Category Archives: Faith

Lordship Salvation’s Mike Gendron: Steeling Minds Against the Gospel

Posted on April 22, 2016 by | 196 comments

By johninnc

Ephesians 6:11-12:

[11] Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. [12] For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Today, I had the nauseating displeasure of ingesting spiritual poison, in the form of a false gospel tract entitled “True Faith or False Hope: How Can I be Sure?” The tract was issued by an organization called “Proclaiming the Gospel,” headed up by founder and director, Mike Gendron.

In addition to his role with “Proclaiming the Gospel,” Gendron is an author and popular Bible conference speaker. His speaking engagements have included the “Steeling the Mind” conferences put on by “The Compass Group.” The “Steeling the Mind” list of speakers appears to represent the gamut of professing Christendom, including some who should know better than to participate in conferences alongside those who corrupt the gospel.

The false gospel tract, “True Faith or False Hope: How Can I be Sure,” includes many of the Lordship “salvation” (LS) greatest hits, including:

  • Faulty Bible translations
  • Standard LS proof texts from scripture, misinterpreted
  • A faulty understanding of repentance in the context of eternal salvation
  • The false notion that God gives people faith in Christ
  • The false Calvinist tenet of perseverance of the saints

Following are some examples from the tract, along with my comments:

There are two types of “faith” described in the Bible. One is a dead faith that originates in man as he gives mental assent to certain truths about God, but it produces no evidence of a new life in Christ (James 2:17). The other is a God-given faith which includes being born again as a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is a living faith that is coupled with repentance (Acts 11:18). It flows out of a new heart that desires to bear fruit for God’s Glory (Ezekiel 36:26; John 15:8).

(My comment: God gives all people the ability to believe in something. If one exercises belief in Christ, he is saved. God does not give anyone faith in Christ.

The “intellectual assent” argument is standard LS jargon, intended to demonstrate that faith in Christ is not sufficient for eternal life. The verses cited in the tract are intended to give the false impression that one can determine whether or not he is saved by examining his works. This is standard LS fruit inspection, designed by Satan to keep lost people lost and to turn believers eyes back onto themselves for assurance of eternal life.)

Which kind of faith do you have? Would you be willing to look to scripture to test your faith? (2 Corinthians 13:5).

(My comment: 2 Corinthians 13:5 is another LS go-to verse to try to falsely assert that one can tell whether or not he is saved by examining his works. That verse, in context, was part of the Apostle Paul’s defense of his apostleship, and has nothing to do with asking someone to take an inventory of personal righteousness to determine whether or not one is showing the right marks, or signs, of having eternal life. The tract also uses the same tired false LS arguments regarding the book of 1 John containing similar “tests” of eternal life).

The Lord Jesus said we must “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to life, and those that find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). The narrow way is hard, and only a few find it, because you must diligently search the Scriptures to find it.

(My comment: Jesus is the strait gate and the narrow way! The way is not hard. The way is narrow.

The KJV Bible has a much different version of Matthew 7:13-14:

[13] Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: [14] Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

In addition, diligently searching the scriptures does not necessarily lead to eternal life. Believing in Jesus as Savior always leads to eternal life. We see this illustrated perfectly in John 5:39-40:

 [39] Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. [40] And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.)

Godly sorrow for their sins produced a repentance that led to salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone (2 Corinthians 7:10).

(My comment: 2 Corinthians 7:10 was written to believers, not unbelievers. It had nothing to do with their receiving eternal life. Since Christ died for the ungodly, how would it be that an unsaved person could muster up a “Godly sorrow”?

Repentance in salvation means a change of mind from any idea of religion that man may have and to accept God’s way of salvation. Repentance does not in any sense include a demand for a change of conduct before or after salvation.)

False converts are not aware of their perilous condition…They desire Jesus as a priest to pardon their sins, but not as a prophet to instruct them, or a king to rule over them.

(My comment: People do not have to desire Jesus as a prophet to instruct them, nor as a king to rule over them, in order to have eternal life. This is unabashed works for salvation – trying to turn the gift of eternal life through Christ Jesus into a trade.)

False gospel tracts, such as the one discussed above, are a “wile of the devil,” designed to keep people lost and to confuse believers. We must put on the full armor of God to stand against these wiles.

If you would like to know the truth about how to have eternal life, click here: THE GOSPEL

196 Comments

Posted in Assurance, Christianity, Ecumenism, Faith, Grace, Lordship Salvation, Repentance

Lordship Salvation: How U (1/2) 2 Fans Reject Christ

Posted on November 16, 2014 by | 42 comments

By johninnc and janeinnc

Ephesians 2:8-9: [8] For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: [9] Not of works, lest any man should boast.

