In many churches in America, immediately after the sermon on Sunday morning, there's a call for people to come down to the altar. Is that a wise practice? Welcome to The Conquering Truth. I'm Dan Horne. I'm Jonathan Sides. I'm Charles Churchill. And I'm Joshua Horne. Starting with John Wesley, there's been this practice of calling people to come down front after after a sermon is given or, you know, in a crusade to come down front so that those who are mourning over their sin is what John Wesley said, that they could come and they could have people that would pray with them, people that would give them advice, people that would further witness to them. And then, you know, now it's kind of shifted so it's for people either to make a profession of faith or to make a recommitment or to say that they're going to repent of this sin and they come down to the altar to do that. You know, is there anything wrong with that practice? When you talk about this, we are talking about it as a practice. We're talking about something that recurs over and over again. If this was something that happened once or once in a blue moon, I don't think we'd be having this kind of podcast. But we're talking about a practice that's common in so many churches that happens every single week or nearly every single week. And when that happens every week, when it's sort of part of your liturgy, that this is going to be the way the sermon ends, then you have to say, well, what does scripture say about something like this? And one of the places I would go is I would look at Hebrews. I'd look at the argument in Hebrews, where as he's going along, he's trying to talk about serious theological things with them, but then he pauses and says, you're not ready for this because all you want to talk about are the basics. And you need to get to the point where you're moving beyond the basics. And this is the sort of practice that leads a church to just think in terms of the basics. Every sermon's gonna end with, well, let's go back to basics. Either basics of salvation or basics of sanctification. Every sermon's gonna end here. It's the trajectory of every sermon. Whether or not the text has that trajectory, a lot of texts do, but not all of them. The majority of them don't. You're not gonna end there. And I know the temptation just from being raised with this kind of a mindset, Because I'm a product of the evangelical church that even when I when I have the opportunity to build a sermon it's hard not to land there, because that's what I was raised with in many kinds of ways by certain pastors. And if you think about it that way, it informs the way that you think about Scripture, because you try and make all the Scripture end on this certain note. At the foot of the cross, to use Charles Spurgeon's term. Exactly, yeah. It makes you think about the nature of the Church a particular way, that the Church is really trying to The main function of the Church is to create believers, as opposed to equipping the saints. So just what it says about the nature of a sermon and what it says about the nature of the Church is going to point you in a wrong direction. It's going to set the trajectory of everything, of the whole project, in the wrong way. Right, and also another part of it, too, is it's gone beyond, in some instances, it's gone beyond just a normal thing that you do, but it's something where you are using psychological tricks to convince people to participate in this, you know, part of the service, so that you end up, you know, between the music, between even, you know, if you're really good at it, you know, having plants, people come down to get the movement started, you know, say, you know, first, Raise your hand. Everyone close your eyes. Just raise your hand. We won't even look. So, you have all these tricks. We end up being more like a timeshare salesman presentation. than an actual worship service of God. And it's something that keeps your church infantile. It keeps them at just this basic level of, hey, if you're willing to do this, then if you're willing to step out in faith like this, well, all you're doing is you're either committing your life to Christ or recommitting your life to Christ. You're not actually maturing in the faith. You're not asking anything of your congregation other than to make these commitments that are not actually any kind of commitment. I remember when I first started preaching that everybody expects it, right? Because you're in a Southern Baptist church and everybody expects you to do an altar call. That's just like the norm. And so I've done a number of them, not a huge number, but I've done a number of them. And I can only think of one that I thought was actually at all helpful to the church. And that when I asked people to come forward, I think it was about men taking, my sermon was about men taking responsibility in their family. And I said that any man that was willing to testify to the church that he was going to do this and wanted to be held accountable to the church, that they should come forward. Well, there was some usefulness to that because it wasn't about people coming to salvation. It was about something that says, let's hold people accountable. Let's notify the church that these men are saying that they're going to do what they should be doing. All the rest of them are just like Joshua was talking about, their emotional manipulation. And even, I wasn't trying to manipulate people emotionally there, and I'm sure some went up there, but at the same time, they just told their wife that they were gonna start being the spiritual leader of their home. They just told the church. There's still real useful pressure that was put on there. But like you said, the normative practice is to make an infant. It's to make a baby that just wants to talk about—not even that list from Hebrews 6 that includes laying on of hands, the doctrine of baptisms, the doctrine of eternal life, the doctrine of eternal punishment. All they want to talk about is repentance from dead works and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's all they talk about. So they don't even get to where the writer of Hebrews is rebuking them for it. They only get the first one of what, and that's where the evangelical church is. Well, how do you have a healthy church if that's all you're talking about? And it's a very carnal practice. And I mean, it was in the end, I mean, like growing up, I mean, I was 32 when I stopped attending a church that had an altar call regularly. So from the time I was a baby until I was 32 years old, that was every single service that I was, you know, growing up going to revivals, going to, you know, midweek service. I mean, you know, my dad being a traveling evangelist at times, I mean, I sat in a lot of churches and the answer is- Even on Wednesday nights they do an altar call. I mean, and it wasn't always as formal, but it was still, I mean, there would be a closing hymn and people are invited to come down here to the altar. And I'll tell you, at least with the one where you ask people to come up front, the answer is, it may have been good in one sense, but because it was done so commonly, because it was done so often, no one expected anything out of it. So even people who came up and told their wives they were going to do it, this wasn't the first time they had come up and said they were going to. You know what I mean? It's like people… And I was very explicit in my language about it, but still, you're right. There's people that… You lowered the bar on every single thing. I mean, it's like when they have… The real problem there is you've accepted lying in the church. Right. I don't think that's a big deal. And that's why I mean it's such a carnal practice because It's like corporate things where they come out and they do the rah-rah, and the people who've been there for a while look and kind of roll their eyes because they know the point of it is to kind of inspire the troops, and they look at them and they go, you know, the people who can be inspired are young and impressionable, the older people just kind of roll their eyes, and in the end it's an admission that this is what the church has become. Because there's a bait and switch with the salvation one. Because there's this idea on one hand that if they come forward and they make a profession, they're really safe, so the Holy Spirit's working in their life. But on the other hand, you know they didn't really consider it in the way that they should. You know they made a decision based on emotionalism. And so you're saying that it has the weight of the Holy Spirit, but you know that you used tactics to get them to make the decision. And so it's this game that, I mean, it's just, it's very carnal. The whole thing is rooted in earthly thoughts. And I think it just, there's real problems with that just from the beginning. I think, I mean, one of the points you made there is that when you're doing that, what you're doing is making it so people don't count the cost. Which is completely contrary to Scripture, right? That's at odds with what Jesus Christ said in Luke 14, 26-33. