Roman Road and Sinner's Prayer

Pinoy, I appreciate your position...I suppose one that is not of the elect ought to have fun in this life, because that's all he's got. And all this time, I thought it was "for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. These words come from the Master Himself. The question I must now ask myself is this: do I believe Him? Here's another passage I would have difficulty with:

Romans 10:8-10 - The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

I just don't see how this passage - and others - go along with your position. There seems to be a process to it taught here, doesn't there?

 

Paul might not have, but Jesus did...
Mark 16:15-16 KJV
(15) And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
(16) He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Why would Christ tell us to waste our time if sinners couldn't choose.
Just doesn't make sense.

Your view is the one thing that destroys missions.
"They are the non-elect anyway, why waste money on sending missionaries?"

Why preach the gospel? If the Elect are going anyway, forget the gospel, go right into discipling the ones that magically appear at our doorsteps.

Oh, but wait... what's the point to discipling them? Are they going to tell others about Christ? No of course not, no need to. The elect will get saved anyway.

So why don't we just sit down and wait on Christ's return... we are the elect. Let the non elect just go to Hell. After all, we have no responsibility.

That is the most dangerous thing I see in Calvinism... the ability to shirk one's responsibilty to live the life, and tell others.

Do calvinists support missions? If so, why? It goes against everything they stand for.

 

Funny how this struck me as an odd comparison. The Sinner's Prayer and the Wedding Vow...interesting!? So because the preacher (or whoever) led you in your wedding vows does that cheapen your marriage? When I enlisted into the military and I repeated the vow to uphold the constitution and to defend my country this was not valid? As long as the soul-winner reiterates to the unsaved (soon-to-be saved) person that there is nothing magical about the words or the prayer but is just a guide line for saying the words that the heart feels and may not know how to say.

As a Soul-Winner and an Altar Worker I have the opportunity to talk with people weekly and it is my preference to give them an option to pray but if they are uncomfortable or seem to struggle with something to say I will lead them in a prayer. I don't think there is anything wrong with this and pity those who limit themselves to one style or method when dealing with people from different backgrounds or levels.

 

very good point MRCoon!

 

In context, "His people" are the Jews. This will come to fruition after the tribulation period.

 

Are the words themselves the bond in marriage and between soldier and country...or the heart behind it? That's what I was getting at. Many times (especially on TV) you will see a half hour show end in "now repeat after me" without ever saying WHY. After they have said their prayer, they then congratulate the viewer by saying "if you just repeated after me, congratulations, you are a child of God!". There is no power in repeating after anyone. The power comes when the heart understands, and words coincide. Unfortunately, this is not taught, and the prayer itself is implied as having saving power.

 

Guess who this is from:

"We always hate to end our show without giving you the opportunity to be saved.. just say this prayer..
If you just prayed that prayer we believe you were born again.

Go now and live a victorious life!"

Well maybe not the exact words, but close...

Give you a chance to guess...
I'll give the answer afterwhile.

 

Oh, yes, that is exactly what I believe, Tom. And may I interpose a correction ? I personally believe that as far as the eternal purpose of God is for His people, the elect not only will be saved, but have always been and will always be, safe in Christ, and that after the cross, there are no more lost souls that need the gospel in order to be saved. What there are are elect who are born at enmity with God here in time because of the sin nature they inherited from their parents.
I believe that it is the Holy Spirit, and Him only, who regenerates those whom He, being Himself God and one with the Father and the Son, foreknew from before the foundation of the world.
He uses no means, no man, no preaching, no Bible to quicken His own, bring them to repentance and faith in Christ.
Understand that I am speaking here of eternal, as opposed to timely, salvation.

Either the eternal salvation of sinners was His finished work only and for His glory alone, or eternal salvation is a shared unfinished work and a shared glory.
I can see from most of the comments here that many believe it is the latter.

If there were any more lost souls that needed to hear preaching in order to be saved in the eternal sense, then Christ failed His Father.
While He was here and before the cross, He spoke of the lost many times, but after He had gone to the cross, the grave, and back to life, and on to glory, you will find the word "lost" just once in the Bible, in 2 Cor. 4:3, and even that is in agreement to what God said in the Old Testament:

Verse 8 is another one that the 'whosoevers' and 'missionists' like to quote. Yea, I believe there is even a song with the same exact verse as title "Here am I, Send Me". Yeah, here it is right here in one of my songbooks, words and music by John Purifoy. Gosh. I used to love to sing this song with visions of martyrdom and longsuffering and stoicism in the face of trials and tribulations spinning in my head !

