The Forgotten Gospel

We’ll move on. Then we take what I call the Baptists. Now, I’m really not, you know, very familiar with Baptists. This should be Charles Simpson at this point, and he would really be able to lay it on. But I would say the essence of the Baptist rules is activity.

You’ve got to be out to meetings four times a week. You’ve got to be on three committees. You’ve got to do door-to-door visitation, and who knows what else? And if you’re not doing those things, you’re guilty.

Personally, I would say, normally, any Christian that was out to church more than three times a week is probably doing the wrong things. And my observation is that Christians that are out five and six times a week are usually neglecting their families and their homes. And I was for six months associate pastor of a church, an Assemblies of God church, where basically, I think, we, on the average, we were out to church five times a week as a minimum. And I discovered a whole host of frustrated families and frustrated young people growing up in that church, and the young people just waiting for the day when they didn’t have to go to church ever again.

Now, Paul says something about the righteousness of God, which is really breathtaking when you read it right. It’s in Romans chapter 4, verses 3 and 4.

“For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”

That’s his faith was counted to him for righteousness, not what he did, but his believing.

“Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.”

If we achieve righteousness by what we do, then God owes us the reward. We can boldly claim it. But the scripture says God doesn’t owe it to any of us, so we’re not going to get it as a reward. What’s the alternative? Verse 5.

“But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

That’s really an amazing statement for religious people. If you are going to receive the righteousness of God by faith, what’s the first thing you have to do is stop working. “To him that worketh not.” There’s nothing you can do, so don’t try to do it.

The third group of people I would call essentially the fundamentalists. And their rules center around being right in doctrine. Having every doctrine exactly right, every doctrinal “i” dotted and every doctrinal “t” crossed, and having all the answers. They have to know whether the tribulation is going to come before the rapture or the rapture before the tribulation. If they don’t know these things, they’re insecure.

Now, I’ve discovered if you attack the basis of a person’s security, you immediately make him insecure. And you go to a fundamentalist and challenge his doctrines, he becomes extremely insecure and self-defensive. Why? Because his security is based on his doctrine. And if he’s wrong, then he’s insecure.

And I want to say that as I understand the gospel, our security in God is not based on being right. Even if we’re wrong, we can still be secure. And the trouble is that of all the people that attach importance to being right, most of them don’t agree with one another. So who really is right? If you want to know what I think about the rapture and the tribulation, I’ll tell you. I think there are a whole lot of things we don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows them.

I was greatly blessed by what Bryn Jones said when he was discussing the first coming of Jesus. And he pointed out three streams of prophecy. He was to come out of Bethlehem, he was to come out of Nazareth, and he was to come out of Egypt. And he said, “How could anybody ever have got it right in advance?” And yet all three were fulfilled. And if there’d been schools of prophecy in those days, we’d have had three schools: the Nazareth school, the Bethlehem school, and the Egypt school. And each one would have tried to prove the others wrong.