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost? Whether he has enough to finish it, lest, after he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with 20,000, or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation to ask conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple." Well, that disciple that Christ is talking about, what's required to be a disciple, that's like completely contrary to most altar calls. Most altar calls are, let's stir up the emotion so people don't think about it. It's not, consider this, you're about to die. You're about to die to yourself. You're about to start to live and walk in a newness of life. Are you really willing to give these things up? Instead, it's just, you know, come forward and pray a prayer. Well, that is just such a lie and such a deceit, and it's exactly the opposite of what Christ says to do. And the ubiquity of it is such that, hey, even, you know what, it may not stick this week, but I'll have the opportunity to do it again next week if it doesn't. Right. I mean, there are people, as you're reading that, I mean, there are people who heard that and went, then who saved? And they should go, probably not me. But I mean, if you think about most professions of faith that get made, do they sound anything like that? And the answer is, most of them don't. And so there's this real part of it where people go, well wait a minute then, so what's happening? And that really should be your question, is if the altar call doesn't sound like this. If John Wesley's original altar call was going, if you're here and you want to talk to someone, there are people who will talk to you. That's okay to say to someone. That's okay to say. Except if you look at his motives, it becomes bad. Sure, but I'm just saying, I mean, if somebody said, hey, if you want to talk to somebody after the service, there are people here who will talk to you. If you're wrestling with your salvation, if you think Then why are you playing music? Right, exactly, that's what I mean. If that's really what you're saying, that's not... I know there's one more person there, let's just sing one more verse of Just As I Am. Right, because in the end... 23 verses of Just As I Am once in a church service, and it's like, give me a break. Right, and some guy took the bullet and ended it for everybody. You know, I mean, and honestly, that's really – that's what the pastor was saying is, until somebody gives in to this, we're not going to stop. And I'm not saying that the person went down because they were trying to make it stop, but in the end, that is sometimes what they were doing is they wanted the tension to end. They were sitting there going, I've got stuff in my life. Does it sound like that? And he's fishing every verse. He's fishing. He's looking for a button to push. Maybe you're here, and this is going on, and God's wrestling with you, and you feel this in your heart. Well, guess what? If the Word of God doesn't make you feel something in your heart, then you're dead. You know what I mean? I mean, this is what the parable of the sower is about, right? I mean, it's not hard to make someone feel something. And just to be fair in that case, because he actually stopped it because we sang like three verses and nobody came down. because people kept coming down. So he went, okay, we'll basically start over and sing it again, and then somebody else came down, and then we start over. So it wasn't as bad of a manipulation. I've been in ones like that one, though, where there were 23, and it was just pushing firm. No, I have no doubt. I just have a sense that somebody out there, somebody out there wants to respond. Let's sing it one more verse and see if somebody will respond. You know, I've heard those as well. And that just wasn't in this case. This case is people kept coming forward, but it doesn't mean that they were saved. It means that they were moved emotionally. It means that they, they saw a problem and it doesn't mean that they weren't saved either. That's the problem that people get upset with with altar calls, is they go, well, when I responded to an altar call, you're now saying I wasn't saved. No, what you're saying is that's not a technique the church should be using. The fact that God allows people to be saved through sin, well, guess what? Every sermon has errors in it. Everyone. even mine, maybe especially mine. But every sermon has errors in it, so God, whenever somebody hears the Word of God, unless it's just reading the Word of God, it has some error in it, and God still saves them through that error. So you don't say, well, we should keep this technique because God used it. No, God always uses error, but we're still supposed to get rid of error. And I think a big part of it, too, comes from a view of salvation, that salvation is driven by—the thing that's stopping people from being saved is that they haven't decided to be saved yet. and that that's what's holding it up, that's what's required, is they need to make a decision for Christ, that God wants to save everybody, and all the wills he has just wants everyone to be saved, and what's holding it up is the people. And so if you can trick them through emotional music, through this, that, and the other, through saying that you know that God is going to save someone right then. If you can trick them, well then you've done it. They said yes. God now will save them. And that instead of seeing it as something that You know, salvation is, I mean, it does involve us exercising our will, but we exercise our will because the spirit works in us and leads us and saves us and leads us to do that. And so it's something where, yes, there is emotion with salvation, there is emotion with Christianity, but it's not something where you can use the emotion to get you in because you just need to check the box and sign your name on the dotted line. It's something where, The preacher has a duty to put forth God's word, to make an appeal, and then the people respond, but they respond not because of how great a job the preacher did at manipulating them. They respond because God, the spirit uses the word spoken to cause a change in their heart. And so there is a gap there where the preacher can't save the people. It has to be God that's doing it. And it's not something where you can manufacture it and make it happen. And I think there's a part of it where, like you were saying before, there are some people who've been saved in a service that had an altar call. But what happens is people actually associate their salvation with the altar call. They were saved by the preaching of the Word of God. You know what I mean? If you're going to attribute it to... The Word taking the Word of God preached, the Spirit taking that Word and applying it to that. But what I'm saying is no one should associate their salvation with the altar call. Right. And there's this part of it where what you should do is for every one person who gets saved in a circumstance with that, you should expect that in almost all other circumstances people are being lied to about what happened to them. They're being lied to. They're being told that sometimes that they are saved and other times that at least that they tried Christianity. That's what they're being told. And that is incredibly harmful. The person who's being saved wasn't saved because of the altar call. The altar call didn't... God doesn't command it. It's not, I mean, it's, you know what I mean? You can say that he commands the preaching of the word. He commands these things. You shouldn't go, oh, the altar call saved them. I mean, I think that's anybody who's out there saying, well, they were saved because of the altar call. I'm sorry. That's not true, and many were lied to. Jesus says in John 3, 5, Jesus' answer, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. You have to be born of the Spirit, and that's not the altar call. God never says that the Spirit moves when you walk to the front of the church. I mean, that's just nowhere in Scripture. That idea is nowhere in Scripture. You know, Jesus continues in talking to Nicodemus and says, the Spirit blows where it wills. And to think that it's going to be somehow special at the front of the church, that's a really dangerous thought, because you're saying from one standpoint, the people are convinced that they're saved, and from the other standpoint, you're basically saying that you can control where the Holy Spirit blows. Well, you've now placed yourself as an authority over God. when you're saying oh God is showing me this so you have to come forward I'm sorry you're putting yourself in the place of God and that's a really dangerous place. And there's a line where you end up making yourself a false prophet if you're saying I know that God is working in someone now to save them and there's there's a line where you don't say and there's a line where you do say that and like if no one gets saved then or someone professes faith and