1st Corinthians 11:18-19, “For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.”
I was listening to a heartfelt sermon this evening by Pastor Al Lacy (1933-2016). It is called: “No Unbelievers In Hell.” I love Dr. Al Lacy, but he says some heretical things in this sermon that don't set right with me. Please understand that I am not writing this blog to put down one of my heroes of the faith, God forbid. I love and cherish the man and ministry of Pastor Al Lacy. But as our text verse says in 1st Corinthians 11:19b, “For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” Every preacher, without exception, says silly things sometimes! I have done it too. This is because no man has all the answers. No man has it all figured out. Some men may think they have everything figured out, but they absolutely do not! No one understands all of the Word of God. That is because we all have different levels of experience, intelligence and education. Discovering THE TRUTH is a lifelong journey, upon which all men are traveling.
Pastor Al Lacy teaches a blatant false doctrine in this sermon. He tells people to repent of their sin to be saved. You won't find any such commandment anywhere in the Word of God. Pastor Al Lacy falsely says, and I quote him verbatim: “The Bible says, you've got to repent of your sin to be saved.” No Sir! I dare you to show me that in the inspired King James Bible? Where does the Bible say to repent “OF YOUR SINS” to be saved. Yes, the Bible does say to “repent,” but it doesn't add the words “of your sins.” Religious men added that! No doubt Dr. Al Lacy heard other preachers make that false statement, and so he also adopted it. I'll tell you, if you are a preacher, you need to declare war on the things other preachers say! I decided a few years ago to start being 100% objective, filtering everything I see and hear with the inspired Word of God. And that is Biblical. 1st John 4:1, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” We must try (test) everything we hear and read with the Bible.
About one-third way into the sermon, Dr. Lacy presents the same exact challenge to a man that I am presenting to you now friend: “Where does the Bible say that?” Or, as I often like to word it: "What saith the Scripture?” Dr. Lacy tells the story about a man—a man who had sincerely told Dr. Lacy that murderers go to Hell. Pastor Lacy challenged the man to show him from the Word of God, where it says that murderers go to Hell? Pastor Lacy kindly said to the man: “Show me where the Bible says that murderers go to Hell?”
Now, I commend Pastor Al Lacy for using the inspired Word of God as our final and only authority! But then why didn't Dr. Lacy apply the SAME standard to the idea that we must “repent of your sin to be saved”? Because if you do apply such objective thinking, it will FAIL THE TEST. If you look in the Bible to find where it says to: “repent of your sin to be saved,” YOU CANNOT FIND IT!!! Only if you have one of the Devil's Bible—the modern corrupt perversions of the Word of God—can you find any garbage therein about forsaking sin to receive God's free gift of eternal life. You won't find any such nonsense in the inspired King James Bible!!!
Like I said, I love and admire Pastor Al lacy. When I gratefully attended Hyles-Anderson College (1985-1993), in the summer of 1992 I thankfully attended a week-long King James Bible Seminar taught by Dr. Al Lacy. Brother Hyles asked him to teach it, and I am SO GLAD that he did. I met Pastor Gayle Russ and his son there from Evansville, Indiana. What a treat! I love those guys and their wonderful Faith Music Missions ministry. I sat on the edge of my seat and wrote down every word which Pastor Lacy spoke! So he is one of my heroes of the Christian faith.
Albeit, my first love and loyalty is toward my blessed God and Savior, Jesus Christ. If a man is wrong he is wrong, period. I won't cover or look the other way for my friends and favorite preachers! Pastor Lacy is preaching Satanic heresy, just as Jesus called the Apostle Peter “Satan,” when he tried to stop Him from going to the cross. So you see, even a child of God can be deceived at times by the Devil. In fact, you don't need to repent of your sin to get to Heaven.
Now, in fairness to Pastor Lacy, he does elaborate and explain exactly what he means by the phrase: “repent of your sin to be saved.” In the preceding MP3 excerpt from his sermon, “No Unbelievers In Hell,” Dr. Lacy makes it abundantly clear that he is not speaking about giving up your sinful behavior; but rather, he simply means that you must turn away from your false religion, self-righteous works and that which has been hindering you from BELIEVING to be saved. I fully agree with Pastor Lacy, because what he just said about repentance is 100% Biblical.
