Religious Without Being a Christian — Winkie Pratney

The following message given by Winky Prattney is entitled, How to be Religious without being a Christian.

Religious Without Being a Christian

This morning I want to speak about how to be religious without being a Christian. We have a lot of books on how to be Christian without being religious, and I think it's high time we had some messages on how to be religious without being a Christian.

A lot of times you, as you go out from door to door, will meet young people who you could call sinners. But those are not the ones that bother me. They're not really the ones that bother God. I've been to both secular universities and also to Christian, quote unquote, Bible colleges and colleges.

And you see, I have really had a better time sometimes in non-Christian universities and colleges than I have in Christian colleges. And the reason why is this. In a secular university you know who your enemies are.

They all are. I have never forgotten a young lady in New Zealand talking with a man who was supposed to be a deacon in the church. And she had just given her life to the Lord. And she was really excited, she was really happy.

And he said to her, how is it with your soul? She said, I'm so happy I can't sleep. And he said, don't worry, you'll soon get over it. I thought to myself, what a tragedy. Number one, that it should be a man who is supposed to be a man of God who said that.

And secondly, that all too often in so many lives of young people who say they have decided with Jesus it should be true. I've spent a lot of time talking with young people who call themselves atheists.

I've never really met an atheist yet. I've met a lot of kids who call themselves atheists. I guess I could have called myself that too some years back. But I've spent about three hours talking to some young people.

And there is one argument I just cannot really answer for them. I can answer for myself, I can't answer for other people. And that is this. A young man said to me, Winky, I believe what you say is true, it makes sense here.

And you're speaking to me here. But he said, I want to ask you a question. Could you show me three other people who are living like you? Who are living this Christian life? He said, I have read the Bible.

I know what the Bible says. I'm not dumb. Growing up in a church, he said, I can see what the scriptures say a Christian is supposed to be like. Show me some people who live like that. And I think people have a right to see that.

It is no good for us to say, listen, don't look at me, look to Jesus. I'm full of sin and iniquity and all kinds of wickedness, rottenness and depravity. But you have to look at Jesus. The sinner has every right to say, I can't see Jesus, I can only see you.

And if he can't help you, what makes you think you can help me? Our parable is told of the Lord Jesus coming back to heaven after his resurrection. And all the angels lined the heavenly boulevards and their wings bowed in adoration.

And Jesus came in triumphantly, the holes in his hands, the task completed. And one small angel came to the Lord and he said, Lord, who have you left behind to carry on your work? Jesus said, I've left eleven men.

And the angel said, what? Eleven men? Not those eleven men you're working with before. Not those guys. He said, yes, eleven men. And this little angel nearly freaked out, if an angel can freak out. He said, but Lord, what say they fail you?

You know what they were like. What say they fail you? What alternate plan do you have for the evangelization of the world? And Jesus looked at that angel with eternity in his eyes and he said, I have no other plan.

Just eleven men. They must not fail. And they didn't. And that's why we're having a crusade here this morning. Listen to this letter from a young lady. I smoke, I drink, I enjoy playing cards for money, gamble, I pet.

I haven't gotten the limit yet, but God only knows whether I will. My family doesn't seem to know that I am bad. Of course, they don't know or won't appear to know that I do all these things. But are parents deaf and dumb?

You may as well know why I can't go to church anymore. Maybe I'm a good girl, but I sure feel rotten. And I certainly can't pray anymore. Sometimes after an exceedingly wild party, I drop on my knees and say, God, forgive us all.

You understand, my crowd is not tough. Just the guys and girls of the best families I was brought up with. What puzzles me is the old people all saying they have faith in us. And you preachers standing around telling us how fine and good we are.

Sometimes I'd like to kidnap you and take you to one of our parties. I guess your next sermon after that would be about sin. And that's what we need to hear. Here are some of my questions. Did my mother do the things I'm doing?

Did my older sisters? Am I wrong in thinking that I am a rotten girl? Is this the way of the world? Shall I go to heaven or shall I go to hell? Does God care? Do you preachers know that young people do these things?

Please write something to quiet my mind or I will go mad. Remainder of this day, we're going to talk about four kinds of ground that seed fell into. And in the book of Luke and the book of Matthew and also in the book of Mark, you'll see it palpable.

