Why No Altar Calls

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.

Why Altar Calls Are Not the Same as Evangelism

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Real time, it is, what time is it in real life? June 4th, Thursday, 2020, as the world continues to lose their minds. I guess there are two categories of people.

I used to think there were Christians and non-Christians, saints and aints. Maybe now it's, in Marxist society, the oppressors or oppressed. Which one are you? Well, we'll talk about that subject maybe another time.

Israel's still on. We're still waiting for the final flight. Prices, but I think we're flying now out of Boston on February 23rd, 24th of 2021. And we're working on that with the travel agent. Things have been up in the air because many flights have been canceled, but I think it'll still be that classic United from Newark to Tel Aviv.

You can listen to Modest Yahoo play that song, Tel Aviv, if you wanna get ready for it. I used to really, I still enjoy Modest Yahoo's music, but when you get to Israel, there's a lot of Modest Yahoo's there.

Oh man, I just interviewed Brandon Kimber. I don't know when this particular show that I'm recording right now will play, before or after Brandon Kimber, but he did the American Gospels and I think he's working on another one or wants to.

And so encouraging. Today, I'd like to talk about altar calls. I have done shows on altar calls in the past, but I haven't done any shows about altar calls lately. So I thought I'd probably pull that up because it's fun to talk about them.

When I first got to Bethlehem Bible Church in 1997, I was asked sometime after that why I didn't believe in evangelism. And I didn't know what they meant. What do you mean I don't believe in evangelism?

I try to evangelize and show myself a good model of evangelism. I try to meet unbelievers and turn things into gospel-centered conversations. I talk about Jesus and you should believe in him every week.

If you're a Christian, keep believing. If you're not a Christian, believe. So they said, I didn't believe in evangelism. I said, what do you mean by that? And it was because I didn't do altar calls. So far in my ministry and the last 31 years of being a Christian, almost 31, I've never done an altar call.

Some people here in the church, they've grown up with me as a pastor, they don't know what one is unless they go visit another church. Sometimes people call altar calls invitations. And there are a variety of things that happen during these invitations.

Usually the pastor's up, preacher's up, and he is talking, right? So, so far so good. Lots of times there's music in the background while the talker is pastoring, while the pastor is talking. There are certain signals that the pastor says after he tells you to believe, and that is, or even maybe after he's talked about that, that he might say, now let's bow your heads.

Every head bowed, every what? Eye closed, no one looking around. And if you want to believe, look up to the preacher or raise your hand or something like that. And sometimes the people will say, you know, I see that hand, you don't have to be embarrassed, nobody else look.

Sometimes people say for the true altar call, quote unquote, come up to the front, right? And many times it's not just music in the background, but they're singing hymns during this time. We're going to sing a hymn, just as I am, and I want you to get up and come down to the front of the church.

And we're going to sing, have thy own way, just as I am, I surrender all. And I want you to come up and give your life to Christ before it's too late. Finney, Charles Finney said, preach to him and at the 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's an 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. Altar calls, evangelistic meetings, calling people up to the front, local churches calling people up to the front, local churches, eyes closed.

We're not going to call you up to the front, but I want you to raise your hand or look at me and I'll establish eye contact with you. Altar calls, calling people to the altar. So you say, well, why wouldn't you do that?

Well, let me give you some reasons. And that's the show today on No Compromise Radio, why I don't do altar calls. In no particular order, I don't know where I found this list. I'm sure other people have come up with these and I just curate them all and now abendrothize them.

So I'm not trying to come up with anything original and I am reminded, by the way, of the importance of integrity and not plagiarizing. I know of a story of a particular man who had a bunch of notes about a subject in the Bible and then published those notes.

And then when confronted with the evidence of plagiarism, he said, well, I had taken some notes from a pastor and he named the pastor, you would all know him. And then I didn't write down, it was that pastor's notes.

20 years later, I write the book. I think they're my own notes. So sometimes I kind of feel that in the sense that I write down some notes and then I go, well, I don't know where I got this. Did I come up with this?

Did somebody else come up with this? So therefore, I give the disclaimer. I don't know where these came from, but they're from the Bible, ultimately. The first reason I don't do altar calls is there's not a command for me to do them.

It's interesting. In the Bible, you'll have commands to evangelize, you'll have commands to preach, you'll have commands to invite people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you shall be saved.

You can look at the call to repentance. You can look through pastoral epistles and find what? You'd think, by the way, if you're gonna do an altar call, the place to find out where to do pastoral ministry would probably be where?

In the pastoral epistles. Nothing in there on how to do them. On the other hand, 1 Corinthians 15, 11 says, whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. As a matter of fact, we know that God has ordained the end, salvation, and the means, preaching, right?

You pray for people's salvation, that's an ordained means. You preach and we realize that this is what the Lord has ordained. So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, Romans 10, 17.

