God Has A Wonderful Plan For Your Life

Chapter 6. The Motive and the Result So far we've looked at the dismal moral state of the contemporary church. We've seen that there are millions within the church who do not have the things that accompany salvation, and multitudes of others who have fallen away from the faith. This has happened because the law has not been used to bring the knowledge of sin. Instead, we've used an unbiblical method of attracting sinners to the wonderful new life in Christ. We're now going to look closely at what happens to the sinner's motive when this modern method is used. Consider the following scenario. Two men are seated in a plane. The first is given a parachute and told to put it on because it would improve his flight. He's a little sceptical at first. He can't see how wearing a parachute on a plane could possibly improve his flight. After a time, he decides to experiment and see if the claim is true. As he straps the parachute on his back, he notices the weight of it upon his shoulders, and he finds that he has difficulty in sitting upright. However, he consoles himself with a flight attendant's promise that the parachute would improve his flight. So he decides to give the thing a little time. As the flight progresses, he notices that some of the other passengers are laughing at him because he's wearing a parachute in a plane. He begins to feel somewhat humiliated. As they continue to laugh and point at him, he can't stand it no longer. He slinks in his seat, unstraps the parachute, and throws it to the floor. Disillusionment and bitterness fill his heart because, as far as he was concerned, he was told an outright lie. The second man is also given a parachute, but listen to what he's told. He's told to put it on because at any moment he'd be jumping 25,000 feet out of the plane. He gratefully puts the parachute on. He doesn't notice the weight of it on his shoulders, nor that he can't sit upright. His mind is consumed with the thought of what would happen to him if he jumped without that parachute. Now let's analyze the motive and the result of each passenger's experience. The first man's motive for putting the parachute on was solely to improve his flight. The result of his experience was that he was humiliated by the other passengers, he was disillusioned and somewhat embittered against those who gave him the parachute. As far as he's concerned, it'll be a long time before anyone gets one of those things on his back again. The second man put the parachute on solely to escape the jump to come. Because of his knowledge of what would happen to him without it, he has a deep-rooted joy and peace in his heart knowing that he's safe from sure death. This knowledge gives him the ability to withstand the mockery of the other passengers. His attitude toward those who gave him the parachute is one of heartfelt gratitude. Many modern evangelistic appeals say, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. He'll give you love, joy, peace, fulfillment and lasting happiness. In other words, Jesus will improve your flight. The sinner responds and in an experimental fashion puts on the Savior to see if the claims are true. And what does he get? The promised temptation, tribulation and persecution. He finds it difficult to live an upright life. Not only that, but other people mock him for his faith. So what does he do? He takes off the Lord Jesus Christ. He's offended for the word's sake. He's disillusioned and somewhat embittered and quite rightly so. He was promised peace, joy, love, fulfillment and lasting happiness. And all he got were trials and humiliation. His bitterness is directed at those that gave him the so-called good news. Because he thinks he tried Jesus and it didn't work out, his latter end becomes worse than the first. He's now another inoculated and bitter backslider. Instead of preaching that Jesus improves the flight, we should be warning passengers that one day they're going to have to jump out of the plane. It's appointed a man once to die and after this the judgment. When a sinner understands the horrific consequences of breaking the law of God, he will flee to the Savior in genuine repentance solely to escape the wrath that's to come. And if we're true and faithful witnesses, that's what we'll be preaching. That there is wrath to come and that God commands all men everywhere to repent because he's appointed a day in which he'll judge the world in righteousness. The issue isn't one of happiness, but righteousness. It doesn't matter how happy a sinner is or how much he's enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season, without the righteousness of Christ, he'll perish on the day of wrath. The Bible says riches profit not on the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. Peace and joy are legitimate fruits of salvation, but it's not legitimate to use these fruits as a drawcard for salvation. If we continue to do so, sinners will respond with an impure motive lacking repentance. Can you remember why the second passenger had joy and peace in his heart? It was because he knew that that parachute was going to save him from a certain death. In the same way as Christians, we have joy and peace in believing because we know that the righteousness of Christ is going to deliver us from