“Sinner’s Prayer is modern evangelism built on sinking sand. And it runs the risk of disillusioning millions of souls”- David Platt

It is very dangerous thing to lead people to think they are a christian when they have not biblically responded to the gospel. If were not careful, we’ll take the lifeblood out of the gospel and replace it with Kool-aid in its place so that it will taste better to the crowds. Its not just dangerous, it is damning.- David Platt, Verge Conference 2012.

“Pray Jesus Into Your Heart”- Not in the bible.

“Accept Jesus In Your Heart”- Not in the bible.

“Accept Jesus as Your Personal Savior”- Not in the bible.

“Invite Jesus Into Your Heart”- Not in the bible.

“Invite Christ Into Your Life”- Not in the bible.

“Trust Jesus as Your Lord & Savior”- Not in the bible.

Repentance, Lordship & Baptism should take the place that the sinner’s prayer does today.

You know what is in the bible…

⁴⁰ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” – Acts 2:40

“⁴¹ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”- Acts 2:41,

What message did they Accept?

“³⁸ Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:38

 

THE SINNER’S PRAYER- History, Comparison to NT Scripture, Every Conversion

By Steven Francis Staten and Wayne Greeson

Intro.
A. “The Sinner’s Prayer” is a common Protestant denominational appeal and plan of salvation. It is often presented at the end of the service when people want to know how to be forgiven of their sins in order to be saved. The words may vary but the elements are usually the same. The assurance is given that if they say these words sincerely, God will save them.

B. Where Did It Come From?
1. It is important to establish that the Sinner’s Prayer is not from the Scriptures.
2. Nowhere in the New Testament is anyone told to pray to receive salvation and become a Christian.
3. Since the Sinner’s Prayer doesn’t come from God’s Word, it must have originated with men.

I. FROM HISTORY.
A. Mourner’s Seat – 1700s
1. In 1730’s and 1740’s a preacher named, Eleazar Wheelock used a technique called the Mourner’s Seat.
2. He would target sinners by having them sit in the front bench (pew). During his sermon he would tell these front row sinners that “salvation was looming over their heads.”
3. After his sermon those in the hot seat were usually open to further counsel and exhortation. False conversions were multiplied.

B. Cane Ridge Revival – 1801 called Second Great Awakening
1. In Cane Ridge Kentucky a “revival” lasted for weeks.
2. In response to the preaching, the intense heat and long periods without food people rolled in the aisles, barked liked dogs and became delirious.
3. All of these responses were said to be the Holy Spirit.
4. One wonders whether people affected their reactions to escape the long periods of preaching.

C. The Anxious Seat – Mid-1800s
1. Charles Grandison Finney (1792 – 1875) took Eleazar Wheelock’s “Mourner’s Seat” and renamed it the “Anxious Seat” and developed a conversion system around it.
2. Finney wrote about his system. “The church has always felt it necessary to have something of this kind to answer this very purpose. In the days of the apostles, baptism answered this purpose. The gospel was preached to the people, and then all those who were willing to be on the side of Christ, were called out to be baptized. It held the place that the anxious seat does now as a public manifestation of their determination to be Christians.”
3. Many accepted Finney’s “Anxious Seat” and others objected.
4. The practice was essentially a psychological technique. It manipulated people’s emotions to make a tearful profession of faith without a true conversion. Its success was dependent upon the ability of the preacher to stir up his audience’s emotions.
5. John Nevin, a Protestant minister, wrote a book called The Anxious Bench. He described Finney’s Anxious Seat as “heresy,” a “Babel of extravagance” “fanaticism,” and “quackery.”

D. The Inquiry Room & Prayer – Late 1800s to Early 1900s
1. In the 1860s Dwight Moody (1837 -1899) took Finney’s Anxious Seat and modified it. Moody asked those who responded to his message to join him and his counselors in a room called the “Inquiry Room.”
2. In the Inquiry Room some questions were asked, some Scripture was read and then counselors prayed with potential converts. Prayer was considered the last step of Moody’s conversion process.
3. R. A. Torrey succeeded Moody in 1899 and he modified Moody’s system to include “on the spot” street conversions. Torrey’s method made popular instant salvation with no strings attached.

E. Billy Sunday Popularizes “Crusades” – Early 1900s
1. Billy Sunday was a well known baseball player from Iowa. After a conversion experience in a Dwight Moody Chicago mission, Billy left baseball to preach.
2. Billy Sunday was a very popular and entertaining speaker. He preached fire-and-brimstone sermons with a great deal of antics, showmanship and humor.
3. Sunday preached that one could be saved by simply walking down his tent’s “sawdust trail” to the front where he was standing. Later people were said to be saved if they publicly shook Sunday’s hand and said that they would follow Christ.

F. Sinner’s Prayer – 1940s to Present
1. Billy Graham became the next big crusade preacher.
2. Graham used counselors to tell those who responded to his “altar call” to pray.
3. Graham’s conversion method began with a prayer from what he called His “Four Steps to Peace with God.” This originated from a tract called “Four Things God Wants You to Know” 50 years earlier.
4. In the 1950s Bill Bright coined the expression “The Four Spiritual Laws” which ended with the so called “Sinner’s Prayer.” “Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.”

II. Passages Used to Support the Sinner’s Prayer.
A. John 1:11-13
1. For years many denominational teachers have used the phrases “just receive Christ into your heart” and “Trust Jesus as your Personal savior.” The method of doing this is often the “Sinner’s Prayer.”
2. “Even in his own land and among his own people, the Jews, he was not accepted. Only a few welcome and received him. But to all who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. All they needed to do was to trust him to save them. All those who believe this are reborn!” (John 1:11-12 Living Bible)
3. While we are to trust in Jesus and receive Jesus by faith into our hearts, nowhere do the Scriptures say that’s all one needs to do to be saved.

