...For whatever is not
of faith is sin. –
Rom 14:23
Evangelism is not mass marketing, neither is it
the Junior Girls Scouts. We’re not looking to get brownie points for the amount
of cookies we convince people to buy.
Many ‘evangelists’ go to any length to get as
much altar call decisions as possible. But not every person who answers an
altar call is saved.
It’s quite easy to get people to “run to the altar now”. All it takes is
to put a little fear in them: Bring a former Witch to testify, Show them the
“Burning Hell” movie, preach to them your unique version of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the hands of an angry God;”
or even tell them you saw a vision that Jesus almost came last Monday or that
you saw God frustrated that the Blood of His Son is being wasted by this sinful
generation (the vision doesn’t have to be true, the ends justifies the means,
right?).
But none of these methods will bring about
salvation. The most you’ll get is populating the Church with “false brethren”
and “mixed multitudes”.
There’s a biblical route to salvation; and that
route is FAITH. Any salvation experience that is not predicated on faith is
flawed. People who assay to scare
sinners into making altar call decisions by gory scary Hell ‘revelations’ or
fake WhatsApp posts have a faulty understanding of the Gospel. Salvation is
more than changing behaviour. It’s a transfer of the individual from one
kingdom to another and a recreating of the New Man in Christ (Col 1:13; 3:10)
When a person makes an altar call decision in
the physical, something else has to take place correspondingly in the spiritual
or else that salvation is not valid. And that spiritual part only happens when
the person comes by faith, not fear.
The scriptures say in four different places
that the “the just shall live by faith” (Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb
10:38). In each instance – whether in the Hebrew or in the Greek – the word
“live” means to “come alive”. A spiritually dead sinner can only “come alive”
by faith.
That is why our Gospel message must lead the
sinner towards Faith in Christ and not towards self-preserving fear that cause
no real change in the spirit.
AMEN.
More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.
GREG ELKAN
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