then they're not a true Christian like what you you just made yourself a false prophet. I mean, if you go back to that Luke passage where it says that he must hate even his own life, if you actually think for a second that you have the skill to cause a man to hate his own life, you are a deluded fool. You know what I mean? I mean, anybody who thinks that... I don't know, I've made people hate their own life before. Maybe if hate isn't interesting. Yes, not unto salvation. Part of the problem is for these things to exist and flourish, you have to push away what God says about what it requires to come to him. You have to move it from being a miracle, that it being a supernatural act of God, to a decision that a person can make because you made them sad. Because they were mourning, which really does go back to John Wesley and the mourning bench. It's like the mourning is, you know, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. And it's not mourn unto repentance. It's not mourn unto, you know, mourning the fact that they rebelled against God. It's just, you feel sorry. So that means you're saved. And that's, that's, that's not the promise of scripture. And the other thing that happens is, I think this is a really crucial point, that you have to be born of the Spirit. God put birth as a nine-month process, right? You're conceived, and then you're knit together in the womb, and then you're finally born. And that's what it looks like to be born. And he could have made it that the baby was conceived and then was born 15 minutes later, I mean, God had the ability to do that. But he chose to make the physical birth take nine months. And we want to turn around and pretend like the spiritual birth is going to be this instantaneous thing. You hear a message, and then all of a sudden, boom, the baby's born. Well, that's not the pattern that God gives us in Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 3, 6 through 9, it says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, you are God's building. Paul writing, he's going, the way some of you came to salvation is I preached, you heard me, then somebody, then Apollos came on and he preached, and you heard him, and then sometime later God saved him. That's the biblical picture of being born again. Being born again is not this, I preach and 15 minutes later the person is saved. Now, you might be in that case where you're right at the end of the process. But even at the end of the process, when God gives the valley of dry bones, the preaching of the word is at the beginning to the bones. When at the end, when they receive life, He prophesies to the Spirit, not to the bones. And so when the Spirit saves them, it's not directly connected to the preaching of the Word to the person. It's when God saves them. And so the picture that God gives us of salvation, they're not saved when they hear the Word. They start the process of being saved through the hearing of the Word. And so we've kind of flipped things in a different order than the order that God and the picture that God has given us. And so we think that last thing, they made the decision. Instead of prophesied to the spirit, and then the spirit says, I will save him. Some of this also, I mean, it's tied to our view. Like I said, it's our view of how the birth happens, that it's a picture of the birth. It's also when Christ comes and he tells the disciples, I'll make you fishers of men. Today, when we think about it, we think of it like fishing with lures and attracting men in. They were fishing with nets. And there's this part of it where, I mean, the way that Christ comes and he captures you, you're caught by the power of his word. You're caught and you're held, and you're trapped and you're pulled in. Pete Slauson Some fish are thrown out, like the dragnet in Matthew 13. Pete Slauson Right, and it's this process that's going on, and it's not this thing of where they bite, and when they bite, they're caught. That's not what it is, and we flip these ideas around, and like you said, there's this part of where the Word is preached. When are they caught? When are they captured? When are they held? And we want to mark the line. Paul's really clear. God marks the line. God's the one who does it. You don't get to do that, and so you shouldn't declare come down here and be saved. Now they're saved. This is just really dangerous. It's a dangerous way to approach these things. If you're the pastors doing this, you put yourself in a tough position. Because if the normal order is it takes time, and yet you have scenarios set up that are supposed to be instantaneous, either what happens is you just lie to yourself about what's actually happening with the people, and you say that there are more people being saved than are actually being saved, Or you're frustrated because you realize the truth that a lot of these people aren't actually being saved. They're not actually responding to the work of the Spirit in their life during these altar calls. So you're doing this thing that's fruitless, and you recognize it's fruitless, but you don't know what else to do. And the answer is simple, stop. Yeah. But it's hard, because the church goes, what do you mean stop? I mean, every time I go to Nigeria, I have this argument. Every time, because every church I go to, they're like, why won't you do an altar call? It's because I don't want them to come to me. I need to come to Christ. At least in America, it's a relatively, it's a practice of relatively low church types of denominations, and yet it is a liturgical element, and anytime you change the liturgy, that's really hard on the people. It takes effort to stop doing something you've been doing forever. Right, and you have to admit that you're wrong. You have to admit that it's a liturgy first, because you may not believe in liturgies, but you have one if you have an altar call every week. I mean, another thing that's very related to it is salvation is actually believing certain precepts about God. It's not just that you have this emotional movement towards God or that somebody preached something that stirred your emotions or made you feel guilty about your sin. It's actually you have to have knowledge about God. And altar calls kind of fight against the idea that you have to have knowledge about God. Instead, it just makes it about emotion. For example, Romans 10 verses 2 to 4. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." He's obviously talking about belief in this context, but he's saying there's a process to it and it's a process that involves knowledge. You think that it doesn't involve knowledge, then you're this person who's got zeal, but is ignorant, and, you know, it's not going to lead you to believe. And in the end, they seek to establish their own righteousness. They think that by walking up that aisle, because they have that zeal, because they have been emotionally moved, they think walking up that aisle that that will establish their righteousness. And they're being told that. And they're being told that, and Paul's writing, no, no, no, that's not how it works. That's just people that have a zeal for God without knowledge. It means they're establishing their own righteousness instead of accepting the righteousness of Christ. Without knowledge, all you can do is establish your own righteousness. They're very deliberately saying, what is the minimum amount of knowledge that someone has to have and can have, and that from that, everyone without amount of knowledge can be saved. And scripture doesn't tell you what that is. I mean, you know what I mean? Churches will be happy to. Right. Scripture doesn't say- Man was born in sin, Jesus Christ came, died on the cross for our sins, you have to believe in him, and then you're saved, right? And we simplify the gospel And where in that that I just said, the simple gospel, where in that does it describe the righteousness of Christ? It says if you're ignorant of the righteousness of Christ, if you're ignorant of the law of God, if you're ignorant of these things, you're establishing your own righteousness. What we call the simple gospel is an incredibly truncated gospel. It's not a salvific gospel. But if every week you're going to end with an altar call, you have to truncate the gospel, because every week you can only go so far. You can only give one sermon's worth of information before you make this call, and you can't build and grow and now say— And you have to keep making the same one every week, even though you take it off of different passages, you say it different ways, but you always end up saying the same thing. One of the things, and I was kind of referencing this earlier, if you think that you can cause a person to hate his own life and to love God in the way he should by your skill, it exalts man in a sense. It exalts the ability of man. And Paul directly deals with this in 1 Corinthians 2, 1 through 5. And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." This is pretty anti-altar call, in my view. Yeah, I mean, you kind of want to