Just Thinking Blog

Is the Average American Church Leading People to Hell?

1/3/2014

In the brief video below Paul Washer brings some interesting thoughts to the table. I certainly believe, based upon what I've seen in the Church during the last 25 years, that many children and individuals have been given a false sense of security simply because they "prayed a prayer" at VBS or in Sunday School. Watch the video and then please share your thoughts.

4 Comments

Joey Jetton

1/8/2014 12:30:10 pm

This bothers me greatly. It bothers me because it's personal, it happened to me.

I can remember it like yesterday. I was approached with one of those blue, Eternal Life tracts when I was about 7 or 8. I was asked if I knew if I would go to heaven or not and that God wanted me to be sure because He is a loving God and has a purpose for me. It was explained to me that God was holy and man was sinful. That there was this great divide between God and man, and that the only way to get to heaven was to bridge that gap. I was told that man cannot save himself but that God had provided a way through his son, Jesus. That forgiveness was possible because of Him. However, I couldn’t receive this forgiveness unless I received Jesus in my heart. The choice is mine. I was told I needed to repent and put my faith in Jesus and surrender to Him as Lord of my life. Then, it was said I needed to ask the Lord to save me. I was directed to read a prayer and see if it said what I wanted to say to God. If so, I could repeat these words or similar words and then Jesus would become my Savior, as long as it was sincere. Now I’ve made the most important decision of my life, am saved and have eternal life. You can find an online version of the tract here: http://www.woodlawnbaptistchurch.org/lifetract/e1.htm.

Until a few years ago, I had gone through life believing I was saved and going to heaven when I died. All because I said a prayer and asked Jesus into my heart. Yet my life was full of pride, selfishness and a “holier than thou” attitude because I was saved and had grown up in church my entire life. All my hope was in MY actions when I said that prayer. My life was not one conformed to the Christian life, to the truth of God. I wasn’t living for Jesus, I was living for me! After all, I was saved. I could do whatever I wanted. And therein lies the problem. I did exactly what I wanted.
This is the problem I have with this tactic. Quite frankly, it deceives the individual and twists the truth. It deceives by using verses of the Bible out of context. After the tract goes through the issue of there being a gap between God and man, and that the only one who can bridge the gap is Jesus, we are told that the only way Jesus can affect our lives is to receive Him and John 1:12 is cited as support. "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name". Reading this verse alone, you would think that there is some action required of you. That Jesus can’t merely save you unless you allow it, unless you make the choice. It boggles my mind why we read one verse and not the surrounding passages to gain the context. If you keep reading, verse 13 states, “Who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” It’s not my will or your will but the will of God that regenerates a person. This is what it means to be “born again”, another term thrown around that has come to mean something other than what Christ meant in John 3 when He tells Nicodemus that “You must be born again. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” (John 3:7-8) To be born again is to be born of the Spirit, regenerated; to be a new creation and have a new heart (mind). So, to say someone does what they want goes without saying. What a person does is the evidence of the heart. (James 1:19-27, 2:14-26) My actions regarding my pride and selfishness, my self-serving attitude were the evidence I was not regenerated, I had not been converted into a new creature because I was insulated from the truth by being lead through a process that told me I had to do something to be saved. I was doing exactly what I wanted to because my heart (mind) was corrupt and I did corrupt things. I had no choice but to live according to my depravity.

Another issue I have with this is that the tract says you must surrender your life to Jesus, to give Him control of your life. Well pardon me, but what kind of god sends his son to atone for a peoples sin, who is all powerful, has created everything including the very people he sent his son to save, what kind of god is this that has all power and dominion but he can’t save me apart from me letting him? What a weak god! NO! The God that saved me reveled Himself to me, reveled His truth to me and HE changed my mind, HE gave me a new heart. I had no choice but to acknowledge that which was reveled was truth! I didn’t decide to do anything except that which to the truth compelled me to do. To repent and believe! This is the Gospel call. It’s not some hour of decision or a choice you have to make. You will repent and you will believe if you have truly been “born again”; this is man’s responsibility to the call of the Gospel.

Well, I have begun to ramble a bit so let me say one more thi

Joey Jetton

1/19/2014 08:39:08 am

Sorry, here's the rest of the story.....

Well, I have begun to ramble a bit so let me say one more thing. A few years ago we were having VBS at the church we were attending. I was walking from one building to the next when the Pastor passed by. He commented, “I wish we could run children through a program like this every week”. Yep, you read correctly. I was instantly sick to my stomach and disheartened. This was my thinking, “I just heard the Pastor say that my children were like cattle, run through the stalls and prodded into the direction he wanted them to go.” What a joke this came to be to me. What hurts most is my oldest daughter raised her hand. She wanted to pray that prayer. It makes me sick to think about my own daughter being misled into thinking she can’t go to heaven unless she prays to ask Jesus into her heart. Well I’m sorry folks, but Jesus never said, “See, I died for you now ask me to come into your heart.” How many people think they are saved because they said a prayer sometime in their life and they don’t fully understand the Gospel?

God is holy and righteous, we are not. If God is just (and He is), he cannot forgive us. His wrath toward sin must be satisfied. Therefore, we must die and go to hell unless….God, because of his love, mercy and compassion becomes a man, Jesus, and lives a sinless life and dies in our place, taking on all the wrath of God for the sins of all mankind. It pleased God to crush His only begotten son. (Isaiah 53:10) He not only crushed Him, He raised Him from the dead that He would be exalted. Most pagan religions require the individual to do something to appease a god or the gods but not Christianity. God requires nothing because God satisfied His own wrath toward sin by taking it on Himself in the person of Jesus. This is the Gospel. Believe and repent.

Joey Jetton

1/19/2014 08:39:21 am

Joey Jetton

1/19/2014 08:39:35 am

Is the Average American Church Leading People to Hell?

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