Conquest is a valiant concept which arouses the noblest thoughts of man. It causes his imagination to ascend as with the wings of eagles to heights far above his mundane existence. And though man is often raptured by the thought of its possibilities, many, if not most, are thoroughly convinced of its improbability. 

This explains the ground-level existence of the masses even among the saints. While the Bible says one thing, [we] shall mount up with wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31), we live as brutes, who, graze with the beasts on the grass of the earth (Daniel 4:15) like Nebuchadnezzar. What ought to be our legacy is often forfeited by our fear, which supersedes our faith. We find ourselves famished when we ought to be fighting and faltering when we should be finishing. 

For many, the thought of this brings discouragement because they reckon themselves too late for the charge. They cannot fathom being overcomers when they have spent their whole lives being underachievers. When their thoughts are aroused by such a possibility, they take heed to the accuser’s voice that tells them of their personal history of failure. Little do men know that it is their failures which have broken up the fallowed ground and created a greater longing for fruitfulness. 

Most have forgotten, if they ever knew it in the first place, that a conqueror is first and foremost a man who has been conquered. A biblical understanding of life is contrary to a worldly view of the same. One sees life as the true means of happiness, the other sees death. And to many people’s surprise, the Bible places death at the head of the table. 

It seems almost foreign to speak, at length, of the necessity of deliverance these days in the context of religious paradigms. That would imply, among other things, the presence of right and wrong, as well as spiritual life and death. It would also suggest the inevitability of a deliverer outside of one’s self, which diminishes the popular notion of the inerrant self-worth of the individual. 

The disposal of depravity and the ascension of inherent goodness in man have rendered such talk of deliverance as fanatical absurdity. Man’s upward motion is so philosophically inevitable in the minds of men that a call for a radical correction makes no sense. If man is walking on water, who needs to save him from drowning? If there is no damnation to avoid, there is no deliverance necessary. 

This is where darkness comes in. Though it is universally present at any given moment, the knowledge of it is suppressed by man’s enlightened foolishness. The pressure of that so-called enlightenment is so overwhelming that, for preachers, ignoring the reality of darkness is far more convenient. 

The effects of this are clearly seen in the user-friendly church movement, as well as the burgeoning emergent movement. For instance, the preacher, once generally known as a prophetic voice against the onslaughts of Satan’s worldly infestations in the church, has now joined the ranks of the fleshly promoters of human ingenuity and faulty philosophies. 

TO ADDRESS the subject of heresy and those who promote it is, ironically, considered heresy itself.  Heresy is defined as an opinion or doctrine contrary to church dogma … or dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, or an opinion, doctrine … or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards.(1)

The question is, Whose standards? Whose opinion, dogma or accepted beliefs? It should be understood that the trend of emerging truth in the church today is so fluid that to grasp it is like picking up water with your hands. The vast majority of Christendom considers standards, unchanging truths and dogma obsolete. Therefore, the heretic is now the one who refuses to deviate from the norm of absolute truth and embrace a relativistic “theology” which promotes and protects vacillation. 

Hermeneutics has been replaced with homogenization, and truth has been relegated to triviality. The entire concept of being heretical is redefined as the conviction that heresy is, in fact, a reality, and today’s “new heretic” is the one who adheres to that immutable conviction.

Redefinition is the new standard of the day, and reminders of the old standard are, at the very least, casually ignored. This mistaken position is dangerous in any field of study, but in the theological arena it is damnable. To replace the foundation of unchanging truth for the ever-changing whimsical notions of fallen humanity is an error too awful to fathom. Yet churches by the thousands are swallowing these fables every Sunday morning. Perhaps one of the greatest hindrances in combating such folly is the absence of addressing the reality of heresy. 

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“Just” is a word I often hear when Christians invite others to Christ. “Just pray this prayer . . .” 

Perhaps some may object to this observation since those words are simply the terminating point of the presentation of the gospel. All the other pertinent information has been duly established. But I beg to differ, at least generally speaking. Much, if not most, of the evangelistic approaches I observe through television, radio and internet ministries, as well as experientially for 33 years of vocational ministry, rarely, if ever, touch on the gospel’s necessity. Facts like the law, sin and its due wrath and judgment are usually left out of the equation. 

Occasionally, these vital elements are briefly mentioned but usually in a casual or surface fashion. What has happened to the church today to cause us to fall into such shallow proclamation? That, along with the biblical prescription for this malignancy, is what I am addressing here. 

When I read Paul’s inspired words in Romans 1:16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek, I find myself dismayed by what I hear coming out of many preachers’ mouths. To equate “just pray this prayer” with Paul’s weighty revelation is like comparing ants to elephants. For many today, it is blasphemy to question the legitimacy of what appears to be an extremely compassionate gesture to invite people to pray a sinner’s prayer. Most would ask, “What could possibly be wrong with the practice?” To put it bluntly, everything!  It is not so much the practice of imploring the lost to seek the Lord through prayer; it is the isolation of such a practice from the gospel itself. It is a valid concern as to what information leads up to such an invitation. After all, there is a “casting the pearls before the swine” to think about when we invite the sinner to Christ. This may explain why so many simply trample the invitation under foot and tread on the blood of the precious Savior. 

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