And I want you to look it up. It's a very interesting story. The story of a sower who went forth to sow. Now, I'll give it to you in one gospel and you can look it up in all these other ones. You start in Luke and I'll start in Matthew, all right?

Matthew chapter 13, chapter 4 of Mark, Luke 8. A story of about a man who went forth to sow. People didn't do it by automation those days. They just went out, pachow, pachow, pachow, throwing food seed in all kinds of different places.

The Parable of the Sower and Four Kinds of Ground

This man went out to sow and he sowed some seed. And the Bible tells us that seed fell on four different kinds of ground. The first kind of ground it fell on was hard ground. Seed just sort of sat there like that.

Have you ever been... Somebody's had a grass lawn and people walked up and down on it for so long, it just makes a big old pathway right through the lawn. Solid ground. It's really hard. And if you throw seed on it, it just sits on the top.

And of course, there's nothing birds like better than seed just sitting up on top there. So they come along and eat it, clunk. And that's the end of that particular kind of sowing. That's the hard ground.

And then, Jesus told a story about another man who went out sowing things. And this man sowed his seed and it fell on stony places. Now, a stony place is kind of a weird ground. It's really all kinds of rocks and stuff down there.

And it's just a little bit thin layer of topsoil. Just a little, any bit. Just enough you like to cover over the top of that rock. And the seed falls into the ground and it's soft and it goes down here.

It gets lodged a little bit in the rock. But instead of growing as it grows up, it grows up very, very fast because you see this topsoil is all loaded with all kinds of nutrients and that. But the roots are going out.

They can't go down because of the rock. So they just go out along the top of the ground and sucking all the moisture out of the top of it, see? And as long as the ground stays wet, the plant is fine. And that effect, it grows far faster than the other plants.

It shoots up, just like that. It's got all these super nutrients and all that. And it's growing up real fast. But unfortunately, the sun comes out. And when the sun comes out, it begins to dry up the top part of the ground.

And the Bible says because they had no root, they dried up and withered away. And that plant died. It never made it. And then the last story was the story of a seed that fell into ground. And the ground is pretty rich.

It must have been rich because there were a lot of other plants growing. But unfortunately, the plants it was growing around happened to be weeds. This one started off well. But nobody took the trouble, unfortunately, to get the weeds out which grew around it.

And the weeds strangled this plant to death. It choked. And that was the end of that plant. And then the last story was the story of some plants that fell into good ground. They sent down roots. And as the roots went down, the shoots went up.

And they brought forth fruit. Some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold. I believe that parable repeated three times by the Lord Jesus is a parable that tells us about three kinds of conversion. Three kinds of counterfeit conversion.

And one genuine. I have called these three kinds of counterfeit conversion the religion of fear, the in crowd, the carnal Christian. Quote, unquote. On this side of the line, number four represents genuine Christianity.

Do you know how many people are supposed to be saved every year in the United States alone? One million people. One million people. If that is true, I wonder why this country is going to hell faster than any other time in its history.

And something hurts in my heart when I see the quality of some of the young people who call themselves by the name of Jesus. And I think it is high time we started looking at what God says real Christians look like.

We have heard so much about what the sinner looks like. Nobody knows what the counterfeit Christian looks like because the Bible tells us a great deal about people who seem to love God but are not real.

The Religion of Fear and Selfish Religion

This morning we are going to talk about the religion of fear, the hard ground. That is why I call it how to be religious without being a Christian. I am going to give you first of all some wrong reason for serving God, taking an idea of this.

The Bible tells us there are only, I will just give you a simple outline of what genuine Christianity is like. There are only two ultimate choices we can make in life. We can either live for ourselves or we can live for God.

It is just as impossible in the Bible to live for yourself wholly and fully and to live for Jesus Christ wholly and fully at the same time as it is for me to walk out that door and walk up to this blackboard at exactly the same time because you see there are two opposite directions.

If I am heading this way, I am looking that way, I am going that way. If I am heading this way, I am going this way, I am looking towards that way and I can't go there and there at the same time. And the whole difference between Christianity and religion is that in religion a person is not saved from selfishness.

But in Christianity, genuine Christianity, Jesus saves us from sin. The Bible calls selfishness, or we call it, the Bible says this, all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way.

