Fundamentalist Or Calvinist
A while back I attended a preacher’s fellowship and left with the feeling I had been called a bad name. Each one of the preachers kept referring to soul winners as pragmatists. (Recently on a mission trip to the Philippines I was privileged to win five people to the Lord. Four of them on airplanes and in airports and one in an office of a welding supply store in Malolas.) I went home from the preacher’s fellowship and opened my Webster’s 1828 dictionary and found the word pragmatist defined as one who gets involved in someone else’s business.The preachers were saying that in leading someone to the Lord in personal soul winning, that person was getting involved in God’s business. Needless to say I was in the midst of a group of Calvinists who believed and preached the five points of the tulip. Their main points being limited atonement and irresistible grace.
A soul winner is one who not only witnesses, but also draws the net after the gospel is presented. In other words, he takes them through the scriptures and shows them they are lost and are going to hell. Then he tells them they have one of two choices: To accept Christ as Savior by grace through faith with a repentant heart, or to reject Jesus Christ and go to an eternal lake of fire and brimstone. Romans 3:22 tells us it is Christ’s faith that saves us and not our own, but man has a responsibility, and that is to believe, which according to scripture does include repentance.
The reason many people never win souls is they never bring them to a point of decision: “ Will you or will you not accept Christ as Savior?“. It is sad to say that the average Fundamental Baptist is, not by belief, but by practice, a Hyper-Calvinist. Most never open their mouths to give the gospel, and if they do, they leave the person hung out over hell and never give them an invitation to be saved. I preach in many churches and in most of them the prayer requests are for someone with cancer or having surgery or heart problems, kidney failure, diabetes or some other sickness. It is fine to pray for sickness or family problems, but who is concerned about lost souls who are dying and going to hell? Most Baptists are so concerned about “picking them green” or easy-believism they witness to no one.
There are two ditches. One is easy-believism and the other is Hyper-Calvinism. The real soul winner is a balanced Christian and is in the middle of the road and not in either ditch. A soul winner is soul-conscious. The urgency of the truth that there are people all around him who are dying without Christ is constantly on his mind. A soul winner is willing to spend his Saturdays and Tuesday or Thursday nights out witnessing and his daily routine includes the habitual handing out of gospel tracts.
The world and the religious crowd want all church activities to stay within the four walls of the church. The sad truth is, that is exactly what has happened. A few years ago, Ellen the Sodomite came out of the closet and said “Shame on you Christian”. Their attitude is “we’re in your face“. The Christian has gone into the closet, which is called a church building. We go inside the walls of the closet, the church, and preach, pray, sing and shout and call that serving God. That’s for your good. Taking the gospel outside is for the cause of Christ.
Shame on the church for becoming ashamed of Christ. Do as the Bible commands. “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”. Don’t be guilty of practicing Hyper-Calvinism even though you do not believe it. Be a soul winner and fill those empty pews.
Dr. J. Wendell Runion
President, IBOM, Ashville, NC.