Until I read, after many years, the next verses. Good grief ! He was sending Isaiah in order to highlight the deadness of this people in their sins thru the preaching of Isaiah ! And the LORD God had no intention at all of converting them !

What gives ?

I thought the Bible said: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish ?

What is it ?

Does God want all people saved ? Or just some.
Is the world the entire world, or is it a world populated by those He loves that He loves.

On the contrary, it is the teaching we have received from seminaries and the majority of preachers regarding the above verse that is totally inconsistent with Scripture, but totally consistent with the humanist desire to share in God's glory by being the vehicle by which God actually saves people, never mind that it was Christ's blood spilled on the cross, never mind that it is Christ who hung on that cross, never mind that it is Christ's name that God exalted above all names because He was the one who obeyed even unto death.

Read the verse in context, and you will see that Paul is speaking of Israelites who are the elect among those caught up in Judaism that need to hear in order to have faith. Not saving faith, but obeying faith. Paul was not talking of salvation in the eternal sense here.

Like I said, where in the Bible does Paul speak of the need of anyone's eternal salvation ? It is salvation from false doctrine, ungodly living, and the costs of disobedience that he often spoke of. And Romans 10 is no exception.

 

hyper-calvanism... or whatever it is that PB believes... about "the elect always being saved" etc.

well. quite frankly - throw stones at me if you wish - its heretical.

the elect are those that are saved - those that are saints.

an unsaved person - if he gets saved - becomes a saint in Christ (a saint isnt a dead person with fat babies flying around him...) and therefore is one of the elect.
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to answer the OP. i say whatever God puts on my heart - whether it be parts of the RR or not.

i dont use the sinner's prayer. its too organized.

 

Well, is this eternal salvation being spoken of here ? If it is, then, are you saying Jesus did not know He just saved His people ? Is He the Savior ? Or is it the words of the gospel that saves ? Is He the Savior ? Or is it the missionary with his message.
If you say it is eternal salvation, then why did God allow His words to be printed and preserved thru the Bible, with Paul as the most prolific contributor, and not once did Paul mention the need to go out on missions to 'save souls' for Christ. What about Peter. Surely, Peter was present when Jesus gave that commandment. Why do we not see Peter talking of missions and the eternal salvation of 'the lost' ? As a matter of fact, he never even once mentioned anything about the 'lost' in his two epistles !

And as if your insisting that salvation is an unfinished work being assigned to 'saved' but fallen sinners to finish in His behalf were not enough, you now add more prerequisites.

First, "believe", then, "be baptized". What do you have to say about that, bro ?

Of course it doesn't make sense ! Because Christ never told anyone to waste his time. He said, "make disciples", not make sinners choose ! He said "teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you", who are the 'them' ? Why, those who would hear because they have ears to hear. And do you know them ? No, you don't. You weren't there when God wrote their names in His book.
But, He knows. Therefore if He calls someone out to the field, He calls them to where He has much people. He prepares the way for those He calls, and supplies all their needs, and that takes faith !

Take your cue from Acts and Paul.
Wherever did you see Paul or Peter or Barnabas knocking on unbelievers' doors ?
They went to those who knew the word !
They preached out in the open, and God drew His people to His voice.
"My sheep know my voice, and I know them, and they know me".

My view destroys only the unbiblical missions, man. whether they are from Southern Baptists, Fundamental Baptists, Bible Baptists, or Primitive Baptists.

When is missions unbiblical ?

(1) if the purpose of establishing missions is to preach the gospel in order for lost souls to get eternally saved;
(2) if the purpose of establishing missions is to spread a particular denominational doctrine. I believe God is able to teach His own people correct doctrine, and give them discernment as to incorrect doctrine.
(3)if one says he is called to go to a certain place, and dillly-dallies waiting for some commitments for his support. If one is called, and one is truly God's own, then by all means, pack up and go right that moment.