There have been many articles written on the subject of Lordship “salvation” and what it is, and isn’t.

What LS is: LS is salvation by faith in Christ + works. LS is a formula for rejecting Christ.

LS is the unsupportable belief that the PERFORMANCE of works, the PROMISE of works, or the EVIDIENCE of works must accompany faith in Christ in order to establish, or provide evidence, that such faith has resulted in eternal life.

The Bible teaches that faith and works do not mix for salvation:

Romans 3:28: Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

Since faith and works cannot be mixed for salvation, LS is simply salvation by works.

What LS isn’t: LS isn’t faith in Christ. LS isn’t the gospel. LS isn’t Christianity.

Are Lordship “salvationists” (LSers) saved? It depends on whether they have ever had a moment in which they trusted in Christ ALONE as Savior.

Either way, LSers do not believe the gospel now.

The false LS formula is: “Salvation” = Faith in Christ + U (½) 2*

* “You have to”

Common forms of “you have to”:

  • You have to desire a relationship with Christ
  • You have to want your life to change for the better
  • You have to want to stop sinning
  • You have to love God
  • You have to have your heart set on obeying Christ
  • You have to be passionate
  • You have to believe in your heart, not just your head
  • You have to confess your sins
  • You have to be willing to turn from your sins
  • You have to surrender your life to Christ
  • You have to commit your life to Christ
  • You have to show evidence of good works
  • You have to be moving in the right direction
  • You have to love your fellow man
  • You have to follow Jesus in discipleship
  • You have to persevere in your faith
  • You have to, you have to, you have to…!

—————————————————————————————————-

Following are excerpts of a Facebook interchange between Jane and a U (½) 2 proponent (LSer), in which the LSer reads, and summarily rejects, the truth of the gospel:

LSer: Salvation by grace is one of the bedrock teachings of Baptists. For most of us it is in our blood. I speak as a Baptist preacher’s kid, a deacon, and a frequent short term foreign missionary. Nobody does salvation by grace like us.

Jane: Look at the Southern Baptist Convention website “How to be Saved.”You will see 3 works you must do to be saved – none are biblical: 1. It plainly states that receiving salvation is a commitment before it even tells you the plan of salvation. (The receiving of salvation does NOT involve a commitment! If you must make a commitment, you are doing a work.); 2. Repent of your sins. (The Bible tells us to repent (change the mind), but never to repent of our sins – unless you are reading another version where that was added, so that is a work); 3. You are told to “confess Jesus as your Lord and your God – this is to surrender control of your life to Jesus” (If you must surrender control, then that is also a work).

LSer: …so a dispassionate statement of belief, with nothing behind it, and no intention to serve God in any way is all it takes…interesting belief. Never heard that before.

Jane: That does not surprise me. Most people have never heard the Gospel clearly explained. The Gospel is not about what we do for Christ, it’s about what He has done for us. If one thinks he must serve God in order to be saved, he is not trusting in Christ alone, he is trusting in Christ plus his commitment. Salvation is not a trade of our commitment in exchange for eternal life. It is the receipt of the free gift of eternal life through faith in Christ. If we could be saved by our commitment to Christ, He died in vain.

LSer: The difference of opinion is about what constitutes works. Accepting Christ as our Savior certainly sounds like a relationship to me.

Jane: Nope. Not a relationship, a gift. If you were to pull my drowning carcass from a lake, I may just walk off without a 2nd thought, I may spend the rest of my life thanking you, or I may drift in and out of your life to express appreciation from time to time. Regardless, in all circumstances, I have still been saved from death.

LSer: I guess the bottom line is that if you are going to define belief as any of us would, but commitment as works, we’ll never get together on this. Take care of yourself.

Jane: I’m sorry that you can’t let go of the commitment part. If you are even remotely curious, please check out the following: expreacherman.com, a blog where many articles have been written and biblicly supported regarding this topic, and northlandchurch.com, the website for Northland Bible Baptist Church (unaffiliated, of course). Dr. Cucuzza has an excellent video presentation of the grace plan of salvation.

