The
Bible teaches that salvation is based upon teaching. We can be taught a lie and think that we are saved, or we can be
taught the truth, believe and obey that truth, and know that we are saved. Not
only does salvation depend upon being taught, but it depends upon what we are
taught. This message of salvation is
called “the gospel” or “the faith”. It
is the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. This message can be changed or perverted, as
has often been the case, but even today 2000 years later, it can be understood,
believed and provide the same blessings as it did when first preached.
Salvation
Comes Through Teaching
Here
are a few Bible passages to be considered.
Jesus Himself said, quoting the Old Testament: “No
one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise
him up on the last day. It is written in
the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the
Father, comes to Me. Not that anyone has
seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has
eternal life.” (John 6:44-47). Yes, those who come to Jesus must be taught
of God. In a series of connected and logical
statements, Paul wrote: “How will they believe in Him
whom they have not heard? And how will
they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, 'HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE
THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!' However, they did not all heed
the good news; for Isaiah says, 'LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?' So faith comes from
hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom.
10:14-17). My dear reader, do you get the point? The pure word of God must be taught.
In the parable of the sower , Jesus emphasized the necessity
and importance of preaching or sowing the
word. This simple parable speaks of
sowing the seed on four different kinds of soil and the different results
obtained. Jesus, in explaining the
meaning of the parable—Matt. 13:18-23, states clearly that “the seed” represents “the
word of God”. The different types of
soils represent different kinds of hearts of those who would either reject or
receive the word of the kingdom. Just as there is power in a grain of wheat, so
there is power in the word of God to germinate and bear fruit in the heart of
man. When the pure word of God is
planted in the heart, it will produce only one thing – a Christian. In order to produce anything else, a
different kind of seed would need to be planted. The pure gospel makes only Christians or
disciples of Jesus Christ. In the end,
only those with good and honest hearts would bear fruit.
The apostle Peter
drives home this same point with these words: “Since you have in
obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren,
fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not
of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the
living and enduring word of God. For, 'ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS, AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS.
THE GRASS WITHERS, AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF, BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES
FOREVER.' And this is the word which was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:22-26).
The power of God’s word is stated in Hebrews 4:12-13: “For the word of God is living and active and sharper
than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and
spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and
intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and
laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”
The Great Commission
When Jesus sent out His chosen apostles to bring the message of salvation to
the whole world, which is called “The Great Commission”, this message contained
details that must not be perverted or changed.
This commission was given to the apostles after Jesus was raised from the
dead. The children of Israel would not
dare change the 10 COMMANDMENTS given by God through Moses to Israel. Why would anyone want to change the great
commission given by Jesus to the apostles to be preached to the whole
world? As stated in three accounts,
these are the words of Jesus:
Matt. 28:18-20: “And Jesus came up and spoke
to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples
of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to
the end of the age’.”
Mark 16:15-16: “And He said to them, ‘Go into
all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been
baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned’.”
Luke 24:45-48: “Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
and He said to them, 'Thus
it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the
third day, and that
repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the
nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things'.”
Jesus
gave some final words to His apostles recorded in Acts 1:8: “but you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the
earth.” From this we see that these particular men were to receive special powers
of the Holy Spirit (see also John 14; 16:13) so that they could verbally
express accurately the message of Christ.
They were also eye-witnesses of the resurrection. The combination of their being eye witnesses
plus their testimony being aided by the power of the Holy Spirit guaranteed
that their testimony would be complete and consistent. This protection involved both their speaking
and their writing. A perfect example
of inspired writing as to their witness of the resurrection is found in 1 John
1:1-4.
The Preaching Of The Gospel in Acts
The book of Acts contains example after example of the
message that was preached by the apostles in their role of preaching the “great
commission” to the world. Is it not comforting
to know, with all of the verbiage coming out of Washington, with all the
rewriting of history, with all the books on every subject imaginable, that
there are some words and some writings that can be depended upon to tell the
truth? This is why I encourage everyone
to read the Bible for themselves and not through some second hand filter. The words of Jesus, these are the words of
eternal life (See John 6:63).
Saved Apart From Being Taught?
Now some believe that salvation can be divorced from the
message preached and that it has more to do with some emotional experience than
anything else. Some teach that being
saved has to do with a “direct operation” of the Holy Spirit upon the heart, and that
those who experience this know that they are saved. Many religions believe and practice such “subjective”
tests of salvation, even though such a thing is nowhere taught in the
Bible. For example, if you are
approached by a Mormon, how do you know if they are telling you the truth? Do you compare what they say with the
Bible? No. Here is what they tell you to do. They say all
you have to do is pray to God and God Himself will reveal whether or not their
religion is true. This is an emotional
appeal and not a test based upon any objective truth or evidence. Others simply say, just believe in Jesus
with all of your heart and immediately God will save you. Not only that, they say, you will know in
your heart that you are saved. It finally
comes down to an emotional experience.
One young man that I know told me that he knows that he
was saved by faith, and that having experienced this salvation, he knows that he
could never be lost. When I questioned
him about the importance of being a disciple of Jesus Christ and following Him
in everything (which is part of the great commission), he told me that such a
commitment was optional and not necessary to salvation. Here he has taken hold of a particular
concept, salvation by faith only confirmed by a “religious experience”, which
enables him to ignore anything else that Jesus or His apostles taught. He wanted no more talk about religion. He interpreted “not being saved by works”
(Eph. 2:8-9) as meaning that obedience to Christ as Lord has nothing to do with
being saved. My pointing out scripture
after scripture which contradicted this interpretation had no impact upon
him. I do not know of any doctrine that
undermines so completely the authority of Jesus Christ. Sad to say, thousands who claim to be Christians share his
views.
