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Click here to download and print a pdf booklet prepared for those who 'accepted Jesus'. (Note that the booklet prints
on six letter sized pages - double sided)
--- The Biblical Way of Salvation:
1. By God's grace you realize
your rebellion against God, your disobedience and sinfulness, and that you are condemned by God and on your
way to hell.
2. At the same time the grace of God draws you and calls you to repent,
in order to be reconciled with God. You have free will to choose, and if you do not harden your
heart God's grace leads you to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. At the cross, by the grace
of God you meet Christ, and you sense His love toward you. When you see Christ on the cross paying for your sins
by His Blood; dying in your place, you are condemned and ashamed for being such a sinner. You are humbled,
your self-assurance has gone, you look up to the Lord Jesus and ask Him to save you. Through the Holy Spirit's
work in your heart, by His grace you receive God's gift of repentance. While you repent, you learn
to hate sin. Now you have a determination to turn from sin and to keep yourself clean for Christ.
Now you want to make peace with God on His terms. You ask Christ to be the Lord of your life, and
you tell Christ that you have an intention to follow Him.
4. God responds by creating a new
nature in you, (the divine nature) and the Holy Spirit takes residence in your heart and assures you that
you are forgiven, and saved in your heart. You don't need outside assurance. This is how the new birth happens.
Now you love Christ for all what He had done for you. You are 'in Christ' now; safe while you abide in
Him. Now your fellowship with God is restored and if you strive to obey His commandments, and persevere unto the
end, Christ will give you "the right to eat from the tree of life." (Rev. 22:14) You are
safe as long as you are in Christ: "...God hath given to us eternal life, and this life
is in His Son." (1 John 5:11)
5. The indwelling Holy Spirit now helps you not to sin, to
abide in Christ, to work His works that He prepared for you, and to obey His commandments. He leads you, one step
at a time, as you obey. Your new divine nature delights in God's ways; you have peace and joy. The Holy Spirit
gives you discernment as you go on, condemns you of sin if sin 'happens,' and leads you to repentance.
If you strive to persevere, but fail, God's grace makes up for the difference: He makes you stand again.
If after being saved you turn to your own ways, God's grace might lead you back, but you cannot count on
it. If you die 'out of Christ,' then John 15:6 applies. Contrast
this (the above) with the false gospel being preached in today's churches: The Repentance-free Way of Salvation (False):
1. Muster up some
human emotional kind of faith, and "accept" Jesus' unconditional gift of salvation and Eternal
Life. You are assured that now you have a Home in Heaven.
2. Since this step didn't
make you biblically born again, the Holy Spirit is not in your heart so He cannot confirm your 'salvation'
by "...testifying together with your spirit that you became the child of God." (Romans 8:16)
As a result, you need some outside re-assurance that it is true, and for this purpose the Pastor quotes for
you some one sided Scripture quotations out of context to assure you of your Salvation and Eternal Security.
3. Since the first step didn't make you biblically born again, (so, you are not a 'New Creation')
the Pastor now has a job to teach you how to try to live a holy life by the efforts of your Old Man's nature.
4. It is now optional, you can try to muster up some
human effort to obey Christ's commandments if you can and if you want. If you don't want to,
or if you fail, don't worry, you will only lose some rewards. You will be assured that you have Eternal
Security which means that you have a Home in Heaven.
So what to do? - Pray that God would convict you of your sins and your unrighteousness and of the judgment to come;
that you are lost and will perish.
- Seek the
Lord. (Matthew 6:33)
- Pray for the “fear of
the Lord”, as it “is the beginning of knowledge”. (Prov 1:7)
- Pray to have your eyes and ears opened to God’s Truth. (Mark 8:18)
- Pray that God would open the eyes of your understanding. (Luke 24:25)
- Pray that you would see yourself as God sees you (dead in sin). (Ephesians
2:1)
- Pray that God would make you hate sin and love
holiness.
- Pray to have a hunger and thirst
for righteousness. (Matthew 5:6)
- Repent.
Make a 180°. Turn from known sin in your life.
- Pray for a “broken heart” and a “contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18; 51:17)
- Pray for the grant of repentance (a repentant heart). (Acts 11:18; 2 Tim 2:25)
- Pray with an obedient heart; pray for a willingness
to obey.
- Start obeying whatever the Lord shows you.
- Pray for the gift of faith. (Ephesians 2:8)
- Pray that God would make you a “new creature”
(2 Cor 5:17)
- Pray for the miracle of being “begotten
of God” (‘born again’) (1 John 5:18)
- Start
obeying whatever the Lord shows you.
- Read God’s
Word (the Bible) and ask the Lord to illuminate It for you and teach you in your heart.