just go, ta-da! I mean, because Paul's just really being blunt. I'm not sitting there. I'm not trying to manipulate you. I'm not trying to be clever. I'm not trying to be fancy. I'm not... And Paul's good with words. You know what I mean? I mean, Paul... Paul was one of the most trained men in Judaism. Right, and so, I mean, he could have done these things. And he said, I specifically didn't, so that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men. As opposed to, when people do altar calls, they are very much, just come forward and pray this prayer, I'll lead you in this prayer, and you'll be saved. Well, that's all about having faith in the wisdom of men. That's not saying, what does God say is required for salvation? That's saying, what does this man that's standing there say is required for salvation? God says you have to die to yourself. And this man says, pray a prayer. That is exactly what Paul's talking about when he says, your face should not be in the wisdom of men. Every altar call that I've ever heard that people are saying about justification, about coming to salvation, it's always the same thing. It's always just trust me, just trust me. You come here and you pray and you follow me in this prayer or just cry out to God, come here and cry out to God and he will save you. All of it is about the wisdom of men, all of it. If you're like me and you grew up in this kind of environment, what would happen periodically is you would go to a place where they would bring in a special speaker. And it would be somebody like, I remember going, Tony Campolo, a spiritual advisor that was like one of Bill Clinton's spiritual advisors. At the time when we heard him, he wouldn't have associated with Bill Clinton. But I mean, he was climbing the ranks of someone who could speak. He had a book, I think, called Friday's Here, but Sunday's Coming. And I remember him delivering that message. complex he's a good speaker he's a great you know I remember chills you know I mean like in the you know everything he did and what he did and the met the you know everything in the way he approached it and then they did the altar call you know and teens hundreds of teens going to the altar of course I mean, not to get saved, but I mean, it was like it was... Everybody else is gone. You want to be... You want to dedicate yourself to the Lord? You want to... I mean, but I mean, in the end, I mean, there are times where you have to seek out someone who has this, because this is the nature of your means. Your local pastor, he's not a national figure, unless you go to a church where your pastor is a national figure. But most people don't. Most people go to local churches. Their pastor's not on that level. He's not as good as someone else. So they take you somewhere where there is someone who's that good. And this becomes the nature of what causes God to move. God moved because the words were lined up right. God moved because the music was perfect. God moved because everything was exactly the way it should be. And Paul's saying, nope, that's not God. It's just having faith in the wisdom of men. Right. And you have to have faith in God to be saved. You go back to what the reason John Wesley started the mourners bench. was because, I mean, Whitefield was more successful than Wesley. So Wesley takes over for Whitefield, but Wesley wanted to show his success. And so the whole mourner's bench from the beginning was about counting the people that were affected by the preacher. It was about exalting the preacher. Look, when I preach, 50 people came forward. When you preached, only 20 people did. Obviously I'm a better preacher. And so that's what the mourner's bench was for. mortars bench then over the next 200 years evolves into what we consider the modern altar call but it was always about numbers always and we shouldn't think that it's not about numbers now because i mean at southeastern we're pretty close to southeastern seminary usually when a per when uh when a uh you know they have a guest speaker in at their their chapel they'll say This person baptized so many people in the last year. Right? I mean, this is, it's all about numbers and it's all a focus on numbers. And we shouldn't think that the numbers, because it's all about exalting the wisdom of men. It's all about exalting the man to say this man could cause you to have chills. Right? It's all about men. And so that means the best way to measure is to have numbers to say how many people were saved. If you say it's the spirit of God blows where it wills, who cares if one person came down or a hundred people came down or no people came down. But the reason you have them come down because God can deal with them in their seat as easily as he can deal with them standing in front of you. The reason you have them come down is to count because you can say to them, and I've done this plenty of times where I go, Look, if you're struggling with this message, go talk to somebody who you know is faithful. Go talk to somebody. Go pray to God. Go read your Bible. There's ways you can do it. You don't need to come to me. I can't do anything for you. And that's easy to do, but nobody can count anybody. And people get very frustrated that they can't count, because trust me, I've done this before 10,000 people, and people that are doing the crusade are like, come on, you have to invite people down. We have to know how many people are affected. And it's like, no, I'm not going to. And you look at examples from Christ's ministry, and Christ wasn't doing this. And if he's our pattern, we would expect to see him doing these altar calls. You have John 6, 65 through 66. And he said, therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my father. From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. So there you have Christ saying that you are not going to be a follower of me unless the father is calling you, is drawing you to himself. Then you have the result of that is that he's reducing the number of people following him. It's like the reverse altar call. It's like he, like he preaches and then half the church leaves and never comes back. A lot more than half the church, because this is, it fed the 5,000 men with wives and children there. So he had probably 20,000 people there the night before. And then the next morning he says, you have to eat my flesh and you have to drink my blood. And They go, these are hard sayings, who can accept these things? And this is his response. And his response was that almost all left except for the disciples. And then he turns to Peter and that's where he says, you know, on this rock I'll build my church. Christ was saying you have to have faith in me otherwise you're not saved and he didn't want to get a lot of false professions of faith which is exactly different than what happens in the churches today is that when you do altar calls everybody expects most of the professions of faith to be false they don't expect them to be true professions they know what the results are somebody who's having a church that's doing that they see the same person come or they They see them come, and then they'll come to church for six months, and then they'll disappear. I mean, they know the efficacy of this. It's not like it's a secret, the level of efficacy of this. But yet, their attitude isn't like Christ's, which is, we want the church to be made up of believers. Their attitude is, we want a large church. And the thing is, if you're doing the altar call, you know there are things you could say to turn people off that are true. When you reduce the gospel down, it's this carefully curated set of details that you're sure that this audience will accept. Not everybody, but you know there are things you could say that all of a sudden they would go, what? That would be just like Jesus saying you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. It would hit them and they would go, I'm not These are the fun things to say there, Charles. Why wouldn't you say this? Everything was going great, and all of a sudden you said that, and everybody just kind of, oh, the spirit, it's like you hit a scratch in a record. You know what I mean? And they know they could do that, and it would be absolutely true, and it would be something that the person has to deal with. I mean, I agree with what you're saying. I would just say that a lot of those people don't know that it's true because they would never have that scratch because they would find where they were. You know what I mean? So they just couldn't even say it because they couldn't fathom it. Actually, I will tell you this, the people I've talked to over the years, there are things that they know that people are going to have, and they'll even tell you. I mean, I've had them tell me, you don't talk about that now. I mean, there are things, absolutely. But there's lots of other things that they would never talk about. Right. I mean, it's why God's sovereignty and salvation, because why would you be doing this? Right. But I mean, but there are churches where they