I don’t know him. He is not my friend, nor any other dead men from his era. I have no loyalty to him, so I don’t hang my hat on what he or any other man say. He is not my church father on this issue of repentance and neither are you pastors out there preaching it to strongly! You men can take the great Baptist positional quotes you use to bolster your positions all you want. The matter is, “What saith the Lord?” We will look closely at it.
Secondly, No man living today should be acting or mimicking any way shape or form actions or even messages of Ezekiel, John the Baptist, or in some cases, Jesus Christ himself. Yes, even Jesus. Some of you don’t believe that. No man alive today standing behind any pulpit or on a street corner should be preaching like the prophets or focusing on certain things that the prophets focused on.
This repentance theology, that has creeped in, is also bordering on the edge of a heresy, called “sinless perfection”. Say a man repents of all their sins believing in the Lord as a preacher would tell them and as many preach but then what happens when they return to their sins?
Now some would say here, “Oh, you know what we mean, and we don’t really believe that they need to repent of ALL their sins…”. Then cut it out and quit saying it. Quit preaching it so incessantly. If you have to defend your position constantly, it may not be attacks from the brethren, it may be God trying to show you something. This repentance position is weak.
Quit trying to fool yourself and your people into thinking you have some mystical, mythical higher calling then them to tell the world and the people around you to repent of all their transgressions and abominations.
Please, for the worlds sake, quit acting as if God gave you thunderous command to get in the peoples faces about their sin because you are a “preacher” and God told you to preach “Repentance” to the world. It’s just things you have concocted in your minds.
Do the preachers preaching the repentance theology heavy ever struggle with sin, or have they been perfected? Are they sinless? Do they still have sin? You men reading this right now, you street preachers, you pastors, do you lust?
You ever look at a woman who is not your wife and find your eyes wandering? Do you envy? Do you covet? You ever see sinners with toys and find yourself upset about it? Do you look at all things decent on the internet on your little iphones. Or how about in your office?
Do you recognize your own ambition and pride in your flesh? Do you hold your people to traditions of men? Do you have fleshly ambition? Do you desire to be seen or to be noticed? Do you operate fraudulently? Do you have to have a ministry for appearances? Do you have to be called of God to have a position? Do you have to be known for your unorthodoxy?
Do you feel that you have to be heard? Do you have pride? Have you conquered these sins? You men don’t even see these as sins. You see the world, your flock if you have one, and the peoples sins around you. The point being, is none of us ever stop having sin in our lives until we are redeemed. Not you, not me, not the dirty sinners you belittle.
This dangerously deceptive theology allows preachers to always have a cause to say “repent” at any multitude of things or sins. You see a lot of this sentiment in the self proclaimed “confrontational” street preachers. They hold the signs with the long list of sins, while excluding themselves from the same lists. You are not exempt from this sins doofus! It’s really deplorable from a far out view. They know when men are not including themselves in the lump sum. They can detect the arrogance.
The fornicators, the sodomites, the abominable, the drunkards, the adulterers, the slanders, etc. Funny how they leave off their own sins. And the people hearing it, the hearers know it. It’s why they usually assume the street preachers are just arrogant, lunatic thugs. The preacher can easily focus on the sins of the church member and the passer byers, while excluding his own temptations, sins and struggles as a burden he must keep to himself because of his high ranking position.
So, this issue of repentance, is repentance “absolutely necessary for salvation” as Spurgeon and many of you Baptist men today say and preach? I say NO! Spurgeon is not inspired so I have no problem saying I don’t think Spurgeon meant for us to take that quote as he said it for a second!
I think men have done what they always do and use other men, their words and some stripped out of text verse from the Bible to bolster their positions. The man is not our sound doctrine, so don’t use him to springboard your flesh-driven-repentance-laced-control-based mindset.
Can one repent of their sins at salvation? It would only make sense to hold that ALL sins need to be repented of at salvation with this repentance mindset, because we are turning to God and God does not accept sin right? It’s become the absolute and only way you men preach it on the streets and from your bull-pits. None of us are sinless yet! In fact, I contest that we cannot come apart from our flesh and our sin. They are inseparable until the Lord perfects us at our translation.
We are to train our flesh, submitting to God, dying to self, learning how to posses ones vessel, but we can never FULLY repent of all our sins, we are yet in our sins. Our salvation was spiritual, not physical. Our flesh is not sanctified! It is the theme of the word of God in a way, in that every thing man does ends in absolute failure. God has to be our helper, Jesus has to be our redeemer, because of our hopelessness and helplessness. We can be sanctified by the spirit, but not sinless!
There are thousands of men and women who have been genuinely converted by belief in the gospel and the Lord, and they never grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. No matter to God! He still holds them, and will always have them. God cannot lie. Salvation is eternal! Guess what, they didn’t “repent” of every sin!
You can throw the Lord’s holy verses around for your condescending reasons all you want, such as “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”, or “by their fruits ye shall know them” but the fact remains, some people never grow but they will wake up on the same riverbank as the fire breathing repentance preacher in the last day! And that fact right there urks these guy. They can’t believe that a sin loving lush who wasted his substance with riotous living could have the same inheritance….
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