- And if you don't feel like it, set your will and seek the Lord anyway and
pray that you would want to seek God and that the Lord would find you and that you would find the Lord Jesus Christ.
One can want to be saved and feel the
darkness on one's soul and the bondage and be unable to do anything but cry out to God for help and continue
to prepare the way of the Lord in one's life (repentance):
- “The
voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway
for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3)
- “The highway of the upright is to depart from evil:
he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul.” (Proverbs 16:17)
- “break up your
fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.” (Hosea
10:12)
“Salvation belongeth unto to the Lord” (Psalm 3:8), we can't receive
it unless it is given (“A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” [John 3:27]), and it is
freely given, but only given and the ability to receive it given once the conditions (seek, repent – start obeying)
are met; and it's ALL by God's grace.
- “to
him that ordereth his conversation [manner of living] aright will I shew the salvation of God” (Psalm
50:23b)
One cannot 'accept the Lord Jesus', as is taught today.
Imagine the pride
inherent in the message: 'Just believe and accept Jesus and you will know tonight that you will go to heaven'.
This reeks of ego, pride, of an unrepentant spirit – what it says is that when I am good
and ready and decide that I want to go to heaven then I whistle up to God and He comes running to throw His free gift of salvation
at me, which I can never loose no matter what. The invitation to 'accept Jesus' also sets one up
for pretend christianity, since the role of the Holy Spirit who is to indwell the believer is completely ignored, so the whole
thing becomes this beautiful symbolic ritual. Pretend. Make believe.
It is the Lord Jesus who accepts us and gives us the ability to receive Him, when we seek Him with all of our heart, and prepare
our hearts, and when we put everything on the altar and repent, obeying all that we know that we should be obeying.
And wanting to do that and being able to do that is only by God's grace working in us.
A Spirit wrought realization, or flash of illumination, not an intellectual understanding.
The difference is that one is intellectual and the other is Spirit wrought.
And the Spirit wrought can never be arrived at through the intellect, but is given from above.
“Salvation belongeth unto the Lord” (Psalm 3:8) and nobody can know anything of the Lord unless
it is revealed to him from above. “...flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17) “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath
sent me draw him” (John 6:44) One can know all about the Bible, and write about it, and be an intellectual
expert and still be on the way to hell. The Bible can be studied and studied (as unbelieving professors of religion
do and as almost everyone in churches today do and as I did) and a person can read many good Biblical books and the veil can
still be on that person's heart and he will die in his sins. It is only God who can turn on the light. “The
people which sat in darkness saw great light” (Matthew 4:16).
Then God gives the gift of the Holy Spirit through salvation:
The Lord will show Himself
to you and bring you to repentance, save you and give you a new heart and you will experience the new birth and you
will know that His Holy Spirit lives inside you. The Holy Spirit will talk to you through the Bible.
And He will teach you and help you to take up your cross daily and to mortify your old nature. And the Lord
will begin to make you over in His image and prepare you for your eternal home. And your soul will stop torturing
you and you will have true joy (and suffering and persecution - “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution.” [2 Timothy 3:12]). But you MUST continue to OBEY. “He
taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.”
(Proverbs 4:4) “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith,
I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 2:3,4)
To summarize:
The Bible is completely closed
to the intellect.
The Lord Jesus spoke in parables and similarly everything
is hid and revealed only to the seeking honest heart by the same Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the Bible
in the first place.
It's like God 'touches' a passage and the light goes on, and it ends up meaning something quite different
or the opposite of the intellectual interpretation. This is what the Lord meant when He said, “who
hath ears to hear, let him hear”.
God's wisdom is to 'touch' the ear of the hearer.
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye
shall search for me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) As the hymn says “and
we never can know the delights of His love, until all on the altar we lay”. We have to give everything to
get everything worth having. “to him that ordereth is conversation (manner of living) aright will
I shew the salvation of God” (Psalm 50:23) This is the concept of repentance, of making straight
the crooked places. Then God can save us.
EVERYTHING must go on the altar, as the hymn says “what He says we will
do, where He says we will go”. “Unless the sinner is willing to reform his way of living
he will never know the inward experience of regeneration” (Tozer, The Root of the Righteous,
p. 44) “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak of myself.” (John 7:17) “God will speak to the hearts of those who prepare
themselves to hear” (Tozer, The Root of the Righteous, p. 21)
- God will not teach the man who is
not willing to obey.
- God will not satisfy the merely
curious.
- God reveals Himself to a humble, repentant, seeking
heart, who takes Him as Lord and wants to be His obedient servant.
The willingness to obey what we are taught
must be there: “Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk in thy truth” (Psalm 86:11)
“Teach me, O LORD, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end.” (Psalm
119:33).
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