preach God's sovereignty of salvation, and they do the altar call. And they do the altar call. So I mean, you can accept all sorts of things. Some churches do the altar call mostly driving towards salvation. but other people use the altar call to drive towards sanctification and towards a manifestation of true faith. That's not what God says how true faith manifests itself. How true faith manifests itself is by doing the works of righteousness, of walking in righteousness. Do not be deceived, little children. Those who practice righteousness are righteous. It's not by walking in an aisle is how you have sanctification, especially the Pentecostals. A lot of them look towards that coming down is that's how they get greater holiness. That's not what God says at all. The way to be more holy is to be more obedient. It's to walk in the ways that God would have you to walk. It's to love your neighbor as yourself. It's to love God. And to do the altar call becomes a substitute of doing the things that somebody who died to themselves does. Because the altar call is a way to not die to yourself, right? You go, look, I'm being sanctified, I'm being turned from my sin, so I'll walk forward so that everybody sees me. Because the churches that focus on it being sanctification, you're basically testifying to everybody that you're being sanctified, that you're receiving more of the Holy Spirit. Well, that's still about exalting man rather than exalting God. I would say like probably, you know, Sunday morning was usually an altar call for salvation. You know, Sunday night, Wednesday night, we're more likely to be sanctification. Sure. And this, I mean, that was pretty normal. Because you probably had what 25 to 50% of the church was there on Sunday nights and Wednesday, because those are the serious Christians. And there's a part of where the speaker, you know, even if it was a revival, you could kind of look and go, are there visitors here or is this the core crowd? This is the core crowd. Let's push towards sanctification. If there's visitors here, we might even talk about sanctification, but we need to, you know what I mean? It's, they're looking and you don't want to use just as I am. That's just not the right song for them. Right, and so I mean, I would say definitely in Baptist churches a decent number of altar calls have to do with sanctification. Some places only do it on special occasions, but there were a lot of them where that was pretty much it was just, hey, God dealing with you on this? Come down here and make things right with God. Come down here and deal with things. Because in the end, the emphasis was, this is an altar. And I mean, that would be emphasized pretty strongly, is this is an altar, and you come to an altar to kill something and get and deal with it. And so even the means of your sanctification was this is a place, a particular place, where you deal with things. Right. And not that you know, that you deal with things in the world. The way you kill sin is you kill sin where you sin. It's not by walking to the front of the church. That's not how you deal with sin. That's not how you kill sin. You have to kill sin where, where you're doing the sin. That's where you have to put it to death. And it creates a very twisted view when you start to say that the, where you're killing sin is not where you're committing the sin. Well, that's not where you kill sin. It's one of the elements that you can have if you are building up a bunch of Christians who are only really Christian in a church building or in a church service. If you're not having this expectation of you have to go out and be Christian outside, you have to go do things to show that you're a Christian. You have to go do things to show that Jesus Christ actually is Lord, to really believe that, that you really follow him in all these other ways, as opposed to doing things within the safe confines of this building. And Christ came to eliminate the idea that there was a special place to meet with God. You know, in John 4, 21 through 24, where Jesus Christ is speaking to the woman at the well, he says, Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship. We're salvationers of the Jews. But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. for the Father is seeking such to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The point is, the whole system that was this picture was this picture that you had to go to Jerusalem to worship, that that's where the presence of God is. But now the presence of God, since Acts 2, since Pentecost has been poured out on the world, you don't need to go someplace special. What you need to do is actually worship God. And so the altar calls are going to make a certain part of a building to be special. Why is the altar more special than sitting in the pew? Why is the altar more special than praying at home? Why is the altar more special than seeing a poor person who has need and giving them a hamburger on the street? We now worship in spirit and in truth. That place has no special significance. It's this want to return back to you know, Judaism, this want to return back towards Roman Catholicism because they very strongly held that the location mattered. It's this returning back to this creation from the secular and the sacred. When Christ came really to destroy that and said, you die in any walk in the newness of life, so your whole life is supposed to be about worship. And as much as you're talking about it being a location, it's also about a time. It's about doing it at a specific time, at the end of a service, instead of, hey, when you're confronted by the sin, whenever it is, deal with the sin then. Bring that sin before God, kill that sin then. Don't wait until somebody tells you on a Sunday, hey, come up here and do it now. I mean, and I don't know any church that would ever say this is the only place you can do it. But like you said, it created a habit of realizing that the nature of fighting against sin was continuing to do this ineffectual thing. Right. And so it normalized a lack of growing in faith and a lack of growing in the knowledge of God. Because in the end, what you did is you came here and you prayed, and so it caused you to think of prayer as ineffectual. because your prayer wasn't connected to the change in behavior, because the connection to the change of behavior wasn't tied to when you did, you know what I mean? It separated those things. And because it decoupled them all, it weakened all the other things that were associated with it. And it makes it not a two-party system anymore, right? Because when you repent of sin, you repent towards God. Right. And he gives you power to turn from your sin. All of a sudden now, you have the church needs to be praying for you. The pastor needs to be praying for you. Maybe not out loud, but the whole point is that men have to come alongside you in order for your sanctification to happen, if we're not talking about justification. But then what happens when you're confronted with sin and you're tempted with sin and you fall? Does that mean you need to get all those people together again? Or is it between you and God? You've made it so that this other party becomes a required element. And if it's a required element, that's a huge problem because it's not usually there. But when you're actually sinning, they're not there! And these are the same churches that would preach the priesthood of all believers, that you have your own straightforward access to God, and yet the practice is, well, you need all these people alongside you. I mean, at the beginning where I was saying it, it creates a bunch of immature Christians. I would agree. I don't think that these are churches that would come out and say, oh, we want a bunch of immature Christians. They would want mature Christians, but the practice is set up so that all you get are babies, if they're even Christians. Right. That's the other issue, is because it's designed to create people who don't actually believe, in the end it becomes a form of maintenance just like the corporate maintenance, just like the corporate things where that's meant to be this artificial means of keeping people's spirits up. So because, literally, they're spirits up because you're not relying on the Holy Spirit. You're not saying the Holy Spirit is in these people and will keep them up. We have to be the one who keeps them. And so, I mean, it's incredibly carnal. It is all based in how do we keep this fleshly group of people who don't have the Spirit of God thinking about religious things? How do we keep propping them up? And that's what it becomes. And as soon as you make it be about this building, I mean, I agree with you about the time. Most people, when they think of church, they think of the building. Well, they think of the location because all of a sudden we've made this location this special thing. The location's not a special thing, right? The church, it says in Acts 20 verse 28, therefore take heed to yourself and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. He