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The Litmus Test
Does YOUR Church Pass It?
Does YOUR Gospel Pass It?
Many Christians use all kinds of tests (criteria) to
determine if a church or ministry is OK (safe to be a part of) or if
instead, they are wolves in sheep's clothing (and should be avoided).
Some Christians check to see if the ministry adheres to the Apostle's
Creed. Some folks just see if the church or ministry claims to
"believe in Jesus", whatever that may mean. Other's check to see if
the church is evangelistic or active in the community in some way.
Other's look for a statement of faith that says the ministry believes in
the trinity, the virgin birth, etc.
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As a blood-bought child of God who has been in and around all
sorts of churches and ministries and who has searched the scriptures for years
and has been confronted by those who had more wisdom from God than myself, I
have finally learned the TRUE LITMUS TEST to see if a ministry, a church, a
missionary, preacher, teacher, pastor, or evangelist is OK. And that
test is simply this:
Do they know the TRUE Gospel of salvation by grace alone
through the completed work of Christ alone?
Do they have the gospel of Paul, of Calvin, of John Gill, of
Matthew Henry, of Charles Spurgeon? Or do they instead have the POPULAR
gospel of today which is the man-centered,
"get-yourself-saved-anytime-you-want" FREE-WILL gospel which can save no one but
sure sounds so appealing since you can get yourself saved at the last
minute on your deathbed after living your whole life as an ungodly sinner.*[see
note below]
Are YOU in a church that never studies Romans chapter 9 or never
studies it in entirety or makes excuses for difficult verses like "Jacob I loved
but Esau I hated" rather than letting God be God and letting the King of all
Creation have mercy on whom He will have mercy? Friend, if you have never even heard of Calvinism (also known as
"The Doctrines Of Grace"), then it is very likely that you are in a church that
preaches a false "free-will" gospel. If your church or ministry uses mass
psychology or psychological devices like altar calls to coax sinners into making
"a decision", then your church is preaching a false plan of salvation that puts
the sinner in the driver seat and puts God at the mercy of the sinner. If
your church tells every one to bow their heads and close their eyes so sinners
are not embarrassed to "come forward and accept Christ", then YOU are in a
church that does not HAVE God's true, one and only plan of salvation. When
Christ walked the earth and commanded men to repent He never told people to bow
their heads and close their eyes while certain shy sinners decided whether or
not they should walk down an aisle.
What an absurd gospel as compared to the real Gospel: "I tell you, Nay: but,
except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."! [Luke 13:3] ... "Ye serpents,
ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? [Matthew
23:33]
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The TRUE Gospel of Christ makes no apologies to
sinners and does not seek to make them comfortable. It seeks to
shake them up to the very core of their souls!!! |
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"And whosoever was not found written in the book of
life was cast into the lake of fire." [Rev. 20:15]
"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they
have no rest day nor night" [Rev. 14:11]
"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The
kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their
bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the
heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he
speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure."
[Psa. 2:1-5] |
Sinners are saved by hearing the word of God, and not necessarily a scripted set
of verses like those that make up the popular tracts of today such as "4
Spiritual Laws", "The Roman's Road", "God's Bridge To Eternal
Life", or "Steps To Peace With God". All those tracts put the cart before
the horse because they tell the unsaved, unregenerated, spiritually dead sinner
to DO something to get themselves saved. The writers of those tracts
apparently don't realize that the Bible verses they are quoting can only apply
to people who already have the spirit of God in them and so those verses are
referring to FRUITS or EVIDENCES of salvation, not CAUSES of or PRECURSORS to
salvation.
God desires that his preachers use
the law of God (Romans 3:20) to inform sinners that they are
indeed violators of His law. Then, if it is God's will to save a
particular individual at a particular time, the Holy Spirit will bring
conviction upon that sinner and God will remove the sinner's heart of stone and
replace it with a heart of flesh, at which point the sinner will become a new
creation, born-again, without needing to say a sinner's prayer and without
having to walk down an aisle or sign a decision card. It will all have
been the work of God's grace and mercy alone. PERIOD! And that sinner, once he
or she becomes a new creature in Christ, will want to repent (turn away from sin
and seek God's kind of holiness) and will be able to really repent and will be able to believe in Christ, the REAL
Jesus Christ who saves sinners without having to wait for the sinner to accept
Him. Once a sinner is Born Again, they will want to accept Christ
and His Lordship in their lives. But prior to that
point they are spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1) and completely unable to turn to God
(Romans 3:11, 8:7-8).
Dear Sinner, have YOU passed God's litmus test? Do YOU
have true salvation that depends on Christ alone and not on what you
accepted or did not accept or prayed or did not pray? Has God convicted
you of the depth of your sin? Has he shown you His hatred for sin and His love
of righteousness? Has He shown you your complete inability to save
yourself or even contribute towards your salvation. Has the thrice-holy God of
the Bible shown you just how lost and undone you are and your complete dependency
upon His grace and mercy alone?
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"For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and
going about to establish their own righteousness,
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." [Romans
10:3] |
Do not fall for the lies of the free-will gospel. Search
the scriptures and not just the ones the free-willers quote! Your pastor
may think that spiritually dead unsaved sinners have the power to come to Christ
of their "own free-will" but the God of the Bible says
they are lost and undone and slaves to sin until and unless God grants them repentance (see Acts
11:18). And that kind of repentance (turning from sin) is only the work of
a regenerated soul for which only God can take credit. The unsaved have no will and no power to worship God in spirit
and in truth. Their will is bent towards sin and self-righteousness. The unregenerated may be able to worship God in
self-righteousness but not with Christ's righteousness. The spiritually
dead may have the will and the power to choose between false Gods (Joshua 24:15)
but they have no ability to come to Christ for eternal life (John 6:44).
Final note: Too many professing Christians are allowing error -
very serious error regarding the Gospel - to creep into the Church today.
This tolerance of error is often done in the name of unity. God's people
should avoid any unity that undermines the Gospel and other Biblical truths.
Jesus told Pilate "I have come to bear witness unto the truth" (John 18:37).
He did not say "I have come to bring unity". He said in fact "I came not
to send peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:24). We live in a day and age when
hardly anybody, even in the body of Christ, wants to say anything
confrontational, even to correct gross error. We think being
non-confrontational is always a virtue, when in fact it is often the opposite.
It is a sin that allows error to go on unchecked.
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If you wish to learn more about the TRUE God-centered plan of salvation
and how it differs from the FALSE man-centered "free-will" gospel, then
please examine the articles listed on these pages:
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Make sure that YOU
pass the "Litmus test" for salvation. Make sure that YOU have the
TRUE gospel! |
Ray Kane
* God (without the sinner's help or cooperation) can save
a sinner on their deathbed, but most likely that happens a lot less often than
people wish to believe. Even on a deathbed, a truly saved person would
probably exhibit some kind of fruit (changed heart) if they are still
able to communicate, just as the thief on the cross [Luke 23:43] who stopped
mocking Christ as soon as God changed his heart. And isn't that indeed an
amazing act of God... that a man nailed to a cross, in agony and about to die
for his crimes, who just a short while earlier was lashing out at Christ, would
have a change of heart! Dare we give the sinner any credit for that
transformation? "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his
spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." [Jer 13:23] |