And you can always tell, genuine Christianity saves people from their selfishness and brings them in love with God. False Christianity keeps people selfish and they never really love anybody else except themselves.

I am going to give you now some motives. I want you to think about two kids who have been growing up in a house. Their dad is, or he is a rich man let's say, he's got a billion, ten billion dollars like the man in the Volkswagen commercial.

And they all live in this house together, him and his two sons. One day, dad gets real sick. The two kids are always around him. One kid doesn't really care very much about his father, but what he does care about is ten billion dollars.

See, so what does he do? He says, oh dad, I'm so sorry to hear that you're sick. What can I do for you? What can I give you? Can I bring you lemonade in bed? Can I give you toast and cookies? His dad, of course, is favorably impressed.

Now, how long does this dad live? Well, he lives about 30 years after he's sick. This kid is standing around there saying, hey dad, I'm really sorry you're sick again, and then to himself, I really wish you'd hurry up and die.

The other kid really does love his father. He also brings him toast and cookies and lemonade, but for a different reason. Can you see it is possible for 30 long years for people to hold up and do exactly the same things for two totally different reasons, and the core of one would be totally wrong and the other one would be totally right?

And God talks about the whole of mankind in one of those two categories. And there are some people who serve God for the wrong reasons. And I'm going to give you some of those reasons today. I've heard so many young people talk about on the streets that we witness to, who say, I don't want to serve Jesus, Christianity is a crutch, and I wonder why they got that idea.

I wonder why they got the idea that Christianity was a crutch. Is it possible that maybe people who call themselves Christians presented Christianity as that? Because in the Bible it is not a crutch. It never has been.

It is the absolute necessity, just like life comes from breathing and eating and sleeping. No crutch. Here are the two motives that are not Christian. It is possible to live by both of these, and we're going to talk about.

Jesus as More Than a New Experience

The first one is serving God for the good things that Jesus can do for you. And here's the first one, a new trip to try. I have never ever go out witnessing like this and say, listen, you've tried everything else, why don't you try Jesus?

He's a wonderful trip, man. He'll do these things for you, make you feel good, he'll make you feel groovy, he'll really turn you on, he'll blow your head, and he'll do all these things. It is possible that Jesus will do all those things, but that better not be the reason why a man gives his life to God.

You must understand that Jesus is not a new trip to try. I don't know where we got the idea of try Jesus. He is not on trial. He never has been on trial. I don't see God going around saying, oh, I wish that somebody would try me.

I really do. You know, I'm standing here in the wings, rubbing my fingers saying, oh, if only somebody would try me, I'd really do all these cool things. I see a hurt God who holds the universe together, and men in rebellion against him, and God in great kindness and great mercy continually putting aside the rightful anger he feels because of a bunch of rebels who have broken his heart.

Can a man come up and say, all right, I'll try you, Jesus. That might be a cool thing to do. And if you don't work fine, I'll go back to the Galak and Leeks of Egypt. All the Israelites knew how to do that.

Oh, Moses is going to take us out. Praise God, glory, and let's go to Egypt. Out of Dubai, near your Egyptian feet. And then suddenly the Red Sea, and here come the Egyptians with the tanks and bazookas and everything over the fence.

Oh, well, we didn't really want to go. It was Moses' fault. This guy, it was him. I'm coming back. Hi, Joe, I remember you. You know, I used to live with you. Put that bazooka down. What a dumb thing.

I have, so many kids have said this, that kids are beginning to believe it. So you know what they do? They try Jesus, and Jesus is not interested in being tried. He wants surrender or nothing. You can't come to God and say, Listen, I'll try you out for a little while.

You can say the real Christianity, the Bible is this. Oh, God, I've had it, unless you can help me. Jesus is not a new trip to try. He is not on trial. And then there's another thing too, the prosperity, the prospect of prosperity.

Rejecting Prosperity as a Motive for Faith

And that goes up very well today in a materialistic society. And this idea, Jesus is a marvelous person to help you get rich quick. If you really want, you're poor, right? Well, here's a cool thing you can do.

Give your life to Jesus, and he will make you rich. Be a millionaire for Jesus. See, this is the cool thing. That would be awfully fun to do in the Bible. I hear so much of this. You give Jesus one dollar, and he'll give you ten back.