Magic ? Does God deal with magic ? Some wise guy among the lurkers here might say, "that's got nothing to do with the topic". But let me say this:

I started a missions work myself, while I was in the Arminian camp, in a solidly Roman Catholic slum area in my country. We started as a Bible study, with only one believer in a group of ten or twelve. This group were 85% adult males who were devout Roman Catholics of the folk religion type who blew smoke at my face, and reeked of alcohol everytime we had a Bible study, and gave me sharp stares.
None of their womenfolk attended.
But I believed with all my heart God had a purpose for me there, and stuck to it, with no financial support from my church, except the love gift that that one believer in the group gave me, every now and then.
Weeks into this work, the womenfolk started attending, and the reason ?
Their husbands no longer stopped by 'the gang' for a drink, no longer beat them up, no longer gambled their pay, and they wanted to know why.
We organized a year later with 80 souls, all of whom were converts from Roman Catholicism, except for that one believer, that one elect child of God, that He used to gather His people in that area.
And I seldom issued altar calls !

Yeah, try that, we all talk a lot about faith in God and trust in Christ here, why don't we try just posting a sign above our doorposts "God's church meets here every Sunday", and hold services with our families, and let God be true to His word !

Well, I'll let those who say that, if there were any, answer for themselves.

You said that. I didn't. I wish you would stick to intelligent, scripture based discussions, instead of resorting to emotions and teaching you acquired from others, who acquired it from others, who acquired it from others.

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Well, I am not Calvinist. I am Primitive Baptist. So, I'll just let the Calvinist speak up at this point.

 

how is that unbiblical? its giving God the glory for it all.

i dont see how that is unbiblical PB.

 

are you saying that what Jesus came to do was unbiblical?

Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost.

 

Well, you certainly have the right to your opinion, seeing as you're in the service and one of those who might one day have to go to war and fight so I can have a right to my opinion.
But I sure won't preach that in the pulpit you know, if only for the reason that I have no idea who the elect are. The Spirit does not witness to my spirit that somebody is indeed elect. The Spirit witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God.
Secondly, it is none of my business how a reprobate lives his life because if a reprobate conducts himself as a reprobate there is absolutely nothing I can do about it because he is dead in his sins and trespasses and the things of God are foolishness to him.

One thing I will not do, however, is to say of anyone, even after death that he is unsaved and have remained unsaved on account of his life, or his theology, or his creed, or his race, or his mental capacities.
Some of those in this board do that.

I don't.

The reason being that I trust God's power is able to reach out and quicken his own even at the last split second of his death, his regeneration and quickening not being dependent upon any of his mental or physical faculties or the ability of a preacher to be present. The preacher is not everywhere, the Spirit is.

That is a fair statement, I think. However, one must consider that just as not everytime the word salvation is used in Scriptures, it pertains to eternal salvation, even so, not everytime the word world is used, this necessarily means the entire world, North, East, South, West, and all points therein, including all its continents, sub-continents, countries, archipelagoes, and scattering of islands, even though one Greek word, "Kosmos", is said to have been used.

For example, by context we know that when the Scriptures said: "And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;(Acts 17:6)", we know that this "world" is the "world" as Jews and Romans and Greeks knew it at that time, which is basically, the Roman world, or those parts of the world where Rome rules.
This "world" turned upside down did not include Japan, or China, or the Philippines, or Vietnam, or India, where the Roman Empire was not in power.
Even then, we can see by close scrutiny that this "world" grows smaller if we consider that the turmoil caused by Paul and others, geographically, did not even include Egypt, but only Israel, parts of Syria, Cyprus, Greece, and Asia Minor.

Besides, if the world that God loved were the entire "kosmos", how are we to reconcile the following Scriptures, among some:

In the version of the Roman Road taught to us at Bible College, we sometimes used this towards the "closing" part of the "sale" (oh, yes, I am being sarcastic, but not towards you, I am being sarcastic at the attempt to reduce my Savior to a commodity and His gracious salvation to a product being sold), you know, that part where we get to tell him to make his prayer so we can tell him he is saved if he truly believed what had happened, and we can chalk it up to another victory for Christ (as if Christ needed someone to get victory for Him), and give our testimony at church about how we got this guy saved and praise the Lord !

But, look at the verse, man.

Using it as a tool for evangelism is about as out of context as that part about Christ standing at the door of one's heart, knocking, begging to be let in, because Christ in the Bible was not knocking at the doors of anyone's heart, he was knocking at the doors of a cold church !

Whom was Paul referring to ? verse 1 answers that for you and me.
What did Paul say about those in Israel and caught up in Judaism ?
verse 2 says, "they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge". We need to go verse by verse, phrase by phrase here to understand that Paul is in no way referring to the salvation of the soul here, to eternal salvation.
He was referring to salvation from error, from the false doctrines of Judaism (vers 3), which, to those who believe, culminates in the understanding of who Christ is (verses 4 and 5), or was, in their case,
which understanding, in turn, results in confession, proceeding from the heart, declared thru the mouth.
Remember "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh" ?