I think that the burden of proof falls on people that say, you know what, you have to do altar calls. If you show me from the Bible where I'm supposed to do them, then that's a whole other story. From what I've found, back in the old days, altar calls originated from the Methodist Episcopal Church.

And they would have things called anxious benches, mourner's benches. You've probably seen deacon's benches here in New England, especially, that you can buy at auctions and estate sales and flea markets.

Anxious or mourner's benches. There's not a real altar in a Protestant church, like there would be a real altar at a Catholic church. Now, it's a non-bloody sacrifice for the Roman Catholics. They're not killing anyone or anything, but it's still called an altar and we can get into that theology later.

But no altars in a Protestant church. So they would have you come up to like the special feet and a few benches, seats, rows at the front. And if you somehow thought, I am gonna go to hell when I die and I do want to not pay for my own sins, I'd like to be forgiven, come on up.

And then the pastor's gonna tell you what to do about belief and repentance and other things, I guess. I want you to know that altar calls are pretty new. For 1800 years, there were no altar calls. And so then you want to probably ask yourself the question, well, then how did anybody get saved if there was no altar to call people up?

How did people get saved? And simply, you preach, God at his pleasure opens eyes. He effectually calls people. And if you haven't gotten this yet, number two, God's not concerned only with the ends, salvation, but with the means.

That is to say, is God concerned about the means of salvation? Or is he just a pragmatist? Is our method holy or unholy? Is our method a-holy? That is to say, it doesn't really matter. Not a-holy, but how would I say this?

I put an A in front of holy to negate it. Non-holy, that's what I was looking for. Ha ha ha. Billy Graham used to say, I'm going to ask you to come forward, up here, 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.

As much as I appreciate, what is this? Something's wrong with this chair. Much of Billy Graham's, the Bible says, preaching, his view of altar calls, of course, was confused, to say the best. You don't want to, number three, confuse external things with inward regeneration.

God regenerates, it's on the inside, right through the preaching of God's word, the new birth, and then somehow, there's something that I do externally, outwardly, and that gets confused with that. And I think that's what Finney did, because let's do something on the outside, and then he conflates that or confuses that with something on the inside.

So you want to try to be careful. Don't think coming up to the front or raising your hand is the same as belief, right? Those things are confused. Actually, if I say an altar call, come to the front, that's pretty much a work of man, trusting on the Lord Jesus, faith is a non-meritorious instrument and is not meritorious, so that's the work of God.

Another reason why I don't do altar calls is because I think men and women outside of Christ are depraved, totally depraved. That is, the total being, their total being, including mind, will, emotions, soul, conscience, everything about it is depraved, affected by the fall, I think, of original sin.

There's no human ability for people to come to Christ. There's human ability to be nice to people and cook a pie for someone or shovel your neighbor's driveway. You can shovel their lawn too. I used to shovel some of the lawn because the dog needed little spots to go to the bathroom and it was two or three feet deep, so we would shovel some of the lawn for the dog, make like a little figure eight or something.

Romans 9 .16, so then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. Romans 9 .16. John 1 .13, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.

But of God they were born. This is a divine work. We are passive in regeneration and somehow when you call people up to the front, you're undoing this very thing. Jesus said, without me, you can do what?

Nothing. And Luther said, it is totally unheard of, grammar and logic, to say that nothing is the same as something. No thing is the same as something. To logicians, the thing is an impossibility, for the two are contradictory.

There's nothing you can do. So I don't wanna, I mean, everybody, unbelievers and believers alike could come to the front, but that's not the same as believing and receiving and resting and relying. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

Christ did everything for you. Now it's time for you to do your part. And your part would be what? Sin, be blinded, other things that show your depravity. Charles Hodge said this, a living man may be persuaded not to commit suicide, but a dead man cannot be persuaded into life.

That's pretty good. That's tweet worthy. By the way, the Twitter world is just crazy. The world is crazy, is it not? I'm gonna put my head down, preach Christ, move forward. Like I said, this is June 4th, 2020.

And of course, everything is just blown up. Not literally, but figuratively. Some things literally, probably downtowns. So it's an interesting time to be alive, is it not? Regeneration, my friend, is a work of God.

Paul said in Titus 3, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. Who makes himself able to believe?

Not us, but the Holy Spirit at his own prerogative. It's the effectual outcome of God's free and special grace alone. That's the London Baptist Confession, Baptist, Babbist. I don't know why I'm so tired today, so tired today.

I'm not exactly sure why. B .B. Warfield, sinful man stands in need, not of inducements or assistance to save himself, but precisely of saving. And Jesus Christ has come not to advise or urge or woo or help him to save himself, but to save him.

That's what we need. The regenerating power of God. After all, number five, we don't have a false, superficial, low view of conversion. Matter of fact, I think I'll just take that and move to number five to this one.

Is the gospel full of law? That's an interesting way to go about this. Are these statements law or gospel? Well, raise your hand. Every eye closed. Come up to the front. Walk up to the front. Do what I say.

