Altar Calls (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

That's what I usually say. This is Mike Abendroth. The format of the show is under the banner, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And what I'd like to do is I'd like to talk about biblical issues, and I'd like to push and prod and poke and try to cause a response.

And the response could be praise. The response could be thankfulness. The response could be mad.

The response could be agreement, disagreement, but I'm desirous to have you get your Bibles out and think biblically.

You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And the society we live in causes us to easily capitulate to our feelings, to surveys, to what the world is selling.

And I don't want you to do that at all. So today I'd like to talk about a topic that I don't hear talked about very much, but is a topic that is near and dear to many people.

And that object is altar calls. What about altar calls? Does your church do altar calls?

That is to say, at the end of the sermon or maybe at the end of the service, sometimes simultaneous, people get called up to receive the

Lord. There's music that's in the background, usually some organ music. It's played fairly softly.

The preacher is pray -talking. That is, he's kind of half -talking, half -praying. And he wants a response to his message.

And he wants people saved. Maybe he's got a great motive, and that is he wants people to turn from their sins and believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. For the most part, that's probably true. He has good motives. And he asks people, every head bowed, you fill in the blank, every eye closed, no one looking around.

Sometimes he might ask the people if they'd like to respond to his message, to secretly look up or secretly maybe raise their hand.

You're not supposed to be looking around. I said to my son the other day, when they did that back at your old school, did you sometimes peek?

And he didn't really want to answer me. And I said, if I was in school, I'd want to peek. If I was in a church, I'd want to peek.

And he said, yeah, Dad, sometimes I peeked. And so altar calls are typically at the end of the service.

There's a final hymn that is going to be sung. Maybe the final stanza of just as I am, or I surrender all for the 50th time, have thine own way,

Lord. And you're asked to receive Christ by coming up to the front, by maybe rededicating your life, maybe talking with some kind of pastor for marital problems, wanting to get baptized, soft music, special effects for the lights.

This is called an altar call. And so what I would like to know is, is this biblical? Can you find precedent for it in the

Bible by prescription, by description? Is this something that's gone on for a long time?

And we need to analyze this. Here's what I'd say from the get -go, from the shoot to make you try to listen today.

And you'll probably either be mad or you'll be happy when I say this. No one in the history of the universe, not one person in the world has ever gotten saved by an altar call.

That's right. No one has ever become regenerate because of an altar call. You say, well, I did.

I watched Billy Graham. I, my pastor said something and I came up and I got saved.

Friends, the only way anyone ever gets saved is through the ministry of the

Spirit of God as preachers preach, as evangelists evangelize.

People get saved by the preaching of the gospel. No one ever gets saved by doing anything.

You may respond with going to the front when God saves you. You may think that's what happened.

God saved you and you did this, that, and the other, but God saves only through the preaching of His word.

That's exactly what Romans 10 says. And so we think about altar calls and before you get all emotional about it and say, well,

I got saved that way, experience is no validator of truth. Before you get all emotional and say, well, my pastor, he's a great guy and he loves the

Lord and he's very biblical and he's more godly than you and he does altar calls. He may be a great guy.

He may be more biblical than I am and he's probably more godly than I am. But we have to ask the question, what does the

Bible say about altar calls? Maybe Roman Catholics have altar calls because they actually have an altar, but we don't do altar calls for lots of reasons.

Let me give you several reasons why you should not do altar calls. If your church does altar calls,

I think you should ask your pastor what's his theological rationale for that. I don't think you should be mean.

I think you should be submissive. I don't think you should hold him to task. I think you should not bolt from your church just because your church does altar calls.

But I think you should ask yourself the question, what does the Bible teach? And if the

Bible teaches something differently, then you need to jettison those false thoughts and ideas and methodologies from your mind.

It's as simple as that. And so most churches today, evangelical churches, you are weird if you don't do altar calls.

I'll never forget when I got here 13 years ago, most people thought I was not very evangelistic.

I was some kind of hyper -Calvinist. I didn't understand soul winning, soul saving.