God is not a bank. He never has been. This prosperity prospect, David Ravenhill told us this story once, of this little old lady who was sitting in the front row of a business meeting, and they were preaching, one guy was preaching about how he first, he only had a dollar, and he gave his dollar away to the Lord's work, and he only kept ten cents of it.

And the Lord gave him three hundred dollars, and then he gave away two hundred ninety-nine dollars and kept only one dollar. And the Lord poured in five thousand dollars, and then he gave four thousand five hundred away, and he only just kept his five hundred, and God gave him a million dollars.

And then he's done this, you know, and now he's a billionaire, and he's standing there preaching away, and I gave away my other million dollars, and then God has given me six billion more, and he's building all this thing up.

And this little lady sitting right in the front was not very impressed. And then he talked about the last fantastic thing he gave away, the little lady in the front. And now he says, now, praise the Lord, I'm a billionaire for Jesus.

And the little lady said, I dare you to do it again. I'll tell you what God wants. He wants your heart, and if he can't get your heart through your money, he wants you to throw your money away. There was a young man who came to Jesus who had everything he needed, except he didn't have eternal life.

And he knew he wanted something like that, so he came to Jesus. And he was rich, and he was young, and he was a ruler. He came to Jesus and he said, Good Master, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?

That tells you he was something else, too. He was a goody-goody. You ever met those kind of people? They always do the right thing when you do the wrong thing. Always wear the right clothes when you wear the wrong one.

He always did the right, you know. He was a goody-goody. What good thing must I good do to have eternal life? Good Master. And the Lord said to him this, Why do you call me good? There is one good, and that is God.

Man, when Jesus said that, this is his implication. If you call me good, I must be God. Are you willing to follow through with that? If you call me good, I must be God. He said, If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.

The guy said, Which ones? And that tells you another thing about him. He was smart. Jesus gave him a list of commandments. The commandments are broken approximately 3 -7 or 4 -6, depending on where you put the Sabbath.

You can put it out here. This lot are man to God, and this lot are man to man. These ones concern our relationships to each other. These ones concern our relationships to God. Jesus left out all of these, and he left out the Sabbath, and he left out this last little one here.

And the last one was a little commandment that starts with, Thou shalt not covet. If you're a little Jewish kid, that's the first commandment you ever saw, because they used to do them on the pillars of the house, all the way down to the bottom.

So when you're a little kid, the very first commandment you see is the bottom one. And the Jewish really know about this commandment, because as they grow up, as they get bigger, they learn the other one.

This rich young ruler said, Which commandments do I have to keep? The Lord said to him, Alright, you don't steal, you don't lie, you honor your father and your mother, you don't commit adultery, you stay sexually clean, in other words, he said, you do all these things, and he laid it all out.

And he left out the last one. And that kid was thinking to himself, I wonder why he left that last one. Have you ever come home, and you've done something wrong, and your mother knew you'd done it, and you knew that she knew?

You ever happen to come home, and when you come in the door, you're dreading what's going to happen to you, and your mother says to you, Hello? You say, Hello? She says, You have a nice day at school?

And you say, Yes. She says, Lovely day, isn't it? And you say, Alright, get a lover with it! I wonder what this character felt, when Jesus went all the way down the line, and they missed that last one out.

That sort of feeling, I wonder why he just... And listen, some of our witnessing plans would never work on the rich young ruler. One of them goes like this. How many lives does it take to make one liar?

And you hold a finger on his nose. The character sees a finger sticking up, tells him, One. Oh, yes. One, see? Tells him. And then you say, Alright, how many sins does it take to make a sinner? One, he says.

And then you ask him this question, Have you ever told a lie? And then he says, Yes, God. And then you say, Aha! Then you're a sinner. And then you get on with the business of getting him to say it. You try that on the rich young ruler.

Jesus said, Don't bear false witness. He said, Oh, he said, I kept from my youth up. How many lives does it take to make a liar? One. How many sins does it take to make a sinner? One. Have you ever told a lie?

No. What? You must have told a lie. That must be a lie. I told a lie. You've got to tell... See, Jesus didn't contradict this young man. He was a very moral type of character. But understand, he was religious, but not Christian.

He knew how to be religious, but he didn't know how to be a Christian. And he said, All these things have I kept from my youth up, but what lack I yet. And Jesus looked into his eyes, and Jesus said, You should enter into life.