didn't purchase the building with his blood. The building is not the church. And when you push people on it, they all go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. But in practice, because they've created this sacred place inside this building, They are saying that's the church. They've gone back and recreated the temple. They've just put them on every street corner. But they've replaced and said, this is where you meet with God. Well, Christ came to eliminate that. Christ came so that his people would be purchased, so that they would have God abiding in them, so they wouldn't have to go to a specific place to encounter God. If they're a believer, they can encounter God in their own heart. I'll just double down on the time. I mean, yeah, it creates a specific place where people think they have to go to God, but also a specific time. We go to church on Sunday morning, as opposed to thinking we are the church seven days of the week. Yep. If you say that we go to church at 7 o'clock or 10 o'clock on Sunday morning or whatever it is, that that's the church, then all of a sudden the church can't do what the church is supposed to do, right? I mean, the kingdom of God is supposed to be destroying all the nations of the world. Well, if that's only happening when you get together at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning for an hour, if that's all the church is, the church can't be the salt and light to the nation. It just can't be. That's that hour where you're just gathering with the people who say that they're saved. Well, that's going to be completely ineffectual in changing the world. It's not going to be acting like the church. And it becomes a consumable. You go to church like you go to the grocery store, like you go to the movies. It's just one other activity that you do instead of an identity that you take on yourself. Right. And it really, really messes up even just the understanding of what an altar is, or what an altar is for, or what you're offering. You know what I mean? If you're offering yourself, well, the way you offer yourself is, Paul talks about that you're a living sacrifice, but you do that by going out and doing the work of God that God's called you to do, and so you pour out your life in these ways, and you pour it out like a drink offering, you know what I mean? But that doesn't happen there. That's not what's happening there. And if you're bringing your sin to the altar, that doesn't make Christ offer the sacrifice. Christ… Darrell Bock Sacrifices aren't sin. They have to be holy to be a sacrifice. for your sin. And I mean, nothing unclean can be offered on the altar. You're not allowed to offer sin. So you can't sacrifice your sin at an altar. That's not what an altar is for. It has to be clean. Incredibly, it's just, it destroys all the imagery. It destroys understanding of when the tabernacle and where the altar was in the tabernacle. I mean, It doesn't make sense. Yeah, because for a long time, all religious building is needed the altar, because that's what religion was about, sacrificing animals to appease God. And, you know, on pagan religions are trying to appease God, you have Judaism, which is it's a point towards Christ. And after Christ, you know, the sacrificing, you know, worldwide is ended. But The Catholic church comes up with their sacrifice in Christ, but the Protestants, we don't have any reason to have an altar and anything of trying to make that we're sacrificing ourselves. I mean, we have a, the Bible says that we have one sacrifice for sin, Jesus Christ the righteous. I mean, there's no more sacrifice needed. So an altar is for sacrifice. So that is, that's done with. A statement I have made many times is Christian churches do not have altars. They have pulpits. Because there's no altar in a Christian church. The sacrifices were done. And the place where we're supposed to be making sacrifices is to be a living sacrifice, and we're supposed to do that in the midst of our life, which is what Jesus says in Luke 9, 23 through 24. and he said to them all if anyone desires to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily not just sunday not for an hour on sunday take up his cross daily and follow me for whoever desires to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it to be a living sacrifice does not require an altar it requires a life that's that's picking up dropping off your sins, turning from the lust of the flesh, turning from your life, your carnal life, and walking in the Spirit instead of the flesh. That's what it requires. That's what you have to do daily. That can't be done on occasion. That can't be done on Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Wednesday night. It can't be done in relationship to a building. It can't be done in relationship to a place. There is no altar in Christian churches. And I mean, if you go back to Joshua's point that the purpose of pagan altars was just to appease God, then there's this part of it where the pastor is up there, maybe with good intentions, He's being a priest to a different God and calling people up to come and appease that God by coming to this altar. Because in the end, this becomes the system by which you appease that church. You go to your church, the altar prep, he stands up, he says words, and then you come up and you You feel better, you appease the system of religion that you're serving, and you go back to your thing, and that becomes the service that you offered to that God, and it's not Jesus Christ, because he's not pleased by any of it. And the biggest offering that you gave was you came up so that you became a number in the system so that you have these high-profile pastors that have all these people that follow them and have all their names and all this other stuff. That's the God that they're making that sacrifice to. It has nothing to do with Christ. It has nothing to do with walking in a way that brings honor and glory to the name of Christ. What it does is bring honor and glory to the name of man. It's a false god. Right. We've created a new pagan form of worship. So, I mean, I think it's one thing that's worth thinking about is, you know, the fact that probably a good section of the listeners don't go to a church that has an altar call, but the things that the altar call is appealing to and the reasons that it's doing, or that you're doing it, aren't unique to just churches that have altar calls. I mean, there's ways to do the same thing without that. And I think kind of one thing that's kind of related to this is, you know, one thing that you can do in a church, say a church that has regular communion every week, is you can end up creating, making that, you know, self-examination before the Lord's Supper into kind of an altar call. where you are saying, this is the place, this is the time where I'm going to have this sanctification experience, where I'm going to repent, I'm going to accept Christ. sacrifice for my sin, but then it's not actually going to play out in my life tomorrow. And then so I'm going to keep doing this sin that I claimed I repented of. And it's something I think is easy to fall into that, you know, that we end up, you know, in our own personal, you know, examination over that few minutes, we just alter called ourselves and, you know, given ourselves this, you know, a false assurance that we're repentant or even that we're saved. And we need to be honest with ourselves of, are we actually repentant of these things that we're talking, that we're praying about? You know, in Hebrews where it says that, you know, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. He says to exhort for love and good works. And so, right, very related to that. And it's not the same in the sense that the structure in the Lord's Supper is not, it's not inherent in the structure because God gave the structure. So it's inherently righteous if you do it right. But when we fail to exhort one another to love and good works, we're effectively doing the same thing as the altar call. When we let that person come where you know they're in sin and you won't confront them in it, you won't call them on it, where you know that, yeah, they probably said they repented, but they went tomorrow and did the same thing that they repented of, and you're not willing to say anything and do anything, you're the same as the audience that's sitting there for the altar call. And that's what Paul actually is warning about when he says that you're not discerning the body. I mean, literally, what you're saying is what Paul says you have to not do. That when you do that, you should expect judgment. They're sitting there watching people get drunk. They're sitting there watching people commit gluttony, and they're not going, these people aren't Christians. They clearly walk in the flesh. Right. And the person doing it is – I mean, they even should be – I mean, because they're sitting there hearing the warning. You keep doing this sin, you keep – I mean, because in the end that – so that is part