By: John R. Forrester

As the remnants of the Christian church enter the postmodern era, it is suffering under perhaps its most severe crisis in its history. Rampant false doctrine, distortions and error are popular while Biblical based teaching is shunned. Many churches shed orthodoxy and embrace modern style worship in an effort to stop their rapidly declining membership. Others simply watch their numbers fall until they are forced to close the church. While modern apostasy and depravity is certainly comparable with the worst epochs of past, pagan civilizations; it can hardly be considered as the worst the church has faced. There are many hypothesis and ideas of why the church has declined so rapidly in the last thirty years, but any serious student of theology must look for the root causes of such a decline. A good example to consider is the Roman Catholic Church. This evil religious system morphed out of the early Christian period after Christianity gained acceptance as the state religion of the Roman empire. Its corruption happened over a relatively lengthy time period but it started in the same place as modern decline: false teachings. While lies and untruths are a part of man’s sin nature, it becomes a serious problem for Christians when these lies are given church sanction and then presented as truth by massive numbers of pastors. The great principle of all true Christianity is Sola Scriptura; the Bible alone. Any doctrine, principle, technique or practice must be sanctioned by the holy writ. If not, it is a falsehood. While an exhaustive study on the history of modern doctrinal error may be presented, we will outline that history at another time. Today we will study four popular lies, completely unsupported by one passage of scripture, that passed into common Christian teaching after the Great War. These lies are so accepted today that just questioning them angers most Christians. However, all teachings and principles must stand up to the test of Scripture. While there are many doctrines that can be debated that emanate from a certain passage or texts, these lies stand apart in that they are completely unsupported by any passage of the Bible at all. There is no reference to them in the old or new testament and they were not found in Christianity until recent modern times. They are not debated because they simply cannot be defended scripturally by their proponents. If a debate is undertaken usually those supporting these lies personally attack the one questioning them or try to make a long, tortuous inference from other passages that have no correlation. So let us consider shortly here these popular myths of Evangelical Christianity.

1. God loves the sinner but hates the sin.

The origin of this myth probably dates back to the turn of the twentieth century. In an effort to make God more appealing to the masses, someone invented this lie so that sinners would feel loved in their sinful state by a holy God. There is no verse in the Bible that implies that God can somehow separate a man from his sin. Considering the fact that sin is committed by sinful man, the whole concept is impossible. Psalm 11:5 says “The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.” Notice there is no distinction here between the wicked and his sin. God tries and proves the righteous, he hates the wicked. In Psalms 7:11 we see “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” Again no mention of God is angry with the wicked’s sin but not them. Paul states it more plainly in Romans 1:18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;:” Again no difference noted between sin and the sinner. In the great white throne judgement, the wicked will be thrown into hell, not their sin. Sin is a transgression of the law of God committed by a person or heavenly being. All humans are sinners by nature. They transgress the law of God on a daily basis and are therefore subject to his wrath and divine hatred. God’s omnipotent holiness and justice cannot tolerate any sin or any unholy being; thus his divine displeasure rests upon wicked men every day. It was because of his absolute holiness and justice that Christ had to come to earth to pay the price of the eternal condemnation against fallen man and substitute his absolute righteousness for ours. Note that he substituted his righteousness for our sinful nature; he did not blind or end the just and holy nature of God. Those who are not under the blood of Christ are under the wrath of God according to John, it already abides on them. They will not be passed over in the day of judgement as the redeemed will be and will pay the horrible, eternal price for their sin. The love of God, manifested through his son, is not bestowed upon lost people. It is given to the saved through our Savior Jesus Christ. God’s longsuffering with the heathen is not to be mistaken as divine love to them. It is a chance for them to accept the sacrifice of Christ or it will be an evidence against them in the final judgement. This lie has been used to make wicked, unregenerate men feel like they are an object of God’s affection and that he does not see them as a part of their sinful deeds. According to the scriptures he sees them as evil. The New Testament presentation of the gospel preached repentance and deliverance from the wrath of God. Now we present God as a deity who loves you as you are and is able to separate the real you from your evil actions. This is completely false and without foundation in scripture. From John to Peter to Paul, the apostles warned the sinner to flee from the wrath of God and seek deliverance in Christ. The recent, unbiblical suggestion that our sin is one thing and we are another has resulted in a lack of fear of God and a general belief that he actually loves the “real me” while disliking our sin. This is impossible and a plain myth in light of the Scripture.

