In Christ,
pastor C

Many thanks for taking the time to respond to my email. I appreciate this very much.

I am so glad to hear that in taking the initiative to see if you could locate anything of me on the net you discovered my friend’s web site where my writings are included and that you believe the Gospel I believe.

The reason I wrote to you and to several others is so I could hear from the horse’s mouth as it were what various ones say the Gospel is. I did this in part to challenge what I believed, to see if there was something I was blind to when it came to what the Gospel of God actually is. I have found so few who believe His Gospel but many who ‘hold’ to parts of it but deny others.

In my discussions with others I have found that there is not so much a disagreement with the doctrine of Christ but with who is saved and who is not. The Bible, as you know, clearly states that one who believes the Gospel is saved and the one that believes it not is lost. Not merely ignorant and saved but lost for the Lord has not revealed Himself to that one.

Also, I have heard many who say that they believe the so-called ‘five ponts’ yet insist that Arminians who deny the effectual atonement of Christ for His people exclusively and say that Christ died for everyone are nonetheless saved. I was shocked when I learnt that someone like Charles Spurgeon who labelled Wesley’s gospel as ‘another gospel’ fully expected to see Wesley in heaven! I have yet to be given any Scriptural evidence by any to show that those who call saved whom the Holy Spirit calls lost, are saved people.

Again, thank you for your time in replying to me. I look forward to hearing from you again. Do you have a web site I can go to? Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Moreno.

Thanks for the questions. I’m not sure how you got my address, but I’ll be glad to correspond. I wish I knew some of your background, and whether you were sincere in asking these questions, or whether they are trick questions as some people send me.

The Gospel is the ‘good news.’ The Gospel is Christ and Christ is the Gospel. The entire Bible was written about Christ -- The Old testament with types and shadows and ceremonies showed the person and work of Christ in providing for our salvation. It gave the perfect Law which only Christ could fulfill. The New Testament attested that Jesus Christ was the very person who was prophesied to come. Christ is the Living Word of God, the Priest, King, prophet, sacrifice, lamb, Altar, Creator, perfect man and Son of God. He is all in all. He is the good news -- that by faith in Him, in His shed blood spilt for us His children, we can be saved from sin, death, destruction and hell. God has a people who are scattered in all times and places, and they shall hear the good news and be saved. God the Father chose us in eternity; God the Son died for us in history, and God the Spirit effectually calls us out of the world unto salvation in time.

In order to be saved, one must be born again by the Spirit of God. The Spirit opens our hearts and convicts us of our sins against God, and grants us repentance and faith to believe in Christ. We show our faith by our lives, our works -- The Just shall live by faith. We live our lives from day to day doing all to the glory of God, whether we eat or drink.

I’m not sure what you were looking for, so please write back if you have more questions. If you were wondering whether baptism saves, the end of the verse says that he that believeth not shall be damned, it does not say he that believeth not and is not baptised shall be damned. While we practice water baptism as a symbol of the baptism of the Holy Spirit filling, washing and regenerating us at conversion -- we do not believe that the outward practice of getting wet saves anyone.

I hope I haven’t been too confusing, as it is late. Let me know if so.

Person D has shared several Gospel truths in his email but he has not actually told me what the Gospel is. He has used many terms and phrases which are very familiar to professing christians but has not defined those terms, which is an essential to the biblical preaching and teaching of the Gospel. He has also stated that ‘we show our faith by our lives, our works’ but fails to add that the principle way in which a believer demonstrates his faith is by his belief of the Gospel. It matters not how much works a man has, if he does not abide in the doctrine of Christ he simply does not have God. Only if the man abides in the doctrine of Christ does he show proper and biblical evidence that he has both the Father and the Son and is therefore saved (2 Jn.9). His comment ‘I’m not sure what you were looking for’ leaves this author quite perplexed for I believe my questions made it abundantly clear that what I was looking for is the Bible’s definition of what the Gospel which must be believed in is. My response to person D’s email is as follows:

Once again, and just as sadly, I did not hear from person D again. There seems to be a pattern developing. As soon as these men are faced with more specific questions regarding the Gospel, they all flee! Why are all these men, refusing to continue their correspondence with me after I make some points and ask more detailed questions? Suffice it to say that for whatever reason person D saw fit not to comment on my reply. Nor did he see fit to add another word to our correspondence or even show the slightest courtesy by writing to say that he wished not to continue our correspondence. There are many statements made by person D which use the correct terminology but there is a failure on his part to define those terms. I know what they mean, but is it what person D means when he uses them? Therein lies one of the reasons for the massive amount of confusion which exists among the religious population. People simply do not define the terms they use hence many believe wrongly that this group is saved or that group is saved simply ‘because they use the same words we do.’ This is one of the greatest flaws in many a man’s teachings: failure to define terms in accord with Scripture. Proper teaching cannot do without it, in fact, to teach without definition is like trying to run a train without tracks. All of christendom is familiar with phrases such as ‘born again’, ‘believe in the Gospel’, ‘believe in Christ’, ‘Christ is my all in all’, ‘Christ has done it all’ etc., but very few know, or have been taught, the biblical meaning of the words and phrases which cascade from their mouths. Man has attributed his own interpretation to the many terms and phrases of Scripture and countless others have warmly embraced these interpretations, not as the doctrines of men, but as the very doctrine of God! Christ said that by his tradition man nullifies the Word of God (Matt.15:6; Mk.7:9,13). One must believe what God says His Word teaches. To attempt to enter heaven with man’s teaching of what the Word of God says is like trying to board an airplane with a home-made ticket. It may look like the real thing but if it wasn’t produced by the airline its not going to get you on board. Likewise, no one has ever entered heaven with a man-made version of the Truth. The Truth is what God says it is, not what man believes it to be, however sincerely. It is not man’s sincerity in what he believes in but the Truth of Christ which makes a man free. It is God’s Testimony of what His Word says that one must believe in. Therefore it is absolutely essential that we believe God’s Way, for any other way is man’s way. Every other way to salvation than the one which God has declared, is a false way that leads all its adherents to a fiery hell. In His preaching Christ always added to what qualified a man to be saved, the inescapable fact that if a man did not believe His Gospel, or, in His name, that man would perish (Mk.1:15; 16:15,16; Jn. 1:12; 3:18). The preaching of the cross is the power of God unto salvation to them that are saved, but to those who perish who do not believe in the preaching of the cross, it is foolishness. They say it is not part of God’s Word on salvation (1Cor.1:17,18). I must point out that, in addition to stating that the Gospel and the preaching of the cross are the power of God, the Scriptures also state that Christ is the power of God (1Cor.1:24). Person D chose to remain silent regarding all my statements that any and all who believe that Christ died for every individual, thus changing the very heart of the Gospel message, are lost. Such issues are referred to by many ministers as ‘too divisive’ and ‘not edifying to the body’. My friend, the issue of the Gospel, what it is and what it is not, is the very heart of the Salvation Message. Without a clear definition of what God’s Gospel is, which distinguishes it and the Christ it speaks of from all counterfeits, there can be no true believing in THE Gospel. Ignorance of the Truth provides no passage to heaven but is rather a sure way of remaining on the broad way to Hell.

Pastor E of Grace Baptist Church in Georgia, U.S.A. was also asked the question, ‘What is the Gospel?’, and his reply is as follows:

The Scriptures pastor E quoted are, of course, perfect. They are very clear to one who rightly and savingly believes the Gospel by the grace of God but how clear are they to one who has never been taught what these verses are saying? What is it to believe in the Son? And what is it to rightly know Him? Is pastor E aware that a Roman Catholic or even a Mormon would happily quote such Scriptures? Mr. also mentions that ‘salvation is in a Person not in a religious system’. This, too, is correct for a mere head knowledge of doctrine has not and never will save anybody. But it must be asked how can one know of the Person, Christ Jesus the Lord, if one is not taught and subsequently believes in the doctrine of Christ? After all, Scripture says that "Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God..." (2 Jn. 9). It is surely not enough to say ‘I believe in Christ’ in order to be saved. Nor is it enough to merely encourage a person to simply ‘believe in Christ’ for there are many false christs in this world who provide false hopes. ‘Believe in which christ,’ it may well be asked. ‘The christ of the Mormons or of the Roman Catholics or another?’ One must know the True Christ to rightly be saved and the only way one can know Christ savingly is to hear, understand and believe the Gospel which reveals Who Christ is and what Christ has done. A true God-given understanding of, and life-changing belief from the heart in, His true Gospel is the sure sign that one is saved. Belief in a Person? YES! But there can be no saving belief unless one has heard the Gospel doctrine and understood and believed it with the mind and fully embraced it with the heart. The reality of the matter is that many call the god they worship ‘jesus’ when they are really worshipping an idol of their own or another’s imagination. "True Worship is attributing unto God all the qualities of character that belong to Him AS HE REVEALS HIMSELF, not as we think or imagine Him to be" (W.P.). My reply to ’s email is as follows:

It was encouraging to receive a second email from pastor E, as the others I had written to thus far failed to continue our discussion after one email. Pastor E’s response to my comments is as follows:

That is all that was contained in pastor E’s second email to me. Don’t you get the feeling that I am bothering these men? They seem to have much more important matters to deal with than explain the Gospel to me. Nothing I had stated was commented on by pastor E. Only this question was asked of me to which I promptly responded with the following:

Pastor E’s response to the above email is as follows:

That is pastor E’s full response to my email to him. No direct comment. No teaching. No explanation of what the Word of God is saying. Just Scripture which I fully agree with because by God’s grace I can understand what it is saying. But again, no teaching by as to what it is to receive Him, believe on His name, believe with all one’s heart, to confess with the mouth, to be born of God, and no direct response in his own words to my comments. Let us continue this correspondence now with my reply to pastor E’s quoting of Scripture:

Gratefully, this time I did receive a reply from pastor E in his own words. It is here quoted in full:

There is so much that can be said about this reply from pastor E. Let me begin with his opening statement: ‘If it’s new, it isn’t true! And if it’s true, it cannot be new!’ This quaint little phrase is designed, one would imagine, to teach us that if a teaching is new (whatever that may entail) then it cannot be true, ie. Scriptural. But I have not presented any new teaching in my emails to pastor E. All I have done is to ask questions seeking the specific details of what it is to rightly and biblically and savingly believe the Gospel, and what it is to not savingly believe the Gospel. My questions are based on the solemn warning given in Scripture, that if one does not repent and believe the Gospel such a person will perish in eternal fire (Mk.1:15; 2Thess.1:7-9). I believe that when a person hears for the first time the Gospel of God, it is indeed something new to the hearer whilst not being something new to what God’s Word has taught for thousands of years. This author believed in lies for the first 30-odd years of my life whilst believing I was a Christian and when I first heard the Gospel fully preached, which revealed the Righteous merits of Christ upon which all of salvation is conditioned, it was indeed new to me. Does this automatically qualify it as false teaching? Hardly. I would still be in a lost state had I adopted pastor E’s philosophy! What about the Mormon who has been fed with nothing but Mormon doctrine who has never heard God’s True Gospel, who one day hears it on a tape or from a true believer? No doubt the doctrine he hears is new to him. What a horror it would be to hear of such a one’s rejection of this ‘new’ doctrine based on ’s ideology: ‘If you haven’t heard it before then it must be wrong!’ What a ludicrous saying. It was no different in Jesus’ day. In answer to those who were amazed at Jesus and His teachings, the Pharisees exclaimed "Are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?" (Jn. 7:47,48). In other words they were saying, ‘How can this Jesus be truly from God if none of the Pharisees have believed on Him?’ In today’s world it would be said this way: ‘How can that Gospel be the one from God if no pastor I know believes it or has even heard of it?’ What pastor E is really saying is, ‘How can you be right, Moreno, when none of the greats in the past believed what you believe?’ It is an insupportable argument that really has nothing to do with what the Truth is. The Truth does not stand or fall by how many believe it. IT STANDS WHETHER ANY BELIEVE IT OR NOT! I would replace pastor E’s philosophy with the following biblical statement: If it is not Gospel, if it adds to or takes away from God’s Gospel, it is not of God and therefore cannot save!

To tell one to read the above verses in meditation and ask the Author of them to reveal Himself sounds very biblical. But how can one believe the Gospel, the Word of God, lest it be preached and heard? (Rom.10:13-15). This is what the Scriptures teach. God’s Gospel must be preached and heard before it can be understood and believed. I do believe that God can and does reveal Himself to some of His children who only have a Bible and no one to teach them for the Bible certainly contains within its pages the preaching of the Gospel by Paul the apostle and others. But even the Ethiopian eunuch as he read the Scriptures readily admitted, after being asked by Philip if he understood what he was reading ‘how can I, (understand) except some man should guide me?’ (Acts 8:31). I fear that pastor E’s email comes from a man who simply has no answers to my questions about what it is to believe and know the Son. All he has shown me are Scriptures which tell what must be done, but one remains clueless as to the specifics and particulars of what must be believed in order for a man to know he is saved. When he asks ‘why would we hear man’s opinion of the Scriptures’, an apparent attempt to excuse himself from offering me any teaching on what the Scriptures quoted are saying, are we to understand that does nothing from his pulpit but quote Scripture? If not, why then was he so reluctant to preach to me and teach me what it is to believe and know the Son? My reply to his evasive email is as follows:

Sadly, perhaps tragically, no further correspondence was received from pastor E. Yes, a trusted pastor of a Baptist church whose church services are attended religiously by many, failed to give an answer to what the Gospel is and what it is to believe and know the Son of God. This should be a lesson for everyone who is attending a church headed by a man they deeply respect and trust is giving them the True way to salvation. I wonder how your pastor would respond were you to ask him the questions I raised with these gentlemen? I challenge the reader to do so! Show your pastor this booklet or any of the others I have written and ask for his comment. I would be very interested to hear of your pastor’s reply or even to hear directly from him. A man’s message reveals who he is and who he is serving FOR what he teaches about Christ will identify which christ he promotes: whether it is God's Christ or one of his own imagination. Is he a man of God preaching God’s one and only Gospel or is he one who preaches a false gospel promoting a counterfeit christ who cannot save, thus revealing himself as a minister of Satan? Does your pastor teach that it matters not who you believe Jesus died for but all is well as long as you believe He died for you? Those who preach the true Gospel serve and glorify the true God and those who teach otherwise are serving the Devil and his purpose, which is to deceive and confuse the masses by false gospels leading them on the broad religious road that leads to destruction (2 Cor.11:14,15). Why precisely failed to answer my questions shall perhaps remain a mystery. But the very fact that he refused on several occasions to specifically deal with the questions I raised shows a reluctance to face the life and death issue of the Gospel which so many care nothing about. What is it to really believe the Gospel? What is it that Christ actually did on the cross and in His life on earth, what has Christ achieved and who are the beneficiaries? Sadly pastor E, a man who goes by the title of ‘pastor’, will not give you the answer because for some reason he either does not want you to know or he simply does not know himself!

The next gentleman’s responses to my question, ‘What is the Gospel?’, comes from pastor F of the Reformed Bible Church in Vermont, U.S.A. His first reply is as follows:

In pastor F’s first email to me I was encouraged to finally see some seemingly genuine interest in my question and an attitude of care shown towards its author. Whilst these are valuable traits, they really are of no worth to the recipient if they are not accompanied by God’s true Gospel teaching. However nice and gentle and loving a person may act towards us, it is no guarantee that what the person believes and teaches is the Truth and the True and only way to salvation. We must not be swayed by a man’s appearance and genteel manner but we must pay strict attention to his message. If that message is not God’s Message then we are to avoid such a person, insofar as spiritual fellowship goes, and we are to give them the Gospel of God with all gentleness and patience (Rom.16:17; 2 Tim.2:24,25). Along with the others I have written to, pastor F has stated several truths in his email to me and the verses he quoted are, of course, most helpful to a person’s being rightly taught the Gospel. However, what has taught is not the Gospel. In saying that God has provided the means for sinners to be saved, are we to understand that this includes every individual sinner or those whom God has chosen unto salvation? We cannot tell from his response because he has not made it clear one way or the other. This is vitally important, for if one says that God has provided the means for all sinners to be saved then one must hold to the belief that Christ’s sacrifice was made for all. Seeing then that Christ has not, indeed could not, have failed in His sacrificial death for the redemption of all for whom it was made, we must conclude that all will be saved. Since this is patently not the case, such teaching as God having provided the means to salvation for every individual, is false and highly deceptive. also mentions that ‘salvation begins with repentance of sin’, but what sin must a man repent of in order to be saved? Does he speak only of repentance from an immoral lifestyle? What of those who have lived upright and moral lives and who have virtually no obvious sins, to their mind, to repent of. Is repentance an act done in order for a man to get saved? Or does repentance follow a man’s being regenerated by a loving God by means of His Holy Gospel and Holy Spirit? The word ‘repent’ means to change one’s mind. The repentance which Scripture speaks of is not merely repentance from one’s immorality but also from the sin of idolatry, from ever having believed and trusted in any person or religion other than Christ Jesus the Lord and His Righteousness imputed, for one’s salvation. This, too, is something has failed to make clear in his letter. ‘Belief’ of the Gospel which is not accompanied by a repentance of all past trusting in one’s ‘good works’ and idolatrous beliefs, is not the belief or faith which comes from God (see Phil. 3). My reply to pastor F’s comments are as follows:

Pastor F's reply is as follows and in full:

Pastor F’s response here isn’t a bad one at all but again, like the replies received from others, he fails to state things in a more specific way. He mentions only a few things which those who stand condemned do not believe but none of these involve the Cross of Christ and its proper biblical teaching. Several terms such as ‘salvation is by faith alone’ are not explained. There are many people who are in hell today who firmly believed that they were true believers in the doctrine that salvation is by faith alone. But what exactly does this term ‘faith alone’ mean? For many, it means that they believe Christ has saved them but they must now live an upright life, which they say is only possible by the grace of God, in order to maintain that salvation. They say that though one has faith alone in Christ for their salvation, they can at any time lose that salvation by not adhering to an upright life and committing certain sins. Faith which biblically believes in Christ alone for salvation is the faith which believes that ALL of salvation from beginning to final glory is conditioned on Christ and that nothing the sinner can do or fails to do will keep the sinner in a saved state or impede the sinner’