the wrath that's to come. With that thought in mind, let's take another look at an incident on board the plane. We have a brand new flight attendant. It's her first day. She's carrying a tray of boiling hot coffee. As she's walking down the aisle, she trips over someone's foot and slops that boiling hot coffee all over the lap of our second passenger. What's his reaction as that boiling liquid hits his tender flesh? Does he say, man, that hurt? Yes, he does. But then does he rip the parachute off his shoulders, throw it to the floor and say, stupid parachute? No, why should he? He didn't put the parachute on for a better flight. He put it on to save him from the jump to come. If anything, the hot coffee incident causes him to cling tighter to the parachute and even look forward to the jump. If we put on the Lord Jesus Christ for the right motive, to flee from the wrath that's to come, when tribulation strikes, when the flight gets bumpy, when we get burned by circumstances, we won't get angry at God. We won't lose our joy or peace. Why should we? We didn't come to Jesus for a better lifestyle, but to flee from the wrath that's to come. If anything, tribulation drives a true believer closer to the Savior. And sadly, we have multitudes of professing Christians who lose their joy and peace when the flight gets bumpy. Why? They're the products of a man-centered gospel. They came lacking repentance, without which they cannot be saved. As Peter preached, he commanded his hearers to repent for the remission of sins. Without repentance, there's no remission of sins. Peter further said, repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. We cannot be converted unless we repent, and that's why Jesus commanded that repentance be preached to all nations. Luke 24, 47 Superficial Repentance For many years, I suffered from the disease of evangelical frustration. I so wanted sinners to respond to the gospel that I unwittingly preached a man-centered message, the essence of which was this. You'll never find true peace without Jesus Christ. There's a God-shaped vacuum in your heart that only He can fill. I'd preach Christ crucified. I'd preach repentance. A sinner would respond to the altar, and I'd think, oh, this guy wants to give his heart to Jesus, and there's an 80% chance he's going to backslide. So I better make sure he really means it. He better be sincere. So I'd tell him, now repeat this prayer sincerely after me, and really mean it from your heart sincerely, and make sure you really mean it from your heart. And I'd say, oh, God, I'm a sinner. And he'd smack his chewing gum and say, yeah, oh, God, I'm a sinner. I'd wonder, why isn't there any visible sign of contrition? There's no outward evidence the guy is inwardly sorry for his sins. But if I'd seen his motive, I would have seen that he was 100% sincere. He really did mean his decision with all his heart. He sincerely wanted to give this Jesus thing a go to see if it's as good as buzz as everybody says it is. Tried sex, drugs, materialism, alcohol, why not give Christianity a try to see if it's as good as all these Christians keep saying it is? Peace, joy, love, fulfillment, and lasting happiness? He'd be a fool not to give it a try. He wasn't fleeing from the wrath that was to come because I hadn't told him there was wrath to come. There was a glaring omission from my preaching. He wasn't broken in contrition because the poor guy didn't know what sin was. Remember Romans 7 verse 7? Paul said, I had not known sin except through the law. How can a man repent of sin if he doesn't know what sin is? Any so-called repentance would be merely what I call horizontal repentance. A sinner may feel sorry because he's lied to men or stolen from men, etc. But when David sinned with Bathsheba, he didn't say I've sinned against man. He acknowledged to God against you and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. When Joseph was tempted sexually, he said, how can I do this thing and sin against God? The prodigal son admitted, I have sinned against heaven. Because all sin is against God, Paul preached that we must exercise repentance towards God, the one we have offended. However, when a man doesn't understand that his sin is primarily vertical, that he has sinned against God, he'll not seek his forgiveness. He'll merely respond with superficial, experimental and horizontal repentance and will fall away when tribulation, temptation and persecution come. The Tragic Results If we continue to offer the Savior merely as a means of life enhancement, many will respond to the gospel for the wrong motive. To see the effect of neglecting to use the law to bring sinners to genuine repentance, let's take a closer look at the tragic results of unbiblical methods of contemporary evangelism. These statistics represent the eternal salvation of human beings. Please listen to them with the same sobriety you'd have while walking through a Holocaust museum. At a 1990 crusade in the United States, 600 decisions for Christ were obtained. No doubt there was much rejoicing. However, 90 days later, follow-up workers could not find even one who was continuing in the faith. That crusade created 600 backsliders, or to be more scriptural, false converts. In Cleveland, Ohio, an inner-city outreach brought 400 decisions. The