of what you're warning them against doing is, don't do this. And so that should be part of – if you have weekly communion, that should be part of your warning. Darrell Bock Which you should, just – Greg Love And that should be a part of your warning to the flock. Joshua, I was thinking about bringing up communion as an antidote to this. And I don't disagree with anything you say about the warnings. But it's interesting, you cannot use communion done according to the way Paul says to do it as an altar call. You can't say, hey, unbeliever, come to this. Because there are things that have to happen from the moment where somebody's willing to say that they're – Darrell Bock Oh, you'd be surprised, Jonathan. You – Jonathan Cahn No, I wouldn't be surprised. I have been in churches where they use the Lord's Supper like an altar call where it's like, don't worry if you're not saved, come partake. I had to grab Joshua once and go, you're not partaking. That's what I said. If you do it like Paul says, you know you can't. Because what you're saying is, I mean, somebody up there properly doing it is they're fencing it. They're saying, this is for you, this is not for you. And you might be appealing to that second group. You might be saying, hey, if you want this, there's things to do, but you don't get it today. We're talking there's birth that has to happen. And then you've got to, You have to do some things before you can actually come and participate in this with the rest of us. One of the takeaways from that is this. There are people sitting here going, I do an altar call, but I do it right. And what we're saying is there is no right way to do an altar call. You cannot do an altar call right. When God says do communion, he doesn't eliminate the ability for people to do it wrongly. Right. The church in Corinth did it wrongly. Right. He doesn't eliminate the capability of sin, but there is a right way to do communion, and it doesn't eliminate other people's sin. And that's really key. But in the end, the altar call, you can't find a way to do the practice that conforms to Scripture. You can't sanctify something that's sinful. Right. And so, I mean, that is a major difference between the two. God is glorified. when people refuse to heed his word and bring condemnation upon themselves. He is not glorified by your actions, by the way you're doing it, when you call them to false salvation and false sanctification. He'll be glorified by judging you one day, but you are not glorifying him by your actions by doing those things. So you just mentioned talking about discerning the body, and one of the things that an altar call doesn't require is it doesn't require discernment. It doesn't require the discernment of faith that's necessary for salvation. So, for example, James 2, verses 17 to 24. Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God, You do well, even the demons believe and tremble. But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith that works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works? And by works, faith was made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. and he was called a friend of God, you see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. And there's just some things that have to happen in the life of a Christian in order for you to see these kinds of things. They have to have a life that you can examine, that you can look at, and you can say that there's work going on in here. I see the work of the Holy Spirit in and through you, and it's coming out of your fingertips. And you don't get that at an altar call. You don't get that in that snapshot of somebody's time. You could tell if somebody's had an emotional event happen in a short time period, but you can't tell if they're living a life like Abraham. in just that moment. Just not possible. Right, when Jesus Christ and the thief on the cross, and he looked at him and said, today you will be with me in paradise, Jesus Christ could tell him he had been saved. We don't have that ability. We don't have the capacity to look at someone and say, today if you die, you will be in heaven. And Scripture, in fact, warns us against telling people, you know, tells people to work out their own salvation in fear and trembling. And so there is just this really, yeah, in the end, it not only doesn't let you discern faith, it requires you to not try to attempt to. It requires you to pull away from that, the idea that that should be something the church does. People do altar calls. They don't go, yeah, come pray this prayer and maybe you'll be saved, or come pray this prayer and... you know, they, they want to make promises about it and they want to say, yeah, this is real. What's happened. And they have no idea. They can't have any idea. And so they end up really deceiving people about what faith looks like. And, and it ends up making, basically we've recreated Judaism in so many ways where people go, okay, I've come to an altar call. I prayed this prayer. So now I'm part of the, I'm a Christian, I'm going to heaven." Well, and Jesus Christ came to the Jews and went, you say you have your father as Abraham. I say, if your father was Abraham, you'd do the works of Abraham. Your father is Satan because you do the works of Satan. And so Christ comes and he says to them, you don't have faith. You just say you have faith because you're a child of Abraham. And we do the same thing in the church all the time, where we don't go you actually have to have faith. We just go, oh, you prayed a prayer, you're a Christian now, so you're saved. No, you're only a Christian if you do the works of Christ. I mean, that's the way it works. He says, you will do greater works than I did. And yet we turn around and say that those works aren't necessary and they aren't meaningful. The altar call just creates this atmosphere of lying that causes people to deny Christ and have the inability to know anything of what he's saying, any of the reason that he came. He came to destroy the works of Satan. And people don't think that from an altar call. They think that he came to save them. He made it easy for them to save, be saved. All they had to do was make a decision. And they just belittle what Christ did. And we just need to recognize how much this is belittling what Christ did and the magnitude of what he did. And typically it's coupled with a low expectation for sanctification, if any. Or what you've done is you've separated the expectation of any kind of sanctification from salvation and justification, and you think it's possible for somebody to be justified. have no change in their life. No turning away from sin, no growing in holiness, no becoming more like Jesus. But they prayed a prayer at that moment and so they're gonna be okay. They might have a smaller crown in heaven, but... And maybe all their works will be burned up because they were wood, hay, and stubble, but they still had works that got burned up and so they'll still be saved. Yeah. and just a twisting of that verse and a twisting of the meaning of that verse. And so, you know, but by the wisdom of men, they have faith in the wisdom of men. And so then they walk around and they think, okay, I'm okay. And that's just really, we have to recognize the destruction it does to the church because what it does to the church is it fills the church with a bunch of unbelievers. but it also is so destructive to the person who, who came up to that altar because they now think they're a Christian and you have to uneducate them before they can actually understand what Christ came to do because they're confident they're a Christian. It's made it very, it makes it very difficult for people to come to faith because they need to first be unpreached before they can be preached. You've doubled the work. And you can see kind of an example of the anti-altar call at Pentecost, because it starts off in the passage where it talks about there were in Jerusalem devout men. So I mean, so what you're about to hear Peter say, this would be on a Wednesday night, But, you know, this is the core crowd. This is the people who know, who should know, who have been part of the church, who have been associated with the altar call, and he preaches to them, and he tells them that they killed the Christ, and then Peter says in Acts 2, 38-42, then Peter said to them, repent. and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remissions of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call. And with many other words, he testified and exhorted them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation. Then those who gladly received his word were baptized. And that day, about 3,000 souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. And so, this is not him going and just, there's people here, they haven't heard the gospel, I'm going to tell them, this is Peter preaching to people who, they knew the Old Testament, they knew the law, they knew the sacrifices, they knew all these things, they had been in Jerusalem, they had seen Jesus Christ. They