An Alien Gospel

“I was abducted by an alien gospel,” writes Dieter Zander. “…a gospel concerned only with how to deal with sin and death, with wrongdoing and its effects. We've got the past covered — past sins are forgiven. We've got the future covered — heaven when we die. But what about the present? Life, our actual daily existence, is strangely absent from [the modern] version of the good news.”

This alien gospel is, I am sad to say, what most evangelicals have been taught to share. It is a gospel that is purely intellectual, a list of facts about God and Jesus.

Now, of course there is certainly nothing wrong with proclaiming facts. Our problem comes when, at the end of our presentation of the three or four facts that "God wants you to know," we tell the non Christian listener, "If you'll just express belief in these facts about God, you can be sure that when you die, you'll go to heaven. Nothing you do or don't do will change your position with God after you agree with the four facts...once you pray them, you're in! So now, go to church, and enjoy the great plans God has for you."

Jesus never said anything like this to anybody...not even close! Jesus never performed an altar call, led someone in the sinner's prayer, or gave out literature with a 1-2-3-gospel pitch. In fact, if we were measuring by today's standards, Jesus wasn't that great of an evangelist. Think of it: he turned away many people who were willing to make a decision, and he taught things that were so hard, many of his followers left him! (John 6:66)

Matthew Henry, the great Bible commentator, wrote at the beginning of the 1700's:

“We are too apt to rest in a bare profession of faith, and to think that this will save us; it is a cheap and easy religion to say, ‘We believe in the articles of the Christian faith;' but it is a great delusion to imagine that this is enough to bring us to heaven. Those who argue thus wrong God…The most plausible profession of faith, without works, is dead…We must not think that either, without the other, will justify and save us. This is the grace of God wherein we stand, and we should stand to it.”

Challenge: Have I studied the message of Jesus for myself, to discover the gospel? Or have I been “abducted” by a version of the gospel that is powerless to really change lives?

You can find the full text of Zander's article at www.SpiritofRevival.com.

Comments

[jacob watches]

the movie "knowing" about aliens, etc. foreshadowed/predicted the gulf oil spill in the part where nicholas cage is in his living room watching tv ... look at the news, the movie was in 09, and the oil spill was in '10, but on his news in the movie they have an oil rig which exploded in the gulf.