Give up your God. Sell what you have. The rich young ruler's mouth stopped open. What are you talking about? This must be some new kind of gospel I've heard of. I only want to be a Christian. I want to sell what I have.

Listen, man, I'm a Christian. They told me that down the road. So I come up, and I accept Jesus. That's fine. That's cool. What is he talking about? But Jesus himself is preaching here, and he doesn't make mistakes.

And Jesus said, Sell what you have. And suddenly, in the back of his mind, it clicked. Got it. Of course. What is the use of taking my gold-plated surfboard around Nazareth? They've got lousy beaches there.

That's dumb. Of course. I sell all I have. I turn it into assets. I take my master cards. My bank account I take a Jerusalem card. And I use all these things. And for goodness sake. Very simple. And I know.

Of course. I just buy what I need. And see? That's a brilliant idea. Of course. That had me worried for a second. And these things in the back of his mind. And I know. I'm going to be Jesus' treasurer.

Christian crusades incorporated. Rich young ruler. Treasurer. I just see in boards in his mind. And then he's sitting there smiling. And then Jesus said, and give it away to the poor. Oh, you've got to be kidding.

Listen. I have. I have a friend. And he joined a church down the road. And they said, Oh, we've been looking for you. We've needed a treasurer for a long time to get our church out of the holes line and the dotted line baby.

I'll tell you something friends. Jesus is a lot more honest than some preachers I know. He knows that if he does not get your heart. He's not getting you. And he's not interested in your money. And he's not interested in your possessions.

He's interested in your heart. And if he can't get your heart. If it's down something else. And he wants you to say goodbye. And I want you to know that. Serving Jesus is not a prosperity trip. And if you believe that.

You go to Red China and preach it. It's easy to preach that here. Go behind the curtain to Romania and preach it there. Preach on how Jesus can make you prosperous. As long as you're a Christian. I'll tell you something.

Jesus sometimes trips everything a person has. And leaves them with nothing but himself and God to get his heart. And Jesus is not a prosperity prospect. If you want to become a very, very rich person.

Then write a book on how to spend God. And you'll make a million dollars overnight. Everybody wants to spend God. But God is not interested in people spending him. He wants to spend them. There is another one.

Heavenly Insurance and False Security

We'll just throw it on the end for you to think about. I call the benefits of heavenly insurance. And the heavenly insurance policy goes something like this. You know. It must be a pretty rotten thing to live in life not knowing that everything is taken care of in the next world.

It really is. A rotten thing. See. After all, you've got your health taken care of. You've got your car insurance taken care of. You've got your medical insurance. You've got all these different things taken care of.

But just think about the next world. You haven't got good insurance in there. You know what you need to do is give you life diseases. And if you do, man, then it's all set up. I thank God for the astronaut that was a Christian.

They said to him, did you, what did you think about God when you were up there? Did your thoughts turn back to God when you got in an emergency? He said, I have made my peace with Micah a long time ago.

My religion is not a fire escape. Thank God for men who like that. Listen. This is a weird thing. But, the great God is not to be peddled as some celestial Santa Claus who we come to and say, oh dear Santa, I need a yacht, I need a this, I need a that, and I thank you that you'll give me all these cool things.

Goodness. And you know what God says? You ask and you receive not, because you ask and you miss. You might receive, spend it on your own selfishness, on your own luck. Please turn the tape over for the remainder of Winky Prattney's message.

This is side two of Winky Prattney's message, how to be religious without being a Christian. Just as much as hope, and I think us Christians are to blame, all too often we have laid out this. Do you want peace?

Do you want happiness? Do you want joy? Do you want to have a cool life and come to Jesus? That's not what Jesus said. He said, do you want death? Do you want to be stripped of everything you have in order that you may find true treasure?

Do you want to, do you want to know that you are really breaking God's heart? Do you really want to know what my cost is? All kinds of people they followed Jesus, listened to him, great multitudes went after him and the bigger the crowd got the more he said, listen, if any man come after me and hate not his father, his mother, his brothers, his sisters, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

And many went back and walked no more than they said, this is too hard of Christianity, forget it. But that was God's time and he had real Christians. Heavenly insurance. Here's another lot of things to think about.