traveled to Jerusalem, right? I mean, it was hard to get there. Right, and they knew about what had happened to Jesus Christ, and Peter, I said before this, Peter's telling them, you killed the Christ. This would be like saying this on a Wednesday night, repent. be baptized not walk up here not just say hey, you know, I mean this is and This would be a very very different thing And before the 3,000 souls were added to them he testified and exhorted them with many other words is what it says Yes, right. It wasn't just the simple. Hey, here's the simple things that you have to believe and He didn't just go, you know, it's for you, it's for your children, it's for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call. He doesn't just say that and then leave it there, right? That's kind of the altar call, is just to leave it there. No, he goes, this is what faith really means. He testifies and says, this is what you have to believe. This is who Christ was. Here's who the Christ you killed. And think of all the things he had to say. You know Jesus Christ raised somebody from the dead. Do you have faith that Christ could raise somebody from the dead? If you don't, then do not believe that Jesus is Lord. You don't believe that. And so Peter didn't just end there, and we want to make it so simple and just end there and not say, if you have questions about this, come talk to me. Talk to somebody who you know. we just end it and go, let's sing just as I am and come forward. That's not at all what Peter's doing. And we shorten and we drop out that he testified and exhorted them with many other words. We just go, let's just sing the same song over and over again. So I mean, some of you who've, we read that section from Acts, and you're going to go, I still think that was an altar call. Understand the context that this was happening in. Jesus Christ had been killed and put to death 50 days prior to this. you know, this was not a small thing that had happened. This was a major, major incident that had gone on. I mean, the veil of the temple had been torn in two. There have been people who have been raised from the dead. There had been, I mean, had been seen by many, you know, I mean, Jesus Christ had been seen by 500 witnesses. I mean, All of these things had happened and been going on. This was a major, major event. And even saying that you believed in Jesus Christ at this point was to go against the political powers that existed at the time. It was a major deal to do these things. And you have to understand that in context because the people who were there were massively inoculated against believing in something like this because they were in their whole life, they had been associating these things because they were Peter saying, you're the one who killed the Christ. For them to be the ones who killed the Christ, they had to believe in the false view of their own righteousness. They had to believe in that. That's who they were. And so they were heavily inoculated against this. And one of the arguments we've been making the whole time in this is, What the altar call does is it inoculates a church against believing in the true power of the gospel. It calls people to a powerless gospel. It calls them to a cheap and easy gospel. It encourages them to stay and follow after it by continually ministering to them with the same thing that has no power. It causes them to come forward and believe they're dealing with their sin when in reality they're not dealing with their sin. And all of these things happen. For them to turn that over, for them to say all of that was fake, takes something huge. And Jesus Christ isn't going to come and die again. And so there's a part of it where the church has to actually look and say, This is wrong. This is sin. If you're in a church that's done this, I mean, repentance is required from the church to deal with this. This is an evil practice. And it requires real work of repentance on the part of the church to say, we've lied to you. The church has lied. If you think this is an altar call, back up a little bit in Acts 2 and read the structure of the sermon that Peter's giving them. And he gets to the point where he says, you killed the Christ. then he just kind of lets it hang in the air and they are cut to the quick and they say well what what must what must we do and he's okay glad you asked let me tell you about some promises but he doesn't you know he waits until they say that that you know they have to build to that what's really interesting to me at least is you could Let's flip a few other chapters later in Acts, and Stephen gives structurally the same sermon. Not exactly, but it's basically, let's walk through some things that happened in the history of Israel. And look at how it's all leading up to Christ, and you're guilty in this. And you know what they did when he gives that sermon is they stone him. They kill him for basically the same sermon. And it's the difference in how the Spirit's moving in the audience. It's not the cleverness of the speaker. It's not the structure of the sermon that ends with getting a bunch of people saved. It's whether or not the Holy Spirit is going to move in one way or another in the audience. And so, you know, kind of like what Charles was saying is people want to put Peter and the role of their pastor, right? What they should be putting themselves in is the role of the Jews in the story. Because the reality is that's what a lot of people in America are like, or our churches would be unbelievably different. And if you put them in the role of the Jews in the story instead of the role of the Jews after they repent, which is what they want to put themselves in, they put themselves in the role of the Jews. Well, what did Christ say to the Jews? That you cheat. men by your traditions, right? That you've come up with all these traditions that make people think they're right with God. You're not right with God because that you're a priest that you wash before you go and serve in the temple. You're right with God because before you eat lunch, you wash your hands. Right? These are the empty traditions that Jesus Christ says, you've replaced the commandments of God with the traditions of men. Well, that's what the altar call is. It's replacing the commandments of God, it's replacing how God says you have to be saved, you have to count the cost. And it's replacing with the traditions of men. And then you go, well, we replace it with the traditions of men. We do this altar call, so that means the people are saved. No, that's what the Jews thought. They thought they were saved because they followed the traditions of men. The traditions of men lead you to hell. That's where the traditions of men end up. And that's where altar calls end up. And we want to think that that leads you to salvation. That's not what Christ came. Christ came to say, no, you actually have to obey God. You actually have to listen to what he said. And instead, the modern church has now become Jews again. They have the same errors where they're saying, we're the people of God. It doesn't matter what we do. And Christ is going, you're only the people of God if you do the works of God. You're only the people of God. You're only the children of Abraham if you do the works of Abraham. You're only a son of God. You're only a Christian if you're a little Christ, if you do the works of Christ. And we want to replace it with walking an aisle just like they wanted to replace it with washing their hands. That's not how God says you're saved. We can become so enamored with our traditions that we start to think that our traditions are biblical, even when they have no biblical basis. But when we do things that don't have a biblical basis, they have a really high cost. We need to recognize that cost, and we need to get back to the way that Christ said to do things, because he has given us the means, the means that we're supposed to participate in the work of the Spirit in causing his gospel to go through the world. And that's by preaching the word of God, by confronting people in their sin, by exhorting them, by praying for them, and not by telling them that they'll have this false assurance if they just walk to the front. or they raise their hand or they pray a prayer. We need to get back to biblical means to testify that somebody's saved so that we don't have churches that are filled with false converts. Christ came to make a holy people so that the nations would look at those people and God would be hallowed in their eyes, in the eyes of the nations, because he sees how, or they see how he's working in the church. The church needs to go back to having that desire. And the way to do that is not by filling itself with unbelievers, but by actually listening and seeking and obeying God. Thanks for joining us. This has been The Conquering Truth, a project of Reformation Baptist Church. If you found this helpful, you can visit us online at theconqueringtruth.com and subscribe here or in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching.