It's put out by
Banner of Truth. Murray’s assessment is accurate, although I think the whole
system is much worse and more harmful than he’s willing to say.
This
theology is destructive, it really cheapens the gospel. And though many Reformed
folks rightly condemn this system, many also embraced D James Kennedy's
Evangelism Explosion which is almost as bad. Whenever I've looked at its
materials, I am immediately repulsed by its marketing used-car salesman
tactics.
Gimmicks
to get people saved.
Paul was
converted in an instant on the road to Damascus, but that passage is not a
normative model for Christian conversion.
Some are converted in a moment, for others it's a bit of process and
it's not always easy to pinpoint the actual date and time. In fact it's really
not necessary. What matters is...what are you doing today? I would ask the same
thing of you tomorrow.
It
doesn't really matter if you repented and accepted Christ on 3 June 1983, let
alone signed some salvation form. What are you doing today? Because if you're
not repenting and believing...the demand of the gospel, the fruit of the Holy
Spirit at work in your life...then it doesn't matter what you did all those
years ago.
Martyn
Lloyd-Jones talked about this a lot as well. He told the story of a man who had
been attending his church during some special meetings and running into him a
day or so later he told Lloyd-Jones....oh, you could have had me if you'd
conducted an invitation the other night.
I'm
paraphrasing from memory. Jones said, it doesn't really matter what your state
was the other night. If you're not willing to repent and believe on Christ
right now than it wouldn't matter. Like I said that was a paraphrase...I'm not
going to dig through the book to find it at this moment but the exchange always
stuck with me. Lloyd-Jones is saying...so what? If you 'came forward' so to
speak one night but you're not moved in the same way the next day...then it's
not about Gospel repentance and belief...it's just emotionalism.
Which is
all the altar call is...as well this system's whole method of 'soul-winning'.
To be
continued…..
*Ironically
Zane Hodges one of the chief proponents of non-Lordship salvation (whom
MacArthur opposed) was also one of the greatest defenders of the New Testament Byzantine
Text versus the Alexandrian Text advocated by modern Biblical scholars. The
Alexandrian Text is the basis of the New American Standard (NASB) and the
English Standard Version (ESV) which MacArthur uses for the study Bible
published under his name. I think Hodges is right on the text issue, wrong on
the Gospel. MacArthur is right on the basics of the gospel, wrong on the text….and
they’re both greatly in error when it comes to Dispensational Theology.