rejoicing no doubt tapered off when follow-up workers could not find a single of the 400 who had supposedly made a decision. In 1991, organizers of a Salt Lake City concert encouraged follow-up and discovered less than 5% of those who respond to an altar during a public crusade are living a Christian life one year later. In other words, more than 95% proved to be false converts. In 1985, a four-day crusade obtained 207 decisions. However, according to a member of the organizing committee, 92% fell away. In his book, Today's Evangelism, Ernest C. Resigner said of one outreach event, quote, it lasted eight days and there were 68 supposed conversions. A month later, not one of those converts could be found. A church in Boulder, Colorado, sent a team to Russia in 1991 and obtained 2,500 decisions. The next year, the team found only 30 continuing in their faith. That's a retention rate of 1.2%. According to Pastor Elmer Murdoch, quote, Chuck Colson states that for every 100 people making decisions for Christ, only two may return for follow-up a few days later. George Barner says that the majority of people, that is 51% minimum, making decisions leave the church in six to eight weeks. Between 1995 and 2005, Assemblies of God churches reported an amazing 5,339,144 decisions for Christ. Their net gain in attendance was 221,790. That means 5,117,354 over 5 million decisions couldn't be accounted for. Charles E. Hackett, the National Director of Home Missions for the Assemblies of God in the United States, said, quote, a soul at the altar does not generate much excitement in some circles because we realize approximately 95% of every 100 will not become integrated into the church. In fact, most of them will not return for a second visit. In Sacramento, California, a combined church crusade yielded more than 2,000 commitments. One church followed up on 52 of those decisions and could not find one true convert. In Leeds, England, a visiting American speaker acquired 400 decisions for a local church. Six weeks later, only two were still committed, and they eventually fell away. In November 1970, a number of churches combined for a convention in Fort Worth, Texas, and secured 30,000 decisions. Six months later, the follow-up committee could find only 30 still continuing in the faith. A mass crusade reported 18,000 decisions, yet according to Church Growth magazine, 94% failed to become incorporated into a local church. Pastor Dennis Grinnell from Auckland, New Zealand, who has traveled to India every year since 1980, reported that he saw 80,000 decision cards stacked in a hut in the city of Ramadagiri, the result of past evangelistic crusades, but he maintained that one would be fortunate to find even 80 Christians in the entire city. A leading US denomination reported that during 1995, they secured 384,057 decisions but retained only 22,983 in fellowship. They couldn't account for 361 and 74 supposed conversions. That's a 94% fall-away rate. And finally, in Omaha, Nebraska, a pastor of a large church said he was involved in a crusade where 1,300 decisions were made, and yet not even one convert was continuing in the faith. Statistics such as these are very hard to find. One organizing committee is going to shout from the housetops that after a massive amount of pre-crusade prayer, hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenditure, preaching by a big-name evangelist, and truckloads of follow-up, the wonderful results that initially seemed apparent have all but disappeared. Not only would such news be utterly disheartening for all who put so much time and effort into the crusade, but the committee has no reasonable explanation as to why the massive catch has disappeared. The statistics are therefore hushed up and swept under the carpet of discretion. A Southern California newspaper, however, bravely printed the following article in July of 1993. Quote, Crusades don't do as much for non-believers as some might think, said Peter Wagner, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Three to 16% of those who make decisions in crusades end up responsible members of a church, he said. End of quote. In October 2002, the pastor of a large church in Colorado Springs had a similar finding. Quote, Only 3-6% of those who respond in a crusade end up in a local church. That's a problem. I was recently in a city that had a large crusade 18 months later and I asked them how many people saved in the crusade ended up in a local church. Not one person who gave his heart to Christ in that crusade ended up in a local church. End of quote. These statistics of 84-97% fall away rate are not confined to crusades but are typical throughout the local church evangelism. Nor is this strictly a US phenomenon. Missionaries confirm that statistics are the same in South America and Europe. An evangelist with a well-known international evangelism ministry noted a similar problem in their overseas efforts. He said, Many came to Christ, but when I started to do follow-up with them I discovered they understood the gospel as a self-advancing thing and when I explained it more accurately to them they walked away from it. God loving them was fine. God wanting a good life for them was fine. Their being sinful and Jesus being the only way, well, that was not acceptable. We fail them if