Quick Prayerism

I read this article from Brother Cloud this morning and thought that I would post it on my blog.  I believe way to many churches and christians have gone this route and have damned many souls.  This verse comes to my mind when I think of this quick prayerism movement:

Matthew 23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

BEWARE OF QUICK PRAYERISM (Friday Church News Notes, October 28, 2011, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Quick Prayerism is an evangelistic methodology that is quick to get people to pray a sinner’s prayer after a shallow gospel presentation which typically does not include any hint of the necessity of repentance. It is quick to pronounce the people saved and give them “assurance” and to try to baptize them even if they barely show an interest in the presentation and even if they give no biblical evidence of having been born again. Frequently, Quick Prayerism incorporates psychological salesmanship manipulation. In Quick Prayerism, an empty “sinner’s prayer” has too often replaced Holy Spirit conviction and miraculous regeneration. Quick Prayerism is characterized by soul winning reports that are grossly exaggerated, since the number of real conversions are minute compared to the overall statistics. We call it “prayerism” because it focuses on a prayer. We call it “quick prayerism” because it specializes in quick presentations and quick decisions and an overall shallowness of spiritual and biblical depth. An example of this was communicated to me some time back by a friend who had the following experience at a prominent independent Baptist church which operates a large Bible college. The soul winner in question is a veteran Independent Baptist missionary to Japan, a man with considerable influence in the Independent Baptist movement. “We went out with their staff on Saturday morning for soul winning. We were immediately partnered up with some of the veterans. The first door we went to, we spoke to a friendly Catholic guy and to my surprise, the guy got ‘saved’ before my very eyes as ------- took him from a few scripture passages to the sinner’s prayer so smoothly that I was caught off guard. I caught myself and while ------- was recording this man’s contact details and writing it down, I asked the man whether (1) he believed that he was a good person and (2) that it is possible to go to Heaven by being a good person. This man who had just got ‘saved’ told me ‘YES.’ I looked around and the other two men beside me said nothing and did nothing. We went to a few more places and eventually reached a home with a Roman Catholic young lady who came to the door. She said she was a professing Christian. Even though she said that all churches were the same ------- gave her assurance of salvation by quoting 1 John 5:13.” The churches that have adopted this unscriptural method of evangelism have produced millions of false professions throughout the world and have given a false hope to this multitude. There are many churches that can show only a handful of new creatures in Christ for every hundred converts they claim. Repentance and soul winning methodology are not minor issues that can be treated as “non-essentials.” Quick Prayerism is death in the pot for any church that practices it.

Do We Stand In Awe?

Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word. Psalms 119:161

Do we stand in awe of God's word?  Or do we just take it for granted and fail to do what the Lord has written?

AWE, v.t. To strike with fear and reverence; to influence by fear, terror or respect; as, his majesty awed them into silence.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. James 1:22

Is Football Your God?

FOOTBALL IS GOD

The report is on the drying up of the football field at Robert Lee High School in west Texas. “So people here are doing everything they can think of to save it. After all, this isn’t just about a game. Here in West Texas, football is God, and the field is church.” That is a sad but true statement, and it is just as true for professing Christians as for out-and-out pagans. Sports is one of America’s gods. Dr. Alan Goldberg of the University of Connecticut said: “Sports [is] like a religion, and the god of that religion that we all worship is the god of winning” (CNSNews.com, August 31, 2001). An extensive survey commissioned in 1983 found that seven in every 10 Americans watch, read, or talk about sports every day. (*I can only imagine what it is today!!!)  The study, the most comprehensive ever undertaken of America’s attachment to sports, found that almost 35 million people are “ardent sports fans” who watch sports events on television at least once a week, and in some cases, every day. I am confident the statistic would be higher today. In 1982, the famous sports announcer Howard Cosell, while viewing the largest Sunday football game attendance in Texas history, said “the Cowboys are more than a football team in Dallas; they are a religion.” Professional football and basketball have become a religion all across America. In other lands the religion is called soccer. A person’s god is that which he loves and serves, and God hates idolatry. The prophets and apostles preached against idolatry, and so should we. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols (“1 John 5:21).

(Friday Church News Notes, October 14, 2011, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A report in the Los Angeles Times on the drought in Texas observes that “football is God” (“In West Texas,” Los Angeles Times, Oct 3, 2011).

* My thoughts on the article

Nothing in Competition with the Lord

Good morning to all!  Below I have posted a quote from Jonathan Edwards, which Pastor Doss had sent out by email about a week ago.  I thought it was really good and that I would take this opportunity to put it on my blog.  It is something to meditate on and hopefully will draw us near to the Lord.

Nothing in Competition with the Lord

See to it therefore that there be nothing that stands in any competition with God in your esteem. Value Him more than all  riches. Value His honor and glory more than all the world. Be ready at all times to part with all things else and cleave to God.  

Let God be your peculiar friend. Value His friendship more than the respect and love of all the world. When you lose other enjoyments, when you lose earthly friends, let this be a supporting, satisfying comfort to you, that you have God left. You haven't lost God.

--Jonathan Edwards, "Christians a Chosen Generation," in Sermons and Discourses, 1730-1733, Ed. Mark Valeri (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 318.

America

The Need In America
	Every year in our country 3500 to 4000 churches close their doors and never reopen.   We are only planting about 1100 churches each year and that includes all Protestant denominations as well as Baptists.   Every year the population in America grows by three million people.   It now takes twice as long for missionaries to raise their support as it did 20 years ago.  Every year we are sending fewer and fewer missionaries from America. Many missionaries get discouraged and quit before ever getting to the field.   The largest Muslim training facility in the world is in New York City.   The largest Buddhist Temple in the world is in Boulder, CO.   Estimated U.S. conversion to Islam is 25,000 per year. Conversions to Mormonism are about 547,500, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses about 500,000 converts each year.   When Kingdom Halls reach 150 members they take 75 and plant another Kingdom Hall, we go in debt and build a bigger auditorium.   No county in America has a greater percentage of church members enrolled in Sunday School today than it did a decade ago.   America is the only nation in the world where the gospel is not spreading significantly! Even foreign missions are now being affected because there aren’t enough mission minded churches now to send all the missionaries the Lord is calling.  To our shame foreign countries are starting to send missionaries to America.  We are 13th among nations in the world to receive missionaries. Our nation is home to 300 million people as of October 2006, it has grown 100 million in the last 39 years and 53% of those are immigrants or decedents of immigrants. They did not bring Christianity into our country, they brought Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, etc. into our country. The choice is ours, are we going to rise to the occasion and do what we did when we first came to America, win America to Christ again by planting churches across our land, or are we going to let Islam reach them first? There are as many Muslims in America now as there are Baptists!                If Baptists don’t plant churches in America by the year 2050 America will be an Islamic nation! The map below shows where religious groups are in America. If a county is predominately one denomination the country is colored the color of that group. Baptists are in red. Notice where truth is there is little error and vise-versa. This study was done in 2000, if it were done today and Islam were included there would be as many Muslims as there are Baptists.  They are converting 25,000 every year to their religion, we are not.

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