42 Comments

Posted in Assurance, Eternal Security, Faith, Lordship Salvation, Southern Baptist Convention

REPENTANCE, Tom Cucuzza New Booklet Free Download

Posted on July 4, 2014 by | 34 comments

Brand New — just published July 4, 2014:
REPENTANCE
Its Meaning and application

Repentance Booklet PDF <<Click to download

Clear, simple and understandable for everyone.  For those who really want to understand the most maligned word in the Holy Bible.

34 Comments

Posted in Faith, Free Grace, Repentance

Another Gospel – The Truth about Lordship “salvation.”

Posted on April 15, 2014 by | 80 comments

Our friend Mark Andre has produced an amazing Biblical video, proclaiming the Truth of the Gospel of Grace and exposing all that is wrong with Lordship “salvation,” Calvinism and other false teachings.

Mark called several months ago asking permission to use some material and ideas from ExPreacherMan.com. We are happy we consented.

The progression of the video keeps your attention — Mark explains the simplicity of the Gospel of Grace and then, naming names, he exposes the preachers and proponents of “works salvation” (Probation). This mission is especially important to Mark because his is a former member of John MacArthur’s church. He realized the Truth, abandoned the lie perpetrated by JMac and is dedicated to exposing those who insist on adding works to the Gospel of God’s Grace.

This is a must watch video. Please recommend it to your friends, especially those who may be mixed up in false teaching. It is also a good doctrinal review for all believers.

Great job, Mark!!

Eternal Life for You << Click

80 Comments

Posted in Assurance of salvation, Calvinism, Christian, David Platt, Eternal Security, Faith, Francis Chan, Free Grace, Grace, Hope, John MacArthur, John Piper, Justification, Kirk Cameron, Lordship Salvation, Paul Washer, Ray Comfort, Reformed theology, Repentance, Salvation, Security of the believer, Washer

Lordship “Salvation” — Willful Naiveté ?

Posted on February 25, 2014 by | 64 comments

By Jack Weaver and our fellow Administrator, John

We will borrow some ideas from a Conservative friend’s web site. He applied the thought to politics, but we see some parallels between the politically naïve and the theologically naïve.  In both cases, otherwise intelligent people seem to park their brains at the door and believe astonishingly stupid propositions.  For lack of a better term, we will call it “willful naiveté.”

In politics, willful naiveté can be seen in people who hold advanced degrees in economics that have convinced themselves that 1+1 = 3, because it fits their political narrative. In the theological realm, there are scores of prominent “educated” theologians who are teaching their theological narrative, the lie of Lordship “salvation”, to vulnerable non-believers and believers alike.

Lordship “salvation” (LS) is the unsupportable belief that the PERFORMANCE of good works, the PROMISE of good works, or the EVIDENCE of good works MUST accompany faith in Christ in order to make that faith result in eternal life.

LS arrived on the scene just after the start of the church.  It was first manifested in false teachers who claimed one must be circumcised – in addition to trusting in Christ as Savior – in order to have eternal life.

Acts 15:1:  “And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved”

LS has shown up in various forms ever since, and has dominated popular Christendom through the centuries.  And, the raging wave of LS continues to invade and overtake our Grace Faith communities.

We see stunning examples of “willful naiveté” in those who advocate LS.  The Bible has more than 150 verses that state that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  See article linked for more information: Believers Justification << Link

However, this overwhelming biblical evidence does not daunt LS advocates.  Instead, they lean on their own understanding of certain biblical “proof texts”, always taken out of context to support their false teaching.  Or worse, their misinterpretation of scripture leads them to believe there are biblical “paradoxes”.  For example, many LS advocates say things like “salvation is free, but it will cost you everything.”  This is non-biblical nonsense.  The fact of the matter is that there are no paradoxes in God’s Word.

LS destroys everything it touches.  It impedes the advance of the gospel, thereby keeping lost people lost; for believers who are bewitched by LS, it undermines their faith and assurance, it robs them of the power to live the Christian life, and it keeps them from a sound spiritual understanding of scripture.

LS has only two potentially “attractive” features that both appeal to the flesh.  First, it appeals to man’s pride.   One may internalize feelings of having contributed to (or merited) his salvation in some way.  He may feel like he has somehow “purified” himself.  There are side benefits, including a sense of comfort in “group think” and a sense of belonging in the ecumenical mainstream. Second, it appeals to the tribal need for an external, common enemy.  So, LS advocates make bogeymen out of proponents of salvation by Grace through faith in Christ alone.  Accordingly, they malign believers, using all sorts of pejorative language. Lordship “salvation” is very much a separate “religion,” a cult in the worst sense of those words.