Hebrews 6:1, “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,” Here we see THE TRUTH. Repentance is NOT from sin; but rather, from dead works (which includes all your righteousness and good works too). Christ didn't just die for your sins, He died for your righteousness too, because even our righteousnesses are filthy rags to God. Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Here is a beautiful quote by John Bunyan:
“I saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday and today and forever.” —Evangelist John Bunyan (1628-1688)
So Pastor Lacy gets it half right! Bible repentance simply means: “a change of mind,” period. But Dr. Lacy says repentance means: “a change of mind which results in a change of direction.” I don't like when preachers embellish the meaning of the word “repentance.” If God didn't add those extra words, what gives any preacher the right to? Dr. Lacy is wrong to ASS-U-ME that repentance means to turn 180 degrees away from sin and move toward the Savior. Why sin? Why not unbelief? You see, by saying that repentance is “from sin,” it opens a whole can of worms theologically. Because then people start insinuating that your life must change. They ASS-U-ME that since you have repented “OF YOUR SIN,” you cannot continue living in them as you did before. Dear reader, none of this is true!
Bible repentance is only from UNBELIEF, not from sins. Preachers get so messed up on this matter that they need to go seek psychiatric help. I'm not kidding. We've got a bunch of depressed, confused and miserable people in our churches today, because they've been LIED TO by preachers! They've been lied to about repentance, told that they must repent and turn away from their sinning to Get to Heaven. The Bible disagrees 100% with them!
Here is a wonderful excerpt from Michael P. Bowen's helpful book titled: “I NEVER KNEW YOU: The Horror Of The Great White Throne Judgement And How You Can Avoid It”:
Here is the gospel: God says that we are sinners and that no amount of good works or behavioral changes on our part could ever make us holy enough to enter heaven. God sent His Son to pay for all of our sins. Jesus paid for our crimes by dying on the cross for us all. His dead body was buried in a grave. On the third day, Jesus arose from the dead. The instant you believe this, He knows it and He saves you. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life”(John 6:47). The free gift is based solely upon your trust in what Jesus did for you and has nothing at all to do with what you do for Him. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). ~ Michael P. Bowen, “I Never Knew You,” p. xii
There you have it friend, how to know that you're going to Heaven in just 30 seconds! I love Dr. Lacy, but the plan of salvation that he gave in his sermon: “No Unbelievers In Hell” is utterly complicated. In the sermon he tells everyone to invite Jesus into their heart. That doesn't even make sense! The human heart is a muscle about twice the size of your fist that pumps blood. So how do you invite Jesus into your heart muscle? It confuses people when preachers stray away from the Gospel as taught in the Bible. Why not simply teach men to BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST??? I mean, that is what Acts 16:30-31 teaches.
I am 100% convinced that Dr. Al Lacy is saved and up in Heaven today. I believe this simply because he very directly explains in the preceding sermon exactly what he thinks it means to repent of sin. Brother Lacy doesn't believe that you must clean up your life of sin to be saved. He doesn't believe that you must make Jesus the absolute Lord and the Master of your life to get into God's Kingdom. But Pastor Lacy is preaching THE SATANIC LIE that to be saved you must “repent of your sin,” because no such command is found in the Word of God!!! Even though he explains what he means, he is still in error to say to repent “of your sin.” The very statement confuses people!!!
Pastor Curtis Hutson (1934-1995) said it well:
“But we've so muddied the Gospel, that when men want to make a decision to trust Christ, we've made it so complicated that they can't make a simple decision to 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' We'll say, 'If you don't do this' or 'You don't do that' or 'You haven't done that,' you're not saved'; but the truth of the matter is that when asked in the Bible, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?,' one clear simple answer was given to him — 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.'” — Pastor Curtis Hutson, “Things That Are Different Are Not The Same” (preached at Southwide Baptist Fellowship on October 3, 1994)
So why does Dr. Lacy say in the sermon, that you need to ask Jesus into your heart to be saved? A lot of Christians have ignorantly adopted this popular cliché (one of many that people foolishly use). It is not Biblical. As I said earlier, the human heart is a muscle about twice the size of our fist that pumps blood. How does a child understand the meaning of asking Christ to come into one's heart? It makes no sense. The bottom line is that this is simply NOT what the Bible teaches! Why stray away from the Word of God?
I understand that Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” But there's nothing said about the heart! The $64,000 question is this: Why present the Gospel is SOME OTHER WAY than the Bible does? Jesus warned us in John 10:1, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.”
In the Gospel of John we are simply told to BELIEVE ON HIM. John 6:40, “ And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.” And in Acts 16:30-31 we read, “And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” So why do preachers use terminology that is foreign to the Scripture? Why tell people to invite Jesus into their heart and life? Why tell people to have a relationship with Christ? Why not simply tell people to BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST???
Here are some helpful quotes:
“Those who go to Heaven ride on a pass and enter into blessings that they never earned, but all who go to Hell pay their own way.” —Dr. John R. Rice
“There is power in this Gospel message. Most people just don't know how to present it... The clarity of the Gospel is what makes it easy for them to believe.” —Pastor Yankee Arnold, a quote from the excellent MP3 sermon titled, “WHY GRACE CAN SAVE THE WORST MAN!”
Salvation is not a reward for the righteous; it is a gift for the guilty!
