THE DANGER OF ALTER CALLS

MIKE CUNNINGHAM

May 28, 2006

Several years ago a young woman named Ashley accepted a coworker’s invitation to attend a worship service at the woman’s church. The contrast between the liberal church she was forced to attend until she turned eighteen and her friend’s church was as different as night and day. For instance, this preacher also told about God’s angry side which was something Ashley had never heard of before.

The man delivered a powerful sermon concerning the tragic truth of how Satan deceived Adam and Eve so that they enabled evil to sneak into the Garden of Eden. Not only was that first couple destined to suffer dreadful consequences but so were every human being who would ever be born into this world. The preacher continued by graphically describing the horrible reality of “Judgment Day” and the eternal fate of folks who were not interested in accepting a pardon for their sins through the work of God’s Son Jesus thereby condemning themselves to eternal torment.

The word picture the man painted was terrible. Ashley never expected to be told that all people are born into this world with the sentence of eternal condemnation hanging over his or her head. She wondered how it was possible for a loving God who is perfect in all respects to allow such a thing. Almost as if he had read Ashley’s thoughts, the preacher said, “God’s perfect righteousness demands perfect justice. He must punish sinners.

Needless to say that was real bad news.

Next the preacher told all about the great news concerning Christ’ love for sinners. He quoted John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Next the preacher quoted Jesus as saying in Mark 1:15 “The time has come.”The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” He went on to quote Peter as saying in Acts 2:38 “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Peter echoed this command in the next chapter saying in verse 19 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.”

The preacher was right on target. (1) A person must repent and believe the gospel in order to be saved. It’s impossible for anyone to have their sin’s forgiven and become a child of God without them willingly turning from their sin’s and following Christ. (2) Every single person without exception who, of his or her own free will, repents and believes the gospel command to come to Christ will receive forgiveness by God. (3) Every single person without exception who with their own mind and heart freely chooses to renounce their sins and come to Christ will have their sins forgiven and never be lost. This is the Gospel, the great news for lost sinners such as you and me.

The preacher went on to make a passionate appeal to anyone present who wanted to have his or her sins forgiven to come forward. Ashley responded and walked up the isle while the pianist softly played “I have decided To Follow Jesus.” She was instructed to kneel and silently think of all the sins she had committed and then to silently confess them to God. The preacher placed his hands on Ashley’s shoulders and asked God to help this poor sinner to recall her past sins so that she could ask Him for forgiveness. Ashley silently acknowledged her sins and asked God to forgive her.

Finally after what seemed as though it was forever, the preacher helped her to her feet and quoted 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. She was given the assurance that her sins were forgiven the moment she confessed them. She left the service feeling uplifted and looked forward to returning the following Sunday.

Although Ashley thought the sermons were too long and not very interesting, the people and the music more than made up for that shortcoming. At the suggestion of the pastor she soon asked to be baptized. Later Ashley formally joined the church. She became active. She attended a weekly Bible study and was being closely discipled by a spiritually mature woman. She invited her friends to church. Needless to say, the Christians in her family were very pleased.

In time however her interest and enthusiasm waned and she started to drift away. First to go were the Bible Studies and the weekly discipleship meetings with the Christian woman followed by participation in worship services dwindling to one or two a month before finally stopping completely. Despite the heart wrenching pleadings of many Christians, Ashley left the church completely.

She soon reverted to her old way of life which by most standards wasn’t all that bad. She knew she wasn’t perfect. She was just a typical normal healthy person who wasn’t as bad as some of the people she hung around with. Ashley was well liked and most folks considered her a nice person. She continued living like this; for the most part wanted nothing to do with Jesus or Christians for a little more than nine years.

After a suffering a series of overwhelming personal losses her thoughts started to turn back towards God. In an attempt to make sense out of these painful experiences Ashley dug out from under a pile of clothing in her dresser drawer the study Bible the church had given to her on the day she was baptized. She was looking for answers. By the grace of God she got them.