2. You need to accept Jesus and ask him to come into your heart.

Here we arrive at one of the most pernicious lies of the modern era: that an important part of salvation is you accepting Christ and asking him into your heart. This is the culmination of years of distortion of scriptures and an essential tool to mass conversions and easy believism. We could start with the minor detail that accepting Christ appears nowhere in the New Testament. No one is commanded to accept or invite Christ into their hearts by anyone anywhere. Repentance, belief, and confession are all mentioned on multiple occasions, but acceptance and inviting Jesus in are not. It is very difficult to even further expound on a subject absent from the holy scriptures, yet this belief is cherished by evangelicals as much as the sacraments are by the Catholics. Ironically both have no Biblical basis. While salvation or conversion is mentioned multiple times in the scriptures as well as its means; accepting Christ is not one of those means mentioned. The New Testament repeatedly speaks of belief, faith, repentance and confession as the vital parts of salvation. Belief in the heart, confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, faith in the gospel, repentance of sin. These have been the essentials of salvation for the entire history of the church. To make evangelism easier and more streamlined the new tactic of asking sinners to “accept Jesus” or “ask Jesus to come into your heart”. Most of us have heard a pastor or soul winner state that “Jesus is standing at the door to your heart knocking” invoking Revelations 3:20 where Christ says “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” The problem with using this particular verse is that it is not in the context of salvation, it is directly addressed to a church of saved Christians. It has zero application in the context of conversion of the sinner and the fact that present day Christians have little or no problem with pulling it out of its context and twisting its meaning is disturbing. We need to ask ourselves serious questions about foisting an obvious lie on an unbeliever. While we have been conditioned to accept these statements as truth, a Christian must be able to support everything with clear teachings of the scripture.

3. The sinner’s prayer.

Now we arrive at the most devastating lie of modern Christianity. The infamous Sinner’s Prayer. Sadly this lie has been repeated to literally hundreds of thousands of people over the past sixty years. When a lost person states his willingness to receive the gospel he is told that he needs to repeat the Sinner’s Prayer and that this will guarantee his salvation and entrance to heaven. We must repeat here the sad fact that the sinner’s prayer does not appear in the Holy Scriptures. Nowhere does Christ, the apostles or anyone else tell a penitent sinner to pray or repeat a prayer. When the Jews on the day of Pentecost asked Peter what they should do to be saved he told them to repent. When the jailer in Philippi asked Paul what to do to be saved he was told to believe on Christ. He wasn’t led in the Sinner’s Prayer. Yet in today’s evangelical world we constantly tell people to repeat an unbiblical prayer and this will somehow grant them eternal life. This is a deadly, vicious lie that has led to thousands and thousands of false conversions. It is not only foolish it is wrong for us to assure a lost man of his salvation because he prayed a prayer not found in the scriptures. There is nothing in the New Testament that even implies some form of the Sinner’s Prayer, the only prayer we find mentioned in the gospels as relates to salvation was the prayer of the publican who cried “God be merciful to me a sinner.” This short prayer is very different from the Sinner’s Prayer. It is the cry of one seeking divine mercy, not of one “asking Jesus to come into his heart”. This issue is a very strange one because the Sinner’s Prayer has the same amount of Biblical basis as fish Fridays for the Catholics, yet it is held as a sacred tenant of the faith by the majority of evangelicals. How can we say we are Christians and preach something not found in the word of God? How can we tell a lost person to repeat an unbiblical prayer and then assure him that this has purchased his eternal redemption? It is a ghastly heresy if one compares it to the light of the truth. Many Christians even carry a copy of the Sinner’s Prayer in their Bible or wallet so they can get the person to repeat the prayer after them. Did anyone in the Bible who was converted need an apostle to lead them in prayer? Did they repeat a prayer while Peter or Paul dictated to them? A penitent sinner looking for salvation does not need to be taught a prayer or say the right words. He throws himself on God’s mercy knowing that there is no other hope for him.