Walk, I'll raise hand. Look at my eyes. Interesting commands. A, they're not from the Bible. B, they're from the preachers. Now I get law, but it's not even God's law showing me my need of the Savior, but it's the law of the preacher.

This is what's called back in the Finney's day. He's the one that really popularized this. It's called new measures. So the old measures, hmm, let's improve on those. Anytime you hear new measures and it's not, it's like the new boy band.

And when it comes to Bible stuff, new measures isn't good. By the way, I just looked online and Justin Peters, why we shouldn't sing Hillsong Bethel music, 1 .2 million views. That is amazing. That is amazing.

1 .2 million. I thought where's Beth Moore's husband at 20 ,000 views is pretty good. Why don't I do ultra calls? Number six, it gives people false assurance. They think they're saved because they walked up to the front.

It confused them. And some people of course are saved and then they respond by coming up to the front, right? I think if you do really come up to the ultra call and you're really sincere about it, I think you got saved in your seat and now you wanna just do something, right?

Instead of be baptized or tell somebody else about your faith, it's this. I think you wanna be careful to confuse people about an experience that can be done by others leading you or a Holy Spirit induced experience, if I can use that language.

This often gives people assurance because this one-time thing, I remember when I walked the aisle, it doesn't matter now that I'm living with my boyfriend or girlfriend, but I will remember I walked the aisle.

And you wanna be careful of that. As Spurgeon said, sometimes we're inclined to think that a very great portion of modern revivalism has been more a curse than a blessing because it has led thousands to a kind of peace before they have known their misery, restoring the prodigal to the father's house and never making him say, father, I have sinned.

Distorted Views of Faith, Repentance, and Evangelism

Ultra calls, I think number seven, make me have a distorted view of faith and repentance. Maybe this ties into that last thing. When they talk about accepting Jesus or something like that, it's difficult.

And then lastly, I don't think I want that one in there. I think I'm gonna take that out and then make this seven. Lastly, why don't I do ultra calls? Because then it tells the people who attend the church, the way of evangelism is not by them particularly preaching the gospel to their friends, but they bring them to church.

Where's evangelism done? It's done at the end of the sermon. There's no sacred space in your backyard. You can't preach there. You better bring them to church. Well, that's why I don't do ultra calls.

God has said that Jesus is the mediator. I'm not the mediator. Maybe that's the last reason I don't do ultra calls is because there's one God and one mediator also between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.

You don't need me to stand there between you and God because if you want me to stand between you and God, then we gotta have one more mediator because I'm gonna need a mediator. And the list goes on. Should you preach Christ Jesus to people?

Should your pastor regularly say, if you're an unbeliever here today, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for your sin bearing? Of course. Should you invite people to believe? Should you invite people?

Should you command people? Should you summons people? Should you tell them to look for Christ for refuge, receive the Lord Jesus? Well, of course, but we don't say come up here to do that. You can do it right where you sit.

Can you not? Come ye sinners. Where are they gonna come? Well, we're not talking about physically coming someplace. We're talking about trusting. We're talking about believing. Spurgeon used to say, go home alone trusting in Jesus.

Oh, but I'd like to go to the inquiry room. Spurgeon, I dare say you would, but we are not willing to pander to popular superstition. We fear that in these rooms, those men are warmed into fictitious confidence.

Very few of the supposed converts of inquiry rooms turn out well. Go to your God at once, even where you are now. Cast yourself on Christ at once, ere you stir an inch. Of course, you're an ambassador if you're a pastor.

Of course, you tell them that, you know, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall not be disappointed. So call on the Lord. Of course, you should preach to the lost. I think what happens is a lot of times, these services end up being services that are evangelistic.

That's the emphasis when I'm supposed to be preaching to build up the saints of God, the sheep of God. And of course, if there are aints there, are goats there, unbelievers there, then they will hear the word and I can call them to belief and repentance.

That's certainly true. But if you say, you know what, you don't do evangelism because you don't do altar calls. I don't know how people in Spurgeon's day and John Knox's day and others, how did they get saved?

No one got saved by going up to the front. Only way people get saved in the Old Testament, New Testament, and even now, in spite of what the new measures people say is through preaching, a proclamation.

You don't have to do anything else. You pray for them and you preach to them. That's amazing. That's wonderful. And so what got me on this topic was Hebrews 13, verse 10. I normally don't end sermons with an altar call, but I might begin one with an altar call.

Here's a call to the altar. Verse 10 of Hebrews 13. We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. We have an altar. Wait a second. What do you mean we have an altar? I thought Jesus has already died.

Well, that's for next time, dear listeners at No Compromise Radio. If you wanna go to Israel, that's info at nocompromiseradio .com, February 23rd, 24th, somewhere in there. 2021, we'll go to Israel and Omaha Bible Church shall go there with us.

I think we have 13 people on our end signed up. We've got 11 slots left. So if you wanna sign up, that'd be great. Any questions for me? Mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

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. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.