So, with many, faith boils down to a particular
experience which has no connection to obedience or following any rules,
etc. Thus, you can understand why so
many people profess to believe in Jesus Christ and yet remain so completely
divided over what the Bible teaches and don’t really care. Ignorance and apathy will destroy us
all. What we have in America is that
most people claim to believe in Jesus Christ but church attendance has never
been lower. There are hundreds of
different denominations professing to believe in Jesus Christ while teaching
and practicing conflicting things, even on basic principles. This encourages the spread of atheism and agnosticism
more than anything I can imagine. Does
this represent the preaching of the gospel and the kind of results we read
about in the New Testament? Not by a
long shot. The fact of the matter is
that truth and the word of God have little to do with what people believe and
how they act. The subjective mindset
has little to do with standing upon the foundation of God’s message and
“growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.” It has now descended to the point that
even so called religious people refuse to talk about the doctrine or teachings
of Jesus Christ. They feel good about themselves
and their religious choices and that is good enough. Some think that it is the job of the “pastor”,
“priest”, etc. to make the people feel good and understand that God loves them
no matter how they live or what they believe.
Since they are told not to judge anyone (that is one scripture that they
know by heart), the conclusion is that there are no standards by which any
judgment can be made. All of this tends
to undermine the authority of God and His word. For such people it is never proper to preach
against sin, and especially don’t get too specific. After all, I’m saved and I know it!
Will Rogers, An American Humorist
If something is based upon emotions or how we feel, then
no proof or objective evidence of any kind is needed. This is about where we are in religion
today. But this is not much different
than it has been for a long time. I
recently read a book about Will Rogers, the great American humorist. He was also a first rate roper and
entertainer. At one time his writings were
syndicated in Newspapers all over America reaching about 40,000,000 million
people at the peak of his popularity. He
wrote mostly about politics, making fun of politicians in a generic way, which
is always a popular thing to do. People
took him seriously although he disdained anyone taking his humor seriously. However, He got very serious money, about
$130,000 per year during the great depression, for not writing anything to be taken
seriously. To his favor, he had a lot of
common sense and wrote on the level of the common people. He was also part Cherokee Indian which
identified him with the downtrodden and common people. He gave a lot of his money away to
charities. Of religion, which he seldom
mentioned, he wrote: “I was
raised predominantly a Methodist but I have traveled so much, mixed with so
many people in all parts of the world, I don’t know just now what I am. I know I have never been a non believer. But I can honestly tell you that I don’t
think that any one religion is ‘the’ religion. . . . . Every man’s religion is
good. There is none of it bad. We are all trying to arrive at the same place
according to our own conscience and teachings.
It don’t matter which road you take.”
(The Quotable Will Rogers, page 86). He also was very negative about religion. He believed that when it came to religion, the
more learning a person has the more evil he will become. He wrote:
“There is no argument in the
world that carries the hatred that a religious belief one does. The more learned a man is the less
consideration He has for another man’s belief” (ibid, page 86). So, he believed that every religion is good,
just don’t become too “learned” in a particular religion. That would be bad. And certainly do not heed all of the
admonitions found throughout the Bible to learn about God by means of His
word. Too much learning might drive us
to madness, as the worldly Festus accused Paul in Acts 26:24. Yet on
another level I can understand what Will Rogers was saying. Much evil has been done in the name of
religion, but misguided zealots do not represent the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Bible itself warns against such things.
Getting
back to the main point and heading of this article, is being saved just a matter
of some emotional experience or how we feel?
Legally speaking you can believe what you wish to believe or you can
believe nothing at all. Thank goodness,
the constitution guarantees the freedom of religion. That allows me to teach the gospel of Jesus
Christ in its completeness and simplicity even if someone adamantly disagrees
with me. But if Christianity is based
merely upon how we feel, it differs not one iota from all of the others
religions of the world. If that is the
case, Will Rogers was perfectly correct in his analysis. When the gospel was taught in the 1st
century, evidence was brought to light which was strong enough to convince good
and honest hearts that the Bible is the word of God, that God does exist, and
that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
Even Jesus taught that no one should believe in Him apart from
convincing evidence (read John 5:3-47).
As
a Christian I ought to know what I believe and why I believe what I do. It is a great joy when I find others who are
sincerely interested in the truth. It
is my prayer that truth seekers everywhere may abound more and more. As Jesus taught, only the truth can set us
free. He declared that His kingdom was based upon
truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, and
the truth, and the life. No one comes to
the Father except by me.” It does not
matter what men say, only the truth will abide forever. Please, Lord, open up the hearts of men and
women that they might see.
Lindy
McDaniel
April,
2013
* * *
The
photo at the beginning of this article is a baseball cartoon appearing in the
St. Louis Globe Democrat newspaper in 1960.
Amidee is the cartoonist. The
boxed quotation in the lower part of the cartoon should read, “Allowing none
through June this year” instead of “last year.” This proves that we all make mistakes. This cartoon illustrates that baseball is a
game of many emotional ups and downs.
1960 was a good year for me, but that was followed by two sub-par
years. In one game you can be a hero and
in the next game you can be a goat. But
the point is that how you feel emotionally (whether you are cheered or booed)
does not determine who you are or whether or not you are acceptable to God. Our relationship with God is based upon a
firmer foundation than that. Do we
follow Jesus Christ regardless of environmental circumstances and do we seek to
do His will at all times? And yes,
serving God with all our heart does bring great joy. The emotional part is based upon service and
obedience.
If
you know of others who would like to receive advanced copies of Pitching For The
Master attached to E-mail, please write to me at: 1095 Meadow Hill Drive, Lavon, Texas
75166. Or contact me at my E-mail
address: lindymcdaniel77@reagan.com. I appreciate your comments pro or con. If you disagree, I only ask that you give
thoughtful reasons based upon reason and facts and not general
accusations.