4. If you were sincere or meant it truly in your heart, God saved you.

Here we arrive at the final of our four infamous lies. The great sincerity test. This is another beloved invention of the “revival” period that saw hundreds of thousands supposedly converted yet no fruits. The new, streamlined gospel of having people “accept Jesus” and prayer the “Sinner’s prayer” with its presentation of a loving God, anxiously waiting on the sinner to receive him, resulted in mass “conversions” at crusades, revivals, soul winning efforts, and other programs. The numbers were truly astonishing. Large churches claimed thousands of people “won” to Christ per month. Crusades boasted sometimes hundreds of thousands of “decisions”. As time progressed, however, it quickly became obvious that these massive numbers were not even close to being reflected in church attendance or spiritual growth. As people who supposedly accepted Christ kept living in the world, having no desire for anything that had to do with the church, holiness, or sanctification, many pastors and leaders had to come up with an excuse for such a contradiction. So the sincerity doctrine was born. All these people that “accepted” Jesus but never once darkened the door of a church had not lost their salvation, because eternal security is almost always taught, they were never saved in the first place because they were not “sincere”. Sincerity is now the new catch all if a soul “won” for Christ doesn’t work out. Many times the person who just prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” is told that he is saved forever and can’t lose it if he was “sincere” or “meant it in his heart”. Of course this is very ambiguous because humans can be sincere about something one day, and not really sincere the next. Many people sincerely love a person for a while, then later fall in love with another. People sincerely desire a certain style or item until they have it, then sincerely want something else. Sincerity is a fleeting emotion in most human’s and “really meaning” is even worse. For a fallen man to be able to gauge his own sincerity when he is “accepting” the gospel is ludicrous. The subject is a person who until recently had no real conviction of his sin, no real desire for Christ, and no serious thoughts about eternity. Now, as he is prayer a prayer to be converted, he is supposed to judge his own sincerity as that is the key to his salvation. This is illogical and of course unbiblical. Some will try and construe Romans 10 where the Bible mentions “believe in thy heart” as sincerity but that is far stretch. All true belief emanates from the heart and man can no more control that then he can control his own eternal destiny. There is no biblical correlation between belief and sincerity; sincerity is something a man cannot really measure on his own. A wicked, lost man cannot judge the sincerity of his wicked, lost heart any more than he can judge his deeds. Sincerity in salvation is a false excuse for false conversions; pushed on people by zealous “soul winners”. How often have I sat or stood next to one of these “soul winners” as they snagged a polite, disinterested party and forced them to listen to their “express” presentation of the gospel, then pushed them to repeat a prayer. Then the supposed new convert is told they are saved, congratulations, and bring another cup of coffee. These people had no desire or interest to hear the gospel, they were practically coerced. So when they never turn up again they are pronounced “insincere” and that is the end of that. This myth is used to justify unbiblical evangelism techniques and mass, false conversion numbers.

Spiritual lies and mistruths, such as these four, are a fundamental reason why the evangelical churches are in massive decline. The word of God is not something to be tampered with, changed, or added to. As the scriptures says, let God be true and every man a liar. The streamlining of salvation and the watering down of the gospel has not helped the church grow; it has caused the church at large to fall into irrelevancy. The culture has suffered a massive, moral downturn that has corrupted the church as well. It is a dangerous thing to pervert the gospel to suit ones ends; no matter how “noble” these ends may be. Pragmatism always ends up in disaster and the pervasion of Machiavellian practice in the evangelical church is having horrible consequences. Salvation has always had the same, biblical application. Repentance of sin, belief in Christ and confession with the mouth. The great Christian allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, sums it up most succinctly. As Christian reads the Bible the burden of sin on his back grows and grows. His realization of his own sinfulness and hopelessness led him to cry out for deliverance. It is at this point that Evangelist meets him and shows him a paper with the words written on it, “flee from the wrath that is to come”. Christian asks “where should I flee.” Evangelist then points him to the light and urges him to run to it. This is true evangelism. We do not “win souls” we cannot help people “accept Christ” or repeat the “Sinner’s Prayer”. We warn sinners to flee from the wrath of God and point them to the light. The sinner who runs to that light finds Christ, forgiveness of his sins, and eternal life.