we're not clear in those two things. End of quote. I couldn't agree more with his last statement. The problem is not with crusades but with the methods and message of modern evangelism. Follow-up still borns. A respected minister whose evangelism program has exploded across the world said that his evangelism course attempts to get at the heart of the fall away rate of new converts by placing great stress on follow-up. However, following up a false convert is like putting a still born baby into intensive care. Neither approach solves the problem. Sometimes there's confusion between follow-up, meaning we need to follow the new converts around because they'll fall away if we don't, and discipleship, meaning teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you. I believe in feeding converts. I believe in nurturing them. Discipleship is biblical and most necessary, but I don't believe in following them. I can't find that in scripture. Consider the Ethiopian eunuch. Not only was the new convert immediately left without follow-up, he was returning to an entirely unchristian nation. How could he survive? All he had was God and the scriptures. This is because his salvation was not dependent on Philip, but upon his relationship with the indwelling Lord. Follow-up is when we get decisions either through crusades or the local church, and we take laborers from the harvest fields, who are few in number as it is, and give them the disheartening task of running after these converts to make sure they're continuing with God. This is a sad mission of the amount of confidence we have in the power of our message and in the keeping power of God. In light of the fact that God is able to keep them from falling and present them faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, either he's not able to keep his converts or his hand is not in their profession of faith in the first place. If he's begun a good work in them, he'll complete it until that day. If he's the author of their faith, he'll be the finisher of their faith. He's able to save to the uttermost them that come to God through him. Jesus said, no man will pluck you from my Father's hand. It's encouraging when a true conversion takes place because there'll be little need for any follow-up. More than likely, you'll hardly be able to keep up with a convert yourself as he puts his hand to the plow and doesn't look back. When I passed from death to life way back in 1972, I immediately began devouring God's word. I disciplined myself to pray. I shared my faith with all who would listen, and I didn't need to be coaxed into fellowship. I wanted to be with other Christians. I think that's a normal biblical conversion. I'm not the only one who believes that the problem is not a lack of follow-up. Jim Elliffe, president of Christian Communications worldwide, quote, A great mistake is made by blaming the problem on poor follow-up. In many churches, there is every intention and effort given to follow-up, and yet still poor numbers persist. One church followed up by the book, seeking to discipline people who had been told they were new converts during the crusade of an internationally known evangelist. The report of the pastor in charge was that none of them wanted to talk about how to grow as a Christian. He said, In fact, they ran from us. Churches have learned to accept the fact that people who profess to have become Christians often have to be taught into going further, and that many, if not most, simply will not bother. Authentic new believers can always be followed up, however, because they have the spirit by which they cry Abba, Father. They have been given love for the brethren, an essential love for the beauty and authority of the Word of God. But you cannot follow up a spiritually dead person. Being dead, he has no interest in growth. End of quote. The problem is that Lazarus is four days dead. We can run into the tomb, pull him out, prop him up, open his eyes, but he stinks. He needs to hear the voice of the Son of God. The sinner is dead in his sins. We can say, Pray this prayer, but he needs to hear the voice of the Son of God, or there's no life in him. And the thing that primes the sinner's ear to hear the voice of the Son of God is the law. It is the law that converts the soul so that the person becomes a new creation in Christ. A well-known preacher of the past had warned, Evermore the law must prepare the way for the gospel. To overlook this in instructing souls is almost certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false standard of Christian experience, and to fill the church with false converts. Time will make this plain. If we continue to disregard the importance of using the law in bringing people to salvation, we will continue to witness the devastating results revealed in this chapter. When we speak about the hundreds of thousands who fall away from the faith, we can lose sight of the reality that these are individual human beings, and at stake is their eternal salvation from death and damnation. We simply must stop telling people under God's wrath and head of the helm that God has a wonderful plan for their lives. If we fear God, we'll return to the pattern given to us in Scripture, and seek and save the lost the way Jesus did. This is what we'll examine in the next chapter.