The Basis for Real Decisions

The Basis for Real Decisions

I found the article "Close That Door!" The Ministry, August, 1961, especially chal­lenging. The seven points on how to close the door were all good. However, I believe there are other viewpoints that should be considered on this very important problem.

Pastor, Defiance, Ohio

I FOUND the article "Close That Door!" The Ministry, August, 1961, especially chal­lenging. The seven points on how to close the door were all good. However, I believe there are other viewpoints that should be considered on this very important problem.

Without being concerned with who is at fault (a question which I am sure no one can answer) I would like first to consider the fact that the majority of the apostates leave the church after ten years' mem­bership. The author left the interpretation of this fact to the reader. I hope, however, that we do not jump to a hasty conclusion that because they had been church mem­bers for ten years they were therefore con­verted Christians.

For instance, the motive of fear can cause a person to adhere to strong convic­tions over long periods of time. Persons of certain religious convictions will do many good acts and adhere tenaciously to their religious practices in order to escape the fires of purgatory or to lessen the torment of a relative in purgatory. Under great in­tellectual conviction of the sure judgments of God, it is possible that some may adhere for years to certain practices in self-efforts to please an angry God who is going to de­stroy the unrighteous at His second advent. Of course, the unrighteous here referred to are those who have sinned away their day of grace. We might well preach as did John the Baptist, "Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matt. 3:7).

In our persuasive speaking, public or private, it would be well to urge individu­als to flee not from God but to Him; not to be afraid of God, but to trust Him. We must remember that men are saved by faith, not fear. Fear may make them church members but it will never make them Christians. The fearful are cast into the lake of fire with such people as mur­derers and idolaters (Rev. 21:8). The fear of God, which we wish so often to put into people, should be a respect for Him. This subject of Christian motivation should be handled very carefully and skill­fully, so that if possible the erring one would not feel rejected by God or His peo­ple. One may try for ten years or more to earn the approval of God and His repre­sentatives only to give up finally in despair. A certain apostate of my acquaintance was invited by pastor after pastor to come back into the church. One day his son said to the pastor, "Dad wonders why the Ad-ventist preachers all want him to join their church because the end of the world is near." The pastor decided to use an­other method of persuasion. He began talking to the backslider about the new earth and the love of God for sinners. After the pastor had appealed to him to surren­der to Christ he replied, "Why should I join your church?" This pastor, who was not worried about church statistics, re­plied, "I haven't asked you to join my church." It had been discovered that the man liked Friday-night ball games and had come to realize by painful experience that some of the saints were not so saintly. His bitterness toward members of the church and his love for ball games had kept him from being a Christian. The pas­tor's appeal was, "Wouldn't it be a shame if after Jesus had bought you an eternal home at such a price, you wouldn't let Him give it to you just because you refused to give up Friday-night ball games or a grudge against a brother?" The back­slider lay awake all night, and the next morning surrendered his heart to God and came back to the church.

A study of individuals as well as of sta­tistics might reveal that the reasons why people become church members are many and varied. A study of theology, I believe, will reveal that the only motives recog­nized of Heaven are faith, hope, and love. We would do well to keep these pure mo­tives in mind when trying to persuade peo­ple to be loyal to God and to His church. The greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13: 13). Love to God ranks first. Next to it, and coming as a result of keeping the first principle, is love to our fellow man (see The Desire of Ages, p. 607). We keep the first of these two great commandments be­cause we know God's personal love for us (1 John 4:19). The only genuine hope that anyone has is that God loves him in spite of his sins.

Some people never come to the point of personal decision because they, although grown to adulthood, are dependent on others to think for them. They may have grown up in a Christian home and at­tended a Christian school, and for such, statistics for baptism and church member­ship are high. How many of these church members, however, are true Christians? This is one statistic that only God can an­swer.

One such man was a member of a cer­tain church. He had been reared in a Sev­enth-day Adventist home, had attended a Seventh-day Adventist church school and academy, and was baptized as a result of a Week of Prayer meeting. However, he married a non-Adventist girl and did not pay tithe. But he did come to church against much opposition at home, brought his children, and taught the youth class. He had stood firm for the Sabbath against much opposition from his employer. He had been an active member for more than ten years. A new pastor moved into the church district and began preaching a se­ries of sermons on what it means to be a Christian. With much success he per­suaded the members that it must be their own personal decision. He was so success­ful, in fact, that this man realized for the first time that he had been a member only because his mother and teachers wanted him to and that he had gone forward for baptism because his classmates had. Later, removed from the influence of his Chris­tian associates but still dependent and in­decisive, he was drawn away by a worldly companion. His present state is confusion as to what he really does believe. He was someone's baptismal statistic and if the present pastor is faithful to what he con­siders his duty, he will probably be an­other man's statistic for apostasy. Statistics can be helpful, but their interpretation is so involved with human nature that they should cause us to interpret them with great care.

On the positive side of the ledger is the story of a young boy who was approached by his pastor during a church school Week of Prayer meeting to take his stand for Jesus and be baptized. His open response was that his parents did not think that he should. Their reason, according to their son, was that some of his bad habits should be given up before he could be a Christian. The pastor appealed to him to decide for himself whether or not he was ready to become a Christian. He made the motions of wrapping a gift package con­taining a beautiful home on the new earth. Rising from his seat, he handed it to the boy and said, "Jesus wants to give this to you as a free gift, and all you have to do in return is to be willing to accept His way of life. Do you want it?" The boy decided to accept it, and I am sure that the angels rejoiced that day.

The making of public appeals can also lay the responsibility of individual deci­sion where it belongs. One pastor holding a Week of Prayer series in another church school in a large city was speaking in his closing message on the principles of Chris­tian recreation. After having given his ar­guments to a somewhat restless group he stated, "You may not agree with me, and I am not too much concerned as to whether or not you do agree, but whatever we do let's be Christians." His vote of confidence in their individual ability to make intelli­gent decisions and his making clear their own solemn responsibility to decide for Christ brought a spell of silence that would, I am sure, have enabled one to hear a pin drop.

The appeal to hope as a motive to es­tablish people in the church is illustrated in this story of a backslider who was visited during an evangelistic series in a certain small town. Much persuasion was used un­successfully upon him to join the church because time was short and because his wife would not be baptized unless he was. Then it was found that two obstacles lay in his way. The major one was that his failure to live up to his baptismal vows was discouraging him from trying again. The other was that he was not clear on a certain teaching of the church. The pastor upon learning of this took along the book Steps to Christ by Ellen G. White on the next visit and read aloud the chapter "Faith and Acceptance." The next visit he had a Bible study on the gift of prophecy to the church. This man made his decision and is today a faithful elder in the local church. The appeal to hope was in the little book Steps to Christ.

It is needful that ministers study people and motives as well as Greek, Hebrew, and statistics.

There is, I believe, great danger in an overemphasis of statistics to the detriment of the ministry. The burden of the ministry as I see it, is not to make the statistics look good, but rather to persuade men, women, boys, and girls in and out of the church to lay the burden of their guilt on Jesus and to accept His righteousness. They cannot possibly do this unless they are inspired to have faith in place of fear, hope in place of discouragement, and love in place of hatred and contempt. If they truly are brought to know God, they can be persuaded to have all three.

The challenge is before us to use every means at our command to make God known to man and to leave the decision with the individual. If we are willing to let the statistics be what they and God make them, we may soon see the great outpour­ing of the Holy Spirit we so much need to finish the work.

 

Pastor, Defiance, Ohio

February 1962

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