Acts 16:28-31, “But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, 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.”
One of my pet peeves as a Bible preacher are foolish pastors who require lost sinners to walk down a church asile to learn how to go to Heaven. My long time ministry friend, Pastor Max D. Younce (1935-2023), thankfully wrote and left behind free .pdf copies of his dozens of books and materials to edify the world for generations to come. I cannot thank Pastor Younce enough for his role in helping me solidify my salvation beliefs. ...
I first met Dr. Younce online around 2005, after I had just moved from Chicago to the island of Guam in 2004. Pastor Younce had found my Jesus-is-savior.com website online (which by God's grace I started in 2002), and noticed that I was exposing Martin Luther (1483-1546) as a fraud, for which he was greatly intrigued. The first time that he emailed me, Dr. Younce said that other than himself, I am the only preacher he knows of who recognizes and exposes Martin Luther as an unsaved heretic. Brother Younce's praise and friendship has meant the world to me over the past 20 years. I love that man of God!
In the preceding needful book by Dr. Younce, 'Salvation And The Public Invitation,' he scolds preachers who add the uneccesary and unbiblical requirement to the Gospel, to walk an aisle to get to Heaven. God only knows how many souls are burning in Hell forever, simply because some preacher refused to share the Gospel unless he could selfishly take the credit and glory for himself, instead of just preaching the Gospel and leaving the praise to God alone.
I am leery of Baptist churches today where the pastor is bragadacious, always touting how many people they got saved last year, and how many baptisms they had. I have been in plenty of churches like that, and in every case people were required to walk down an aisle to the front altar to learn how to go to Heaven. It ought not be folks! The truth is that you can be saved right from your pew. I was saved in a pew at age 13 in 1980.
Dear reader, no preacher should ever require someone to walk down an aisle to the front of a church auditorium to learn how to go to Heaven. Why don't those preachers tell people how to be saved in their pew? I'll tell you why! It is because those wicked pastors want to exploit you. They want to make a public spectacle of people who come forward to trust Christ, boasting of how God's power is upon their ministry. I loathe the irresponsible preachers today who are braggadious about how many people THEY'VE led to Jesus Christ. I humbly give God all the praise and criticism in my ministry work, good and bad alike. The day I got saved at age 13 my life became hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-3). What happens to me happens to Jesus (Matthew 25:40, 45). As believers, we're in this called Christianity together, with our dear Savior.
No pastor ought ever require anyone to walk down an aisle to learn how to be saved. Every preacher should tell the audience how to go to Heaven from where they are seated or standing. Millions of people will someday burn in the fires and torments of the Lake of Fire, all because of foolish preachers who refused to share the Gospel without adding the unbiblical obligation to walk forward in a church or revival service to be saved.
Many people won't walk forward during an invitation due to fear of the unknown, or perhaps they don't want to be made a spectacle of in front of a group, or maybe they don't feel well physically, or they will be put on the spot, et cetera. By sharing the Gospel with them in their pew, it eliminates all of those potential hindrances to them getting saved (2nd Corinthians 4:3-4). If there is one place in the world where the Gospel ought not be kept secretive, it is in a local New Testament church. Thank you for reading my ministry blog. God bless.
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