Picture the Judgment Seat of Christ on the Last Day. Multitudes throng the throne of God and verdicts are being read. You are approaching, but before you reach the Judge, you hear a plea filled with deep anguish along the lines of: ‘…but Lord, I responded to an altar call. I said the sinners’ prayer and the preacher told me that I was saved…’
And the Judge responds, in a calm but damning tone ‘…depart from me you worker of iniquity, I never knew you!’
Take a moment right now, and imagine yourself in this person’s shoes. Could it be you? Is there a possibility that you think you are saved because you responded to an altar call at some point in the past? Do you believe the lie of decisional regeneration?
The ‘altar call’ movement is new and recent, as near as the 19th century. They were mainly popularised by Charles Finney (1792-1875) who employed near to manipulative antics to have people ‘make the decision’ to follow Jesus.
But before I move on, I must say that I do not have a problem with an individual making a public confession of faith. I think it is necessary, which is why we have water baptism. And I do not have a problem either with a Preacher asking the congregation to commit to following the Lord. But I do have a problem with a thinking that supposes that a man is saved by responding to an altar call.
Because he is not.
Decisional regeneration is a teaching that a man is born again by making a public confession of faith. The main problem with this understanding, apart from the fact that it is a recent innovation is that it misunderstands the depth of human depravity.
Scripture declares that an unregenerate man is not just weak, but is dead (Eph. 2:1). Dead. What decisional regeneration therefore does, is preaching the gospel to the dead (which we all must do), but hoping that the dead man will choose to respond, by his act of the will, before he is raised to life.
But we all know that dead men say nothing when the living ask them anything.
The second problem with decisional regeneration is that it is emotionally manipulative and does not aim at biblical persuasion but on numbers. I recall a conversation I had with an American missionary who has spent time in Africa in which he was boasting of the number of those he ‘converted’ to Christ. He had problems with Ray Comfort’s street evangelism because ‘he did not cut the deal there and then.’ To him, if the gospel does not produce immediately visible results, then it was wrongly preached.
And so preachers psychologically manipulate people into their kingdoms, but tell them it is God’s kingdom they entered. We often forget that we were sent to preach to all men, not to save them.
This leads to the third problem with this tactic, the one with which we began. Decisional regeneration gives a false assurance of salvation. There are many today who made the profession of faith but live like the sons of hell and will be cast into the outer darkness on the last day. But when you ask them, they tell you that they also ‘accepted Christ.’
To them, if you said the “sinners’ prayer” you are saved. They confuse the physical act of coming to the altar with the spiritual reality of coming to Christ. For these, Christ paints a somewhat troubling scene in Matthew 7:21.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
To respond to an altar call does not mean to be saved. It merely says this, you responded to an altar call. To be redeemed is to be changed, delivered from the kingdom of darkness and conveyed into the domain of light, and to live as such (Col. 1:13-14).
Now, do not get me wrong. I believe that many people who responded to these calls are genuine converts. But they were not saved by the altar call, but by Christ who works in us when the gospel is preached, despite the methods we use. Thus, I am not questioning the genuineness of their conversion, but the biblical warrant, motivations, and misplaced ideas for and about the technique.
And as theologian John Williamson Nevin noted concerning Finney’s tactics;
Spurious revivals are common, and as the fruit of them, false conversions lamentably abound. An anxious bench may be crowded, where no divine influence whatever is felt… Hundreds may be carried through the process of anxious bench conversion, and yet their last state may be worse than the first.
To conclude, let me state that indeed people should be challenged to come to Christ for salvation. However, heeding Thomas S. Kidd’s warning is essential. Kidd cautions that whichever way this invitation is issued, “nonbelievers and immature Christians must never get the impression:
- That walking an aisle and praying with the pastor, by definition, made them a Christian. Walking an aisle should be the beginning or continuation of a longer conversation about grace, faith, and discipleship.
- That God will reward those, who walk the aisle with salvation. Prospective Christians must understand that there’s nothing they can do to earn God’s favour.
- That walking the aisle is the lone standard for how the prospective convert knows that he or she is a Christian. If “hitting the sawdust trail” is not followed by obedience (first by receiving baptism, at least in churches that practice believer’s baptism) and faithfulness to the Lord and the church, then the body of Christ may well doubt whether the one-time response to the gospel was evidence of real regeneration.”
It is possible for you and me to have responded to that altar call in vain. As the Apostle argues,
‘Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realise this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? —unless indeed you fail to meet the test!’ 2 Corinthians 13:5
For further study, consider these articles: Thabiti Anyabwile, Douglas A. Sweeney, and Paul Washer.
I like hearing from you. Feel free to get in touch with me at theprincejose@yahoo.com.