She saw that regardless of what she or others thought about her being a nice person, in God’s eyes she was a rebellious creature in need of His forgiveness. After that revelation, she began to loathe herself and feel awful. Finally, alone in her room, she got on her knees and, with tears streaming down her face confessed her sins to God and asked for His forgiveness.

Today Ashley is back in a Bible believing church. She prays constantly. The only problem she has with the sermons these days is that they are not long enough to suit her. She finds them thought provoking, challenging and stimulating. She loves being in the company of God’s people and looks forward to being together with them. As often as possible and regardless of whatever problems she is wrestling with; today this woman joyfully serves the Lord with thanksgiving and gladness.

She’s sincerely trying to follow Jesus by making Him Lord of her life. Ashley wants to please Him. She’s eager to share His love for her and her love of Him with anyone willing to listen. She really try’s hard to overcome the temptation to sin. She doesn’t always succeed and would be the first to admit it. However, whenever she does sin Ashley now feels awful and quickly goes to her Lord and Savior to ask for His forgiveness and help in resisting future temptations.

How can we explain her experience’s after she had responded to the alter call? At first glance it may seem as though she was a backslidden Christian who had finally returned to the fold. In the beginning she had jumped right in and got very involved in the life of the church. And yet, after about a year Ashley lost interest and wrote the church and God’s people off for nine long years. She still believed in God but she didn’t want anything to do with formal religion. She had seen too many phonies.

Although she accepted a lot of what the Bible had to say, she considered other parts of it foolishness such as it being a sin to engage sex outside of marriage as long as they loved each other or for two homosexuals to have a sexual relationship with one another. But what happened to Ashley? How can we make sense out of the experience of this young woman after having responded to the alter call?

Allow me to refresh your memory with the three points I mentioned earlier. (1) A person must repent and believe the gospel in order to be saved. It’s impossible for anyone to have their sin’s forgiven and become a child of God without them willingly turning from their sin’s and struggling to follow Christ closely. (2) Every single person without exception who, of his or her own will, repents and believes the gospel command to come to Christ will receive forgiveness by God. (3) Every single person without exception who freely chooses with their own mind and heart to renounce their sins and come to Christ asking for forgiveness will have his or her sins forgiven and will never be lost. This is the gospel the Lord has revealed in His inerrant Word.

But these three truths don’t answer our questions,

do they? Ashley had responded to the alter call and after silently acknowledging her sins to God and asking for His forgiveness, she was told that, on the basis of 1 John 1:9, her sins, past, present and future were forgiven. The preacher and other Christian’s also assured she would never loose her salvation on the authority on numerous passages of Scripture which I quoted in the beginning of this message. Never the less this young woman had rejected Christ and His people for nine long years before finally returning to God’s church. And all the people rejoiced because another backslider has returned to the fold. But is this reality? It may be the most popular explanation in describing Ashley’s experience but, according to the Bible, it simply was not true

Allow me to quote from an excellent little tract entitled “GOD’S PART AND MAN’S PART IN SALVATION.” The author is the late Southern Baptist preacher named John Reisinger. Commenting on the first three points I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, Reisinger writes: “The same Bible that states man must repent (loathes and hates his sinfulness) and believe also emphatically states that man, because of his sinful nature, is totally unable to repent and believe. All of man’s three faculties of mind, heart and will, which must be receptive to gospel truth, have neither the ability to receive such truth nor even desire to have such ability. In fact the exact opposite is true. Man’s total being is not only unable either to come, or want to come, to Christ, but every part of his nature is actively opposed to Christ and truth.

Rejecting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is not a passive non-action but a deliberate volitional choice. It is deliberately choosing to say “No” to Christ and “Yes” to self and sin. No one is neutral in respect to God and His authority. Unbelief is just as much a deliberate act of mind, heart, and will as is faith. This is what Jesus meant in John 5:40 “you refuse to come to me to have life.” You refuse (you are deliberately making a choice) not to come to Me.” Yes, unbelief is an act of the will. In fact unbelief is active faith, but unfortunately it is faith in oneself.