I didn't care about the lost. And I couldn't really figure out what it was until a person said, you don't do altar calls.

You don't do invitations. And so therefore we don't think you're concerned about the lost.

And so maybe that's what you think when you go to a church and you don't see or hear or feel an altar call.

Come up to the front and give your life to Christ. Billy Graham used to say, I'm going to ask you to come forward, up there, down there,

I want you to come. You come right now, quickly. If you are here with friends or relatives, they will wait for you.

Don't let distance keep you from Christ. It's a long way, but Christ went all the way to the cross because He loved you.

Certainly you can come these few steps and give your life to Him. And so is this biblical or is it not?

I think this stems from a theology that's not a very good theology. It stems from the idea that Charles Finney would have in his lectures on revival, quote,

Preach to him. At the right moment, he thinks he is willing to do anything. Bring him to the test.

Call on him to do one thing, to make one step that shall identify him with the people of God.

If you say to him, there is the anxious seat, they'd call the anxious seat like the altar calls, the first row or first couple rows at the front of the church that were kept empty for people to come at the end of the service.

There is the anxious seat. Come out and avow your determination to be on the Lord's side.

And if he is not willing to do a small thing as that, then he is not willing to do anything for Christ.

So my question to you today on No Compromise Radio, is are altar calls biblical?

Let me give you reasons why I don't do altar calls, why we at Bethlehem Bible Church don't do altar calls.

And we'll start with number one. Number one, why don't we do altar calls?

There are no commands in the New Testament to do them. Number one, there's no command to do them. So you might ask a question this way.

Are you sinning if you don't do altar calls? Should you church discipline your pastor if he does not do an altar call?

There's nothing prescribed in the Bible about coming forward that is, you must do this.

There's nothing described in the Bible about coming forward, Pentecost, Jerusalem, any of the churches, whether it's a

Gentile, Sumerians, dispersion, Gentiles, Greeks, Jews, you won't see that at all.

There are commands to preach the gospel. There are commands to evangelize. You think of Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20.

There are commands to preach the Bible, but you won't find altar calls commanded in the scripture.

The onus of doing altar calls in a local service by a pastor, the onus and the burden of proof is on the person who does them.

Why am I the one who has to say, well, we don't do them? There's no ammo really that I have because it's not in there at all.

And so we have to go almost a circuitous route to say, that's why we don't do them. And so why do

I ask people who do them? Tell me your biblical foundation for altar calls. And don't you think that if altar call methodology would be found somewhere in scripture, don't you think it'd be found in the pastoral epistles especially?

If pastors need to know how to call people to Christ, need to know what to do at the end of the service, need to know how to talk to people without manipulating them, it would be at a pastoral epistle where Paul would tell pastors,

Titus and Timothy and every other pastor and elder, he'd tell them in one of those books.

But if you read the pastoral epistles today, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and even the fourth, quote unquote, pastoral epistle, 2

Corinthians, you're not going to find anything that's going to resemble inviting men and women to come up to the front to be saved.

It is not a biblical necessity to have an altar call for people to be saved. Romans 10, 17, so faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, period, paragraph.

Altar calls are modern, altar calls are convenient maybe, but altar calls are not biblical.

If you look back at the origin of the altar call, probably the earliest record of these altar calls were found in the late 18th century and they were found in Methodist Episcopal churches.

And they would have camp meetings and they would have these mourners benches or anxious benches and they wouldn't really have an altar at places where sinners who began to feel the weight of their sin would come up and receive more instruction about faith.

Finney, the Pelagian heretic, Finney, who denied original sin, who denied substitutionary atonement, who denied

God alone saves people, really brought it into public light.

He is the one who said altar calls, not he didn't really say it, but by what he did, he made altar calls mainstream.

And he basically said, whatever means you can use to get people to be persuaded, you must win them.

We have a high goal and that is to win people for Christ and so any means necessary, we will use.

1 Corinthians 15, verse 11 though, makes it clear that we preach and God saves through preaching.

Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Tell me if you think this is biblical or not. What if God is dealing with a man and the preacher lets him get out of church without giving an invitation?

How will he ever be saved? That's the way people who are Arminian and who are

Pelagian and who believe in altar calls sometimes think. This is written by one.

We must preach the gospel and beckon people to believe, not to come to a certain part of the church.

We invite them to Christ, we command them, we beg them, we entreat them, we preach to them, we herald to them.

How did anyone get saved before Finney came along? 1800 years of the New Testament church and no one is able to get saved without that?

No, God makes his appeal through us. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 20, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Of course, we preach the gospel. Of course, with Luther, we use language like closing with Christ, run to him for refuge.

But we don't say things like come up here and receive Christ, move forward and receive

Christ. That confuses people. At best, it confuses them. We tell people with the hymn writer, come ye sinners, venture on him, venture wholly, let no other trust intrude.

None but Jesus, none but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.

And if you're driving today and you're not a Christian, you are a sinner. In word and deed, the best thing you do, the most righteous things you do are still filthy rags.

The best you do is horrible sin. Even good things, according to the culture and according to the press are still sinful because your heart's sinful and you need to repent and to believe and to trust

Christ alone, his death in your place, his life in your place.

Jesus, this resurrected Jesus, you must believe in him. This Jesus who is

God and who is man, virgin born, you must believe in him. You don't need to pull over to the side of the road and come to the front of the car by the altar call radio station area.

You don't need to come to the church and wait for a Sunday. You repent right now. Look to no one else, look not to yourself.

Come ye sinners, you sin horrible sins, come to Christ and be forgiven. We don't do altar calls at Bethlehem Bible Church because there's no prescription nor description to do them.

Number two, why don't we do altar calls? My name's Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. We're on WVNE 760 in Worcester.

We don't do altar calls, number two, because altar calls confuse an outward act with an inward new birth.

Altar calls confuse an outward act with an inward new birth.

And that's basically going right back to Finney and his theology. He confused the outward act and the new birth.

One man said an individual can fall on his knees, raise his hand, or walk to the front, but there is nothing in the

Bible to say that such actions make or even contribute to making a person a

Christian. The older evangelical preaching taught the instant responsibility of sinners to obey the gospel in repentance and faith.

It did not pass over such texts as God now commands all men everywhere to repent, Acts 1730.

But at the same time, it knew that the time of the hearers of the gospel get grace to obey is not in the hands of men.

The new measures, by bypassing that fact and appointing a physical duty which the unregenerate can perform, represented conversion as something less than it is made in the

New Testament. Under old school preaching, it was expected that conviction of sin would show hearers their need of change, a work of new creation securing a new life and a new moral existence.

If no such regeneration is supposed to be necessary, then conversion becomes a much easier matter, end quote.

So here's the thing, you can have unbelievers come up to the front of the aisle, unassisted by God, no spirit of God helping them, but you cannot have that unbeliever have a change of heart, mind, soul, will, emotions, new affections, new loves, new hates, a new desire to follow

Christ without the spirit of God. Coming forward, going down an aisle is a lot different than coming to Christ.

One is physical, one is temporal, one is in time, and the other is spiritual, the other is impossible for the human to do outside of God working in their hearts.

When you say come to the front and get saved, you make salvation seem like a work of man.

And it's not a work of man, it's a work of God. It is something that God gives supernaturally by his own free will, by his own initiation, by his own son's meritorious work, not man's work.

You can have people all riled up and get to the front. I think I'm a fairly persuasive speaker, but I don't want them to come up to the front based on my persuasion, do

I? Luke 8, Jesus said, and the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy.

But these have no root. They believe for a while, and in a time of testing, fall away.

So you can get people riled up and come to the front and say, now you're a Christian, all you want.

But Jesus said, Jesus said, that some people hear the word with joy and they're still not saved.

They receive it with joy, but when there's trouble, off they go. I'm not going to do some kind of altar call at the end of the service because it makes it seem like God is waiting.

He's the gentleman Jesus, and he's not going to knock on the door and open the door unless you let him in.

Poor God, let's let man do some work first. And then if you do that step, then God will kind of meet you where you are.

