God Hath Spoken

by Harris J. Dark

2. “For me to be baptized for remission of sins would be to say that my parents are lost.” Of course, that implies that his parents are already dead and that they were never baptized for remission of sins. I answer this objection by giving a concrete example. I visited a lady in West Virginia and anticipated that she would make this excuse. In fact, when I entered the room I could see the tenseness in the muscles of her face. She was expecting me to say that her father had gone to hell, and she was all set to get angry when I did. But I disappointed her. I didn’t say it. I have never said that to anyone. I do not see how it can do any good. There may be times when I am convinced that it is so. But after one is dead there is no need to discuss it.

My approach was this: “I am willing to admit that your father was just as good as you think he was. There is no reason why I should deny this. But remember, if your father was as good as you think he was, then he did the best he knew, he lived up to all the enlightenment he had; because if he had not done so, he would not have been a good man. He would have been a hypocrite. So we will just assume that your father did the very best he could. Then you are not as good as he was unless you do the very best that you know, and you know that you ought to be a Christian. You know you ought to be a member of the church we read about in the Bible. You know that you ought to be baptized for remission of sins. If you don’t obey the gospel, then you are not as good as you say your father was.”

The tenseness left her face. She relaxed and talked more reasonably. Before the meeting closed she obeyed the gospel. If your father and mother are dead, if they are on their way to heaven, and if they are conscious, then they certainly want you to obey the gospel so you will go there, too. If they are not on their way to heaven, if they are conscious of being on their way to the other place, then they certainly want you to obey the gospel, for torment in fire is one misery which is so terrible that it does not love company. The rich man did not want his brothers to come to the place where he was in hades.

3. “I am better now than some of those who are in the church.” In a sense that might be so. Morally you might be better than the worst hypocrite in the church, but why do you want to select the lowest standard that you can find? I have often wondered why a decent man will select a hypocrite in the church, or an immoral, disloyal, unfaithful church member as a standard by which to measure himself. To do so is certainly no compliment to yourself. We do not use such standards in other matters. We want the best standards in the affairs of this world and even though your comparison be true, it still remains that the best man in the church is far better than the best man on the outside. And the average man in the church is better than the average man on the outside. Furthermore, when you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ you will not be judged according to any human standard, but according to the word of God Almighty.

4. “There are so many hypocrites in the church that I cannot afford to become a member of it.” When one makes this excuse I don’t say, but I feel like saying, “Well, come on in, brother; there is always room for one more.” The man who offers that excuse is a hypocrite himself. That’s not what keeps him out. It is just an excuse for not coming in. Furthermore, there are hypocrites in every organization in the world. There are hypocrites outside the church. You can’t get away from the hypocrites by staying outside the church, because they are not all inside the church. The church doesn’t have a monopoly on them. Most of them are still on the outside, and you will be with them as long as you remain there. Furthermore you’ll have to spend eternity with all the hypocrites, those that are now in the church and those that are now outside the church. So, if you want to get away from hypocrites, there is only one way to do it: become a Christian and tolerate the few hypocrites in the church while on this earth you dwell, then go home to heaven to be free of all of them forever.

5. “I’m not good enough to be a Christian.” If you were, you wouldn’t need to become one. The gospel is for people who need to be better. The gospel is for sinners. Sinners are the raw material out of which Christians are made. The people who were saved on the day of Pentecost were not such good folk to start with. They were murderers. They had murdered the Son of God. Yet they could be saved. If you are not worse than the men who, with wicked and lawless hands, nailed the Son of God to the cross, then you are not too mean to be saved. In fact, Christ is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. His power is not limited. One of the most wonderful things about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it makes no difference how dark or black your record may have been in the past, you can have it washed clean and white as snow in the blood of the Lamb. His blood is able to wipe away all your sins; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool; though they be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow (Isa. 1:18). There is no one too wicked to be saved if he is willing to believe in Christ, repent of his sins, obey the commandment to be baptized, and remain faithful thereafter.

6. “Well, I’d like to become a Christian, but I’m afraid I can’t hold out.” People say a lot of things they don’t mean to say. They use a lot of words sometimes when they don’t realize what they are saying. So does the man who makes this excuse. Let’s just look at it a minute and see what a fellow really says when he states that he is afraid he can’t hold out. If you analyze his excuse, it simply means this: “I’m on my way to hell and there is nothing I can do about it.” He didn’t mean to say that. He didn’t intend to assume such a hopeless attitude. “I’m just on my way to hell and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Why nobody, not many people at least, believes that! And yet that’s virtually what you say when you say, “I’d like to be a Christian, but I am afraid I can’t.”

God is not the author of such hopelessness. The Bible says, “Whosoever will let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17). The Bible teaches that God “will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). The Bible plainly declares that all of those who will may come. Anybody who is willing to try can be saved. To say it is impossible for you to be saved is to dispute the word of God Almighty. I do not believe you really want to do that.

7. “I don’t know enough yet.” That could be so. I think I have seen some people of whom that was true. But you can learn enough in a very few minutes. Do you know that in every example of conversion we have in the Bible, the people who were saved obeyed the first sermon they heard? In every case! Now, if those people who lived nearly 2000 years ago could learn enough from one sermon to obey the gospel, how long should it take one today? In every instance they obeyed the first sermon they heard. It didn’t take long, did it? I have worked with people whom I had to teach for a full year before they would obey the gospel. Of course, I admit that I am not as good a teacher as Peter or Paul, but when I read to you just what those men said, then, after all, they are doing the teaching. People of that day could learn enough from them in just an hour or so to obey the gospel. Surely it ought not to take one several years now to learn the same. After all, you don’t need to know much to be saved. You don’t need to know everything. If you wait till you know everything before you do anything, then you’ll always do nothing.

In order to be saved, you simply need to know that you are lost, that Jesus is able to save you, and what he wants you to do in order that he may save you. I can tell you that in less than a minute! “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). Now, that is enough if you are willing to accept it and obey it. Even if you didn’t know it when you came, you now know enough to be saved.