LS advocates will continue to be deceived and to deceive others until the Millennium. They have successfully “converted” many into a works-based religion, false salvation and probation — which result in no salvation at all. By selling books, designing seductive web sites, producing slick YouTube videos, by infiltrating and taking over churches, religious schools, Bible colleges and seminaries, LSers have raised yet another generation of “Christians” who will continue to refuse, or fall from, God’s true Grace. They abhor the freedom and individual liberty we are to have in Christ Jesus as is so clearly delineated in God’s Word, the Bible. (John 3:16-17, Ephesians 2:8-10, Titus 3:5)

Is their deception a willful naiveté or deliberate?

Our suggestion: We waste our time using secular logic on these folks, so let us use God’s Powerful Word!!! (Hebrews 4:12)  Scripture says, “Let us reason together.” However, we often find LS advocates very unreceptive to either reason or scriptural proof.  They find it virtually impossible to accept Biblical, contextual “reason.” We must continue to “earnestly contend for the Faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) and do it Biblically. That is the goal of our ministry here at ExPreacherMan.com which, by God’s Grace, we will continue! We thank the Lord for our many friends who support this ministry by commenting here in support of God’s Biblical Grace.

Please click here >> Wiki-Index of False Teachers for our compilation of a partial index of false teachers.

The Truth of FREE Eternal Life << Click

64 Comments

Posted in Assurance of salvation, Bible, Calvinism, Christian, Christianity, Eternal Security, Faith, Free Grace, Grace, Hope, Joy, Lordship Salvation, Once saved always saved, Salvation, Security of the believer

ExPreacheMan.com’s Most Popular Articles Posted Within The Amazing Past Year

Posted on February 8, 2014 by | 12 comments

Listed below are our most popular articles posted within the last year. The number of views are recorded in the right hand column of each listing. You will notice on our page- right column – that ExPreacherMan.com has accumulated over half a million (506,544) views since its inception,.

Feel free to scan the list below for a topic that interests you — click on the link , read it and we welcome your comment.

We thank the Lord for His Grace, your support and help in making ExPreacherMan an Oasis of Grace in a mixed up world of false prophets and religions.

59,627
8,258
6,105
5,556
3,273
3,026
2,812
2,804
2,710
2,403
2,355
2,098
1,847
1,819
1,696
1,635
1,600
1,590
1,575
1,566
1,529
1,514
1,503
1,383
1,354
1,324
1,318
1,277
1,265
1,260
1,231
1,198
1,186
1,142
1,080
1,042
1,042
1,004

God’s Eternal Plan of Salvation. FREE << Cli

12 Comments

Posted in Assurance of salvation, Bible, Christian, Eternal Security, Faith, Free Grace, Grace, Lordship Salvation, Once saved always saved, Salvation

A Free Gift? Absolutely FREE? You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

Posted on December 24, 2013 by | 11 comments

John 8:32 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

By Jack Weaver

TV Clothing store – Buy one get two absolutely free

An electric razor, buy one and get one absolutely free — just pay shipping and handling.

Free web computer scan for problems — absolutely free — just a small fee to find out what it is and fix the problem.

Christmas – good kids get absolutely free  gifts — “bad” kids get none.

There always seem to be strings or conditions attached to FREE! Don’t believe the advertisers. NONE of these are free. The words FREE and GIFT have been perverted in so many ways that when we speak of salvation and eternal life as God’s free gift, folks automatically throw up a guard and think there must be conditions attached.

THE GIFT:

It did not begin with the Creation of the world. John 1:1-3

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

It did not end with the Birth of Jesus Matthew 1:22-23

“Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”

It did not end with the Life of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)

It did not end with the persecution of Jesus John 19:16:17

“Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha:”

It did not end with the crucifixion of Jesus. John 19:18

“…  they crucified him, and two others with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst.“

It did not end with the burial of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15:4a

“And that he was buried, …. according to the scriptures:”

It did not end with the resurrection of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 15:4b

“…and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:”

It does not end!!

God’s GIFT of Eternal Life is still FREE to you — no strings attached, never ending.

Jesus Christ, the Creator of the universe, the Savior is Himself Eternal. His Gospel of FREE Eternal life is just as ETERNAL. Eternal means NEVER ENDING!!

Eternal Life — the totally FREE Gift <<< Click and Believe

11 Comments

Posted in Assurance, Assurance of salvation, Bible, Christianity, Christmas, Eternal Security, Faith, Grace, Hope, Joy, Once saved always saved, Salvation, Security of the believer