B. Revelation 3:20
1. Consider how this passage is misused as a basis of evangelizing Christians. “Here is a promise of Union to Christ; in these words, I will come in to him. i.e. If any Sinner will but hear my Voice and open the Door, and receive me by Faith, I will come into his Soul, and unite him to me, and make him a living member of that my mystical body of which I am the Head” (John Webb, Christ’s Suit to the Sinner, p. 14, mid 1700s).
2. Many denominational preachers base their plea to sinners “to let Jesus come into your heart” upon this passage.
3. Jesus’ words are not to those lost in sin and outside of Christ, but to lukewarm Christians. Rev. 3:14-20
4. This passage cannot be used to appeal to those who are not Christians.

C. Romans 10:9-10
1. Notice that nothing in this passage mentions praying for salvation or a Sinner’s Prayer.
2. What it does say is one must confess Jesus as the Lord and believe from one’s heart that God raised up Jesus from the dead.
3. If one argues that this passage states the only things necessary for one to be saved, he would have a problem.
4. There is no mention of recognizing one is a sinner.
5. There is no mention of repentance or turning from sin. Jesus said, “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” (Lk. 13:3).
6. And there is no mention of baptism for removing sin. Jesus also said, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” (Mk. 16:16)
7. Belief and confession are unto salvation or lead to salvation, but salvation is not complete until one truly repents of his sins and is baptized into Christ for the remission of his sins.

D. Rom. 10:13
1. This text is not instructing prayer for salvation.
2. Paul is quoting a promise of the Old Testament about the availability of salvation with the coming of Christ.
3. The action of “calling on the name of the Lord” does not refer to prayer but belief and obedience to the commands of the Lord.
4. Calling on the name of the Lord includes:
a. Belief (Rom. 10:9)
b. Confession (Rom. 10:9)
c. Repentance (Acts 2:21, 37-38)
d. And baptism (Acts 22:16).

E. Luke 18:13-14
1. Is this an example of the Sinner’s Prayer that saves and makes one a Christian?
2. This prayer was offered by a Jew who lived under the Law of Moses.
a. As a Jew he would have already been a child of God.
b. As a Jew he was in covenant to God.
c. As a Jew he could pray and receive forgiveness for his sins from God.
d. As a Jew he lived before the death of Christ and the offering of salvation through Christ.
3. The prayer of the tax collector is not an example of a prayer that a sinner might pray today to be saved.

III. No One Was Ever Told To Say the Sinner’s Prayer To Be Saved.
A. Those on Pentecost. Acts 2:37
1. Did Peter say, “Just say the Sinner’s Prayer and you shall be saved from your sins and become a Christian.”?
2. Yet, that is exactly what you will hear over and over again from so many preachers.
3. Why can’t these denominational preachers simply give the answer Peter gave in Acts 2:38?
4. The reason so many denominational preachers can’t give people Peter’s answer is they don’t believe it!

B. The Samaritans and Simon. Acts 8:5-6,12-13
1. Was it, “And when they believed Philip’s preaching, they prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” and received Jesus into their hearts and were saved?”
2. The modern preaching “crusades” go out preaching Christ.
3. What happens when people believe the preaching?
4. What are they told? They are told to pray to get salvation, but this is not what Philip preached to the Samaritans.

C. The Ethiopian eunuch. Acts 8:34-35
1. And after preaching Jesus, the eunuch wanted to know how to become saved. And Philip said, “If you pray the Sinner’s Prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart, you may.” And right there in the chariot as they rode down the road the eunuch said the Sinner’s Prayer and received Jesus into his heart and was saved?
2. How many times do preachers today tell people that wherever they are they can be saved by simply saying the Sinner’s Prayer?
3. Doesn’t it seem strange that we hear so much about the Sinner’s Prayer today and yet we don’t read about it in the New Testament, and Philip didn’t preach it here when it would have been most convenient.
4. (Acts 8:36-39) a. When Philip preached Jesus he didn’t preach the Sinner’s Prayer, he preached baptism.
b. Why didn’t Philip tell the eunuch to pray for salvation?
c. He would not have had to stop the chariot.
d. He would not have had to go down into the water.
e. He would not have had to get wet.

D. Saul of Tarsus.
1. The account of Saul’s conversion is found in three places (Acts 9, 22 & 26).
2. Saul was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus.
3. Saul had arrest warrants to arrest Christians to bring them back to Jerusalem for trial and to be put to death.
4. On the road to Damascus he was blinded by a great light. And the Lord appeared to him.
5. “So he, trembling and astonished, said, ‘Lord, what do You want me to do?” (Acts 9:6) and the Lord said “Saul, Saul why haven’t you prayed to me and said the Sinner’s Prayer?” No.
6. Then the Lord said to him, Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:6).
7. Saul went into Damascus and for three days Saul did not eat food or drink and he prayed (Acts 9:9,11).
8. If there was ever anyone who should have been saved by prayer it should have been Saul!
9. But the Lord sent Ananias to Saul to tell him what to do as He had promised Saul.
a. And Ananias said “And now why are you waiting? Get down on your knees and pray the Sinner’s Prayer to wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord”?
b. Ananias said “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” (Acts 22:16).
(1) Saul was told to arise, not get down on his knees.
(2) Saul was told to be baptized to wash away his sins.
(3) The act of being baptized was the act of calling on
the name of the Lord. 10. Even after three days of praying Saul was still in his sins and in need of cleansing.

Conclusion.
A. If you have not yet become a Christian, and want to do so, do not pray the sinner’s prayer.
B. Instead, obey the gospel just as those people did as recorded in the book of Acts.
1. As Ananias told Saul, “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” (Acts 22:16)