A Challenge To Christians: How Is Salvation Through Christ Accomplished?

I was once an adherent to the sinner’s prayer, but I have since switched to this method: The Three Step Salvation Plan. But many disagree with this method of salvation, including this very sincere lover of Christ who dropped by my website to tell me so. With such people, I had basically decided to agree to disagree, UNTIL I found this website recently (which regrettably I have been unable to re – locate) that claimed that Billy Graham created the sinner’s prayer, that it was unknown to Christianity beforetimes, that it was creating legions of false converts, and that Billy Graham’s Calvinism was the culprit. Which struck me as totally odd, because I am aware of Calvinists who themselves claim that Billy Graham and his sinner’s prayer create false converts. But it caught my attention, because whatever one thinks of Calvinism (which I oppose), one cannot deny that Billy Graham has clearly gone in an anti – Biblical direction, and that the evangelical movement that he mainstreamed (some say created) and that I myself used to be a part of is with few exceptions utterly atrocious.

This is the problem. The Bible really does not give a guide. And that is a good thing, because if they had, then it would have been just another thing one group of “Christians” would have used in their legalism and another group of “Christians” would have added to with their traditions and extrabiblical revelations. It would be just another thing that you could say as a ritual without any sincerity, belief, commitment, or spiritual change, or just another thing you could attach all sorts of heretical blasphemous apostasy to and thereby deny the true meaning of the Bible and nature of God. So by clearly describing salvation without spelling out a SPECIFIC WAY to salvation in the same manner that the Old Testament laws, rituals, and observances were in excrutiating detail, God in His Infinite Wisdom saved the salvation process from religion. But it appears that man has opposed God on salvation as they have with everything else.

Now I suppose that I could ask how salvation rituals have been performed historically, but even that is problematic. Though I deny being a Catholic basher, from Constantine until Luther the Catholic Church was all the western Christians had, and even after the Reformation from what I have seen the early Protestant denominations initially retained much of Catholicism and then over time rather than simply going back to the Bible simply usurped Catholicism with their own man – made traditions and interpretations, which rather than converging veered into radically different directions (a fact that Catholics note, and not without glee).

One would think that “going back to the early church” would be a solution, but is it really? The early church was exceptionally chaotic, with the same modalist, humanist, and gnostic heresies in circulation today moving through the church back then; as a matter of fact much of the New Testament is meant specifically to oppose them. The Council of Nicea, lamented as it is my many Protestants (and anti – Christian conspiracy theorists) was the most significant event in the formation of true Christian doctrine and practice since John completed Revelation (with Martin Luther’s removing the Catholic extrabiblical literature being the second most important). So unless it is something that can be proven to be what was given to the church directly by Yeshua HaMashiach or his apostles (which includes Paul and Matthias, you “Christian” liars who bash either or both), if it is pre – Nicea I have no confidence in it.

Which brings me back into the sinner’s prayer. If it is true that it either did not exist or was not in wide use until Billy Graham introduced it, and it is not how the act of salvation was historically practiced in the church, then what? If you are walking down the street or riding the bus and God tells you to gain for Him some random person that you have never met before and probably will never see again, how is that person to be gained? I can think of no other way than the sinner’s prayer, and if the sinner’s prayer works in the street or on the bus, then it has to work in the church. Any corrections? Suggestions? Comments? Any counter – challenges from non – Christians (or non – fundamentalist “Christians”, who let’s face it, are not actually Christians at all) who are angered at how a person who is so sure in his own beliefs, who aggressively proseltyzes, and who unconditionally condemns to eternal damnation all else can even be entertaining questions in such a vital area? (Let me short – circuit you by saying this: just because I KNOW BY FAITH that the Bible is true doesn’t mean that I understand all of it, but I can say that there is enough of the Bible that I do understand completely, things like John 14:6, to say without reservation that you are going to burn in the lake of fire for eternity unless you repent of your sins, accept Yeshua HaMashiach as your personal Lord and Saviour, and love Him by obeying His Commandments and also love your neighbor for the rest of your life, and if you disagree with any of that, then yes this means you, and you need to go say and believe the very prayer that I am attempting to justify, for even if it does have problems you will be better off for saying and believing it than you are now; at least you will have a chance which you can then fulfill or throw away.)