Salvation is not doing your best, it is having Christ's best put to your account through receiving Him by faith.
Turning away from sinful ways would be a work. Faith puts all of the merit where it belongs, on the object of our faith, Jesus and His work.
If to “repent” means to forsake our sinful ways TO BE SAVED, but Jesus already paid for our sins by dying on the cross, then what are we repenting from?
The true Gospel always points you to CHRIST; a false gospel always points to YOU.
We must stay true to the simplicity of the gospel!! Repentance regarding salvation is a change of mind from unbelief to belief!!! We must earnestly contend for the faith (Jude 1:3).
In closing, I am not against Pastor Al Lacy. I love him and intend to continue promoting his sermons, because his preaching is life-changing. Pastor Lacy was one of very few godly men who sided with the King James Bible only movement. Dr. Peter S. Ruckman (1921-2016) was another godly preacher who stood for the King James Bible, when being King James Bible only wasn't cool. So I am a big fan of Pastor Al Lacy. But he is WRONG to tell people to: “Ask Jesus to come into your heart,” and to tell people to: “Repent of your sin to be saved.” Those are heresies!
Consider that not once in the Gospel of John is the word “REPENT” mentioned. Not once! But we do find the word “BELIEVE” mentioned 88 times!!! Clearly the man who believes has also repented. It is automatic. The man who changes his mind has believed; and the man who believes has changed his mind. Please read what Evangelist John R. Rice (1895-1980) believed and taught, with which I agree. I just don't like the words “turn from sin,” but like Dr. Lacy, he gets it theologically correct (his terminology is wrong):
There are those hyper-dispensationalists who think that John the Baptist preached a different Gospel from Christ when he commanded repentance (Matt. 3:2). But it is the same repentance Jesus commanded in Matthew 4:17, in Luke 13:3 and 5, and the same repentance that Paul preached in Athens that God “now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17:30 31). Repentance is not a different plan of salvation from having faith: it is part of the same plan of salvation. Or rather repentance is simply another way of describing or looking at the plan of salvation. One who turns from sin to God has done so by trusting in Jesus Christ. A change of mind toward sin is necessarily involved in saving faith.
Everyone who genuinely repented under the preaching of John the Baptist put his trust in the Saviour John the Baptist preached, and was regenerated. There is no such thing as being “a disciple of John the Baptist” in any honest sense without being a disciple of Jesus, that is, without trusting Christ for salvation. [emphasis added]
SOURCE: Evangelist John R. Rice, “Acts: Filled With The Spirit,” pp. 251-252; Sword Of The Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee; ©1963
Now, I agree with the theological statements of both Dr. Al lacy and Dr. John R. Rice; BUT, both of these men foolishly use the unbiblical phrase “turn from sin,” where the Holy Bible DOES NOT!!! So why use it? Why tell people to “repent of your sin” when no such commandment or wording is found in the Scripture? Doesn't that make sense? Sure it does. I NEVER tell lost people to “repent of your sin” to be saved. And if you do, you are preaching another gospel (unless you explain exactly what you mean, as did Pastor Al Lacy and Dr. John R. Rice).
“There is power in this Gospel message. Most people just don't know how to present it... The clarity of the Gospel is what makes it easy for them to believe.” —Pastor Yankee Arnold, a quote from the excellent MP3 sermon titled, “WHY GRACE CAN SAVE THE WORST MAN!”
God knows that I didn't write and publish this blog to criticize my friend, Al Lacy. Rather, I am simply trying to help others, you dear reader, to keep the Gospel simple the way God intended for it to be. Here again is a helpful excerpt from Michael P. Bowen's helpful book titled: “I NEVER KNEW YOU: The Horror Of The Great White Throne Judgement And How You Can Avoid It.” This is the simple way that we should all be presenting the Gospel:
Here is the gospel: God says that we are sinners and that no amount of good works or behavioral changes on our part could ever make us holy enough to enter heaven. God sent His Son to pay for all of our sins. Jesus paid for our crimes by dying on the cross for us all. His dead body was buried in a grave. On the third day, Jesus arose from the dead. The instant you believe this, He knows it and He saves you. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting life”(John 6:47). The free gift is based solely upon your trust in what Jesus did for you and has nothing at all to do with what you do for Him. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). ~Michael P. Bowen, “I Never Knew You,” p. xii
Now how does that compare to Pastor Al Lacy's THREE POINTS (in the preceding sermon I shared with you)? Dr. Lacy starts out by telling the audience that they must admit to being a guilty sinner. But then he adds another point to repent. Friend, repentance is not a separate step from admitting that you're a sinner. Nor is repentance a separate step from BELIEVING. There are no “steps” to being saved, you simply BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST (Acts 16:30-31), and in that moment you have fulfilled everything required by God to receive eternal life. It's that simple.
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