To believe and preach (as in today’s alter calls) points one, two, and three, without also preaching number four is to grossly misrepresent the gospel of God’s saving grace. It is to give a totally false picture of the sinner and his true need. It shows only half of man’s sin. It misses the most crucial point of a lost man’s need, namely, his lack of power or ability to overcome his sinful nature and its effects.

The gospel which is concocted out of this view is only a half gospel. It is at this point that modern evangelism so miserably fails. It confuses mans responsibility with his ability, and falsely assumes that a sinner has the moral ability to perform all that God has commanded. The cannot texts of Scripture are either totally ignored or badly twisted by this perversion of the true gospel of God’s saving grace.

Please note a few texts of Scripture that dogmatically state some of the things that lost man cannot do:

Man cannot see– until he first is born again. John 3:3 “Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

Man cannot understand– until he is first given a new nature.

1 Corinthians 2:14 “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Man cannot come until he is first effectually drawn by the Holy Spirit. In John 6:44-45, Jesus says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. ⁴⁵It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”

The sinner absolutely cannot (notice it is not will not) come to Christ until God first does something in that sinner’s nature. That something is what the Bible calls the new birth, and it is the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit. Man has no (active) part whatsoever in the new birth.”

No child of God will ever find any part of God’s Word to be foolishness. They may not like some parts of it. They may do things differently if they were God. They may reject parts of it. We all do every time we sin. But every true child of God is able to understand the spiritual truth in the Bible. They are able to hear it and see it, and they sincerely try very hard to live by it. And when they do sin, they feel awful and quickly ask God to forgive them.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that what I am about to offer as way of an explanation is all too true. In responding to the alter call, Ashley may have admitted her sins but she didn’t confess them. Admitting transgressions is an admission of facts but it is not a confession of the offenses we committed. There is no feeling of shame for sinning against a Holy God. Admitting guilt is not the same as loathing and being repulsed with yourself for breaking God’s law.

This is how we can make sense out of Ashley’s experience. In light of the 4^th point previously mentioned, she obviously had not been born again until nine long years after responding to the alter call. She believed the message. She went forward and silently listed her sins and asked for forgiveness. The preacher gave her the assurance she was saved, but, as we saw, it wasn’t until nine long years later that a Sovereign loving God had mercy on Ashley and caused her to become born-again.

This is what is deadly wrong about alter calls. It may have ended well for my fictitious young woman named Ashley but there are millions of poor lost sinners walking around today believing they have been saved when they are not. And they have been led to believe this satanic deception by decent Christian preachers who do not preach the whole gospel. In all too many evangelical churches’ today, a lop-sided Gospel is preached. The sinner’s responsibility and man’s free will is emphasized while God’s role in Salvation is either greatly played down or ignored completely.

This is the danger of alter calls. Just as there are millions of folks who think they are headed toward Heaven because their parents had them baptized as infants, or they were baptized as an adult, or because they speak in tongues, or whatever, so too, there are millions who believe they have been saved by responding to an alter call and given the assurance they were saved.

How about each of you? Do you know if you have truly been born again? Are you able to say that you are becoming a completely different person or are you the same person just trying to clean up your act? Have you really confessed your sins or have you just admitted your guilt. Can you truthfully say you loathe yourself whenever you break God’s laws? Are you sincerely struggling to stop sinning or are you just giving it lip service? We can fool one another. We can deceive ourselves. The time will come when we will face the all-knowing Judge who will say to each of us one of two things.

Matthew 25:41

“He will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. That’s the bad news. But listen to the great news.

Matthew 25:34

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.”

The choice is yours. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that can prevent you from silently telling God right now how sorry you are for rebelling against Him and then asking for His forgiveness. Nothing can stop anyone right this moment from asking Him to plant the seed of a new nature within you and start to change you into the likeness of His Son Who loves sinners so much that He allowed Himself to die an agonizing death on an old wooden cross to pay the just penalty for the sins of anyone willing to sincerely repent and accept His love.