The Religion of Fear Versus Love for God

Christianity is not a thing of fear. Now Jonathan Edwards preached one sermon like this, it scared people silly. He preached about the great God who dreadfully abhors you, who dangles you much as you would dangle a spider over a candle flame.

And then when he finished preaching people screamed out and grabbed chandeliers and they thought the floor was going to open up and swallow them. And Jonathan Edwards only preached that sermon. He didn't preach very many others like that because Jonathan Edwards was not really a fantastic preacher.

He was a great man of God. He spent about eight hours a day in study. But see he just read a sermon like this. And he's a little cross-eyed. And he read them in a monotone. But see that happened to be a kind of message that people needed in those days.

It scared them silly, really did. Scared them skinny. I know God does sometimes use fear to awaken people to his claims. The Bible tells us Noah was moved by fear. He built an ark. But listen, God doesn't save people by scaring them into heaven.

Never has. I know a girl who came to me. She was being flippant. I said, young lady, I want you to make a choice. You give your life to God or you stay with your mouth. I'm finished. She said, ah, let me think about it a little bit.

She went out and got in the bug, drove away. I got a call at two in the morning. She said, well, I was driving on the freeway and a wind hit my bug and it somersaulted. I turned about five times over, smashed, total light off, but I'm still alright.

And she's shaking. She says, ah, I need to give my life to God. That's cool. But I do not believe that God scares people into heaven. And I do not serve Jesus and neither does any Christian in here because if we don't, he'll send us to hell.

There are other reasons for serving God. Now, it is true. If you don't follow Jesus, then there is fire. The Bible is very clear about that. But that's not the reason why a man ought to serve God. Not for you.

Here's another one. The fire escape thing. When the earthquake came here, man, boy, there was a lot of Christians who became Christians within 15 seconds. I've been here all the time. God says, oh, really?

I was listening to the radio. I thought it was so funny. After the earthquake the crime went down like this. The commentator said it was probably because we had more policemen out and not through any change of heart on behalf of the criminals.

I said, I bet a lot the cooks were scared on six o 'clock in the morning. And then the last one. See, there's all kinds of cool things. I've got all kinds of men come up to me and open their services and I say, oh, when I was in the war, the bombs were falling and I said, oh, God, save me and I'll do anything you want.

And I said, what are you doing now? Well, smashed out of their minds. Listen, you can't make fire escape promises to God. Let me tell you a really strange thing. I would be happy in hell if Jesus sent me there.

One, I deserve it. Thoroughly deserve it. Know that. Know that for sure. Secondly, I am not serving Jesus so I can get to heaven. I don't know much about heaven. I've read a bit in the Bible about it.

I'm sure it's not a place where people play hearts and stuff. The Bible doesn't tell us a great deal about it, which tells me something about Jesus and it's that, that that's not the reason why we ought to serve him.

And I'll tell you some people in the Bible that were willing to go to hell if it could mean that others could be saved and one of them's name was Moses. God had worked so long with Moses' people and God said, I'm going to destroy this people.

Moses, stand out of the way. I'm going to take you and I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm just going to wipe this people off the face of the earth. And you know what Moses said? Oh God, if you can't spare them, take my name out of the book of life you've written.

Block my name out of your book. He said this, my souls are there. I'll go to hell in their place. If you can't spare them, send me to hell too. That was his love for his people. He said, oh God, take my name out of your book.

And you know what God said? Moses, send me to sin against them. Him will I take out of my book. Moses is ready to give his soul. And I'll tell you something, if you're going out witnessing, you love the kids enough to die for them and you'll see some results.

The world is not impressed with feelings. It is impressed with a genuine love that comes from the heart of the man who's in love with Jesus Christ and who loves people and loves God more than he loves himself.

And Paul, do you remember the apostle Paul? I wished that I'd be accursed for my brethren's sake. Paul said, if I can go to hell for them, I would go. God could take me and say, Paul, I'll tell you what, if you will take these people's punishment in hell, then I will save them.

Paul said, send me, I'll go. That is real salvation. I have a funny feeling today that most young people who say they really serve God put in a tight corner, would say, well, that's not fair of you, God.

Look, you took away my murder card. I'm not going to serve you anymore. I'm finished. I've had it. I thought you were going to be cool, and now look what's happened. Some kids don't need to be sent to hell.