But you know what I’ve seen in us. We talk a good talk and all that, but when I watch a Calvinist, many times supposedly lead someone to the Lord, they’re no different than someone with really bad theology. Really. How’s your theology made you any different?
I was about 30 clicks south of Alaska, preaching to the Southern Baptists in Canada. That one, I’ll never figure out. And they asked me to come and do a conference and I did it, and then they asked me to come the next year and go around to all the little churches that couldn’t come. So I was in this little town 30 clicks south of Alaska. The grizzly bear population, I was told, outnumbered the people population in this town. A man came in….a mountain of a man, right when I was getting up in the pulpit. Sixty, 65 years old. Could have cleaned the clock on 20 men gathered here. He was just a mountain of a man. He was the saddest human being I’ve ever seen, and I just went to the pulpit. I started preaching the Gospel. I preached. When I finished the Gospel, I went down and I said, “Sir, what’s wrong with you?”
He pulled out a manila envelope, and he said, “I’m going to die in three weeks. I’ve never been afraid of any man. I’ve lived in the bush. You can only get to the ranch that I work either by riding over the mountains or taking a plane or taking a river raft for so many days down the river. I have never been to church. I believe there’s a God, and one time I heard someone talk about some guy named Jesus, and I’m scared to death.”
I said, “Sir, I preached the Gospel to you. You heard it. Did you understand it?”
He said, “Yes, I understood it, but that’s all. Anybody could’ve understood that. But is that it?
I’m just to tell you I understood it?”
Most Southern Baptists evangelists would have said, “Yes, sir, that’s it. Now, pray the prayer with me,” and they would have damned his soul to Hell. We ought to put most of these evangelists on a boat, send them to some island, and sing the doxology as they are departing from the port. No, really, why should I get mad at Jehovah Witnesses who damn people to Hell and not speak about men who do the same in our denomination?
I looked at him and I said, “Well, sir, I’ve got to fly out of here tomorrow. I’ll cancel my flight. We will stay here until the Lord reveals Himself to you or you die.” I said, “Let’s start.” So I started just taking him through the Word. I went through the Word about an hour, talking to him, counseling. I said, “Do you understand what we’ve gone through?”
He said, “Yes.”
And I said, “And? If you’ll call upon the name of the Lord, do you want to seek Him?”
He goes, “Look, I’m just….”
So, I said, okay, go through the Word again. See, if you want to get to Denny’s and eat, then forget about leading men to Christ, it might take days. So I went through it again, and then the third time around, I say, “Okay, let’s just keep praying.” And we get to John 3:16 about the twentieth time. I said, “Just read it.”
He said, “Okay. ‘For God so loved the world that he….’ I’m saved! I’m saved! I’m saved! I have eternal life. My sins are forgiven. I’m saved.”
I said, “Sir, how do you know that?”
He said, “Haven’t you ever read this verse before?”
You see, what’s the point? The point is this. They’re people. They’re not numbers. They go to Hell when they die if they don’t know Christ.
A lady walked up to me in Missouri one time and she said, “I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost.”
And I don’t know why I asked her this. I said, “Well, have you ever asked Jesus to come into your heart?”
She said, “Six times.”
I said, “Well, it didn’t do any good, did it.”
She said, “No.” She said, “What should I do?”
I said, “Go home. Go home and cry out to God as though Hell were opening up its mouth to swallow you down. And cry out to God until He tells you He’s saved you.”
She went home and she came back the next evening, looked just horrid. She said, “I cried out to God all night. I fell asleep in total despair. I’m so lost I don’t know what to do. What can I do?”
I said, “You have two options, dear. Keep crying out to God until He saves you, or stop and go to Hell.”
The next night, I was praying with her dad, and she came up there, and he came up there and we were praying, and the music started, so he went back to his seat, and all of a sudden someone plopped down beside me. I looked and opened my eyes, and she said, “I’m saved. I’m saved.” I said, “What happened?”