One altar call proponent said something like this, quote, if you really want to go to heaven when you die, then step out of your seat, wherever you are.

Come and let us know about your decision. Christ went all the way to the cross for you. Won't you just walk a few steps for him, end quote.

This language is silly. This language is man -centered. This language is not persuasive.

It's manipulation is what it is. It's manipulation. Why don't we just preach the gospel and let the chips fall where they may?

To use that kind of language may be irreverent, so let me rephrase it. Why don't we preach the gospel and then let

God, who according to John chapter three, his spirit is like the wind.

You don't know where it's coming from. You don't know where it's going. His spirit sovereignly works.

Through preaching, yes. Through the gospel, yes. But he sovereignly works, and let's just trust in his sovereign work.

Do you do altar calls if you're a pastor? I think the onus of proof and the burden of proof is on you.

Why do you do them? Because you have to, because the congregation demands it, because the old timers did it.

Why don't you just preach the gospel and call people to Christ and let the sovereign spirit save as he would please, only as he pleases, as often as he pleases.

We don't do altar calls, number three, because they give a superficial view of sin, depravity, and conversion.

Similar to number two, but a little bit different. We don't do altar calls, and neither should you, because in an altar call, one has a perception that sin is superficial, man isn't totally depraved, and conversion isn't what the

Bible teaches. When we do give an altar call, there's a false view of human ability.

Humans have, fallen humans have no ability to choose spiritual good. They can't choose

Christ on their own. They are affected by the fall. They have no independent self -determining power outside of determination to sin at will and sin a lot.

Lorraine Bettner writes, as the bird with a broken wing is free to fly but not able, so the natural man is free to come to God but not able.

How can he repent of his sin when he loves it? How can he come to God when he hates him? This is the inability of the will under which the man labors.

And that's written in a book called The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, and you ought to read that book. Friends, salvation is not of him who wills.

It is not of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. Romans 9, verse 16.

And if you believe that you can do something to contribute to your salvation, you would not be biblical.

Luther said it is totally unheard of, grammar and logic, to say that nothing is the same thing as something.

To people, this thing is an impossibility. The two are contradictory.

You can do no thing if you're an unbeliever. So why do we call them to do something?

Well, we call them to believe. We tell them they must repent and believe because that is what God tells us to tell them.

Why give them other things to somehow do? You must believe in Christ, but you are not able to do it unless God does the work.

But if I call you to come to the front, you are able to do it even if you're an unbeliever. And so let's not give altar calls because we then tell people, indirectly or directly, that sin isn't as damning, sin doesn't make as unable as it really does.

And so when we say, come to Christ, then we are biblical. If you flip around the other way,

Finney told us he was in New York in 1834 for many centuries, but little of the real gospel has been preached.

He said, you know, that's not the real gospel when you just tell them to repent and believe and tell them who Jesus is. That's not the real gospel.

Well, I think I like Charles Hodge's reply to that. No more soul -destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves and repent and believe when they please.

If you show me someone who believes in altar calls, I'll show you someone, even though they'll probably try to deny it,

I'll show you someone that has a higher view of humans than they ought to, that they have a lower view of the fall than they ought to, because they're doing these things that reflects what theology they have.

Spurgeon said what the Arminian wants to do is to arouse man's activity, get him to come to the front.

What we want to do is to kill man's activity once for all, to show him that he's lost and ruined and that his activities are not now at all equal to the work of conversion, that he must look upward.

That's exactly right. If you are going to be saved, it will take an act of God to save you. So cry out to God, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner.

We tell them you must flee to Christ. God holds salvation in his hand.

He holds you in his hand, and you must submit to him and cry out, Lord, save me or I'm going to perish.

You can, well, let me ask you this question as we're wrapping things up. Lots of people have come to the altar to get saved when the real gospel hasn't even been preached.

So my question is, what did they get saved from and what did they get saved to? We're going to pick this up next time on Altar Calls Part Two.

You ought not to do an altar call. You don't need to do an altar call to have people saved. You need to pray to God that he'd use your words and strike the people's hearts and God would save them.

My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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