The idea of calling people up to the front of the church to supposedly get right with God there is not Biblical.  Whether there is actually an altar at the front of the church building, or whether people are being called to the front row of the church for the so-called altar call, there is nothing special at the front of the church to better facilitate, or validate, a response of living faith in Christ before God than there is anywhere else.  We should rather demonstrate such a response by doing the thing, or the things, which a right response to God demands that we do.

Examples: Doing whatever works are fit to demonstrate repentance before God and confessing Christ publicly in baptism as the Bible teaches.  Or, in the case of one who is a true Christian already walking in the narrow way in Christ, that would mean taking the next step of faith that one ought to take.  That could look as different as the many different ways that a person might need to go forward in obedient faith.

So many have a false hope of salvation through having responded to an altar-call.  Many so-called gospel ministers glory in getting people to respond to an altar-call (think Billy Graham crusades and the many different crusades that report statistics which, if added up and taken at face value, would indicate that the entire population of earth has been soundly converted to Christ already- perhaps even many times over.  It really is madness).  

I’ve been in meetings where the vast majority came up to the front near the end.  I have little doubt that those who put on these meetings considered the meetings to be successful because of this.  The altar, or whatever was at the front, was so crowded that anyone who really wanted to pray and seek God would have been better off just staying where they had been sitting.

Many have misled others in relation to giving altar calls, especially by using emotional manipulation tactics to get people to respond to their altar call.  These need to repent.  True repentance in this would mean losing face and acknowledging that many (maybe all) whom they think they’ve led to Christ have actually instead become two-fold more the children of hell and are almost certainly very confused over this experience as well.

What some might call the altar-call could be a way to separate those who think they urgently need prayer, or those who might need counsel, away from everyone else.  Yet this would not really be an altar call- especially not in the way that it is typically done now.   It would rather be a way to facilitate people getting alone to pray and/or facilitate people getting further instruction after hearing preaching.  When understood like this, and taken no further, and when response to the call is not equated with conversion to Christ nor used as a measure of the success of a meeting, then this is not necessarily a deception.  

It’s also notable that occasionally people are just ready to break and might turn to the Lord with the slightest nudge to do so.  If they would have done so while simultaneously running to the front of the church to respond to an altar call, they would have done so right where they were sitting or standing if that is what they had been directed to do.  

Altar call responses in reality stroke the preacher’s ego who gives them.  They don’t accomplish anything truly good which couldn’t have happened by other methods which weren’t so potentially misleading and overall deceptive.  They are rather very likely to beget confusion and make people two-fold the children of hell through trusting in an experience induced by an emotionally manipulative preacher (which is also often accompanied by music used in an emotionally manipulative way to complement and enhance the preacher’s methods).

Sometimes standing up in a meeting to confess surrender to Christ, or telling others that you need prayer, could be a helpful moment in the overall process of doing what worship at an altar was intended to signify in the Bible.  Yet many in the realm of professing Christianity have this idea that salvation is basically going up to the front (they might say, to the altar) and saying the sinner’s prayer.  No matter how one lives afterwards, that moment is what ultimately matters to them.  

To make things yet more deceitful and ridiculous, often if someone has never responded to an altar call nor said the sinner’s prayer, yet they really begin to walk as a faithful Christian (and even confess Christ in getting baptized like the Bible commands), the same shallow ministers of the altar call and others who promote the altar call will even often be suspicious of the authenticity of that person’s Christian faith until/unless they go through the altar call/sinner’s prayer routine.  

What a pathetic superstition.  

When the Bible warns of vain tradition and commandments of men which turn from the truth, a prime example in our time would be the unbiblical altar call and sinner’s prayer routine which has permeated so many circles in the realm of professing Christianity.  This has come to practically be regarded as a sacrament whereby people not only enter into true Christianity, but even secure salvation (through the unconditional eternal security lie which usually accompanies the altar call and sinner’s prayer routine).  

This is a sacred cow which needs to be slaughtered.  

No one is going to improve upon Joshua when he exhorted Israel after they entered Canaan.  An exposure and rebuke of the chief idols of America, including the chief idols of the realm of professing Christianity, followed by an exhortation like Joshua gave, makes the point sufficiently.  It also doesn’t leave anyone with a false assurance based upon an experience nor communicate the devilish delusion that one can have security in the Lord without faithfully worshiping and serving Him from the heart while shunning idolatry and all sin in the present.  

Those who minister such false assurance and/or communicate the delusion of unconditional eternal security are serving Satan.  These need to repent and get right with the Lord themselves.  

Joshua 24:14-27 (Joshua is speaking to Israel after he had rehearsed God’s acts of faithfulness to them and built up to this exhortation) “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.  And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood (the Euphrates River), or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.  And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods; For the Lord our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed: And the Lord drave out from before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land: therefore will we also serve the Lord; for he is our God.  And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins.  If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good.  And the people said unto Joshua, Nay; but we will serve the Lord.  And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you the Lord, to serve him.  And they said, We are witnesses.  Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel.  And the people said unto Joshua, The Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey.  So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.  And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.  And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the words of the Lord which he spoke unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God.”

Can you imagine a preacher or Bible teacher actually telling people that they cannot serve the Lord due to His holy and jealous character?  Joshua in his faithfulness indeed did this.  He wasn’t saying that serving the Lord is impossible.  He was rather communicating that no one can faithfully serve the Lord while being casual about it nor even do so without exceedingly great fear and trembling with great care to separate oneself from idolatry and all sin.  It is delusional to equate responding to a preacher’s efforts to get one to come up to the front of the church and say the sinner’s prayer with that.

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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