And we have all around us, in many churches, people who were once strict religionists and who, because of faith given from God, because of ears opened by the Lord, hearts opened by the Lord, now confess not their former religions, but Christ !

They have been saved from erroneous doctrines and whatever lifestyles those doctrines generated for them, but their eternal salvation is and always will be OF the Lord who gave it to them, and had nothing at all to do with their theologies or earthly circumstances, then, now, or ever.

They confess Christ because they were born from above by the will of God.

 

Again, I will refer you to the quaking-voiced preacher's prayer that "millions of souls are going to hell daily because we failed to give them the gospel."

Do you agree to that ?
If you do, what then of the cross ?
Who is Christ ?
Is He Savior, in fact and in deed ?
If yes, yet millions of souls are going to hell daily, where is the glory for God ?
Missions as defined and carried out in its purpose today, even by my fellow Primitive Baptists who have gone to 'spread the gospel', is unbiblical, because in effect it says that without the preacher, God's eternal salvation wrought in Christ cannot and will not be effective. That quaking voiced preacher's blasphemous prayer would be something he will account for, if he is not one of God's own, if he is, then he has no one to thank but Christ that it will never be brought up again when he gets to glory.

But that's exactly the point why missions where the declared purpose is to "win souls for Christ" is unbiblical.
Jesus is the One who came to seek and save that which was lost.
And how was He going to save ?
By taking the penalty for their sins unto Himself.
Proof ? He was born of a virgin. He lived a life of obedience. He never broke the law. He spilled His blood. He gave up the ghost. He took up His life again. He came into the presence of the Father in the heavenlies bearing His own blood for the eternal redemption of "us all".
He did it all. He accomplished what He came to do.

Missions and missionaries in effect say "no", that is not true, not until one hears the gospel, not until one believes the gospel and is baptized, not until one accepts Christ first !
Jesus already saved His people, all that were given to Him by the Father at His first coming, save Judas, and all that will be drawn to Him by the Spirit through regeneration.

There are no more lost souls among God's own. The lost souls are the reprobates. They are not our problem. There is nothing we can do or say to cause their salvation, or their Godly repentance, and turning to God. God's will is that among His people He is to be glorified, that His people conduct themselves as pilgrims in this earth, that His people edify one another, that His people live a life that does not cause His Name to be blasphemed among the unsaved.
That is what those in the ministries are called to do.
Not save souls ! Christ did that already !

All those who are His will be brought to glory with Him, because He died for them, because He prayed for them, and because He knew about them (Romans 8:28-30, John 10:16).

If there are, then Christ's coming to earth, His leaving His glory behind Him, His obedience unto death, His pain and sufferings, His blood, all mean nothing. His prayers meant nothing. His will meant nothing.

 

You're welcome, Tom Butler. Uh, regarding the "hyper-CAlvinist" thing.
I am not a hyper-Calvinist.
I am a Primitive Baptist.
Some Primitive Baptists could be called hyper-Calvinists because of the added fact that besides TULIP they believe in the absolute predestination of all things (like, if I put a comma where there should be a period because a fly lit on my nose, God predestinated all two events), I don't.

Isn't that a sin ? :smilewinkgrin:

 

Tim, would the initials be J.O.?

 

PB, you wrote, "You said that. I didn't. I wish you would stick to intelligent, scripture based discussions, instead of resorting to emotions and teaching you acquired from others, who acquired it from others, who acquired it from others."

You mean like the church has taught for almost 2000 yrs.

You also wrote,

"When is missions unbiblical ?

(1) if the purpose of establishing missions is to preach the gospel in order for lost souls to get eternally saved;"

I'm sorry you feel this way, because that is a heretical belief.

We are to preach the Gospel in order for people to hear it then believe.

How did you get saved? Have you accepted Jesus as savior?
I'm not being mean, it just sounds like you think you were elected before the foundation of the world, and don't have to accept Christ.

If this is so, and have never accepted Christ, you are on your way to Hell.

I guess you must have torn this out of your Bible...

Romans 10:13-15 KJV
(13) For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
(14) How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
(15) And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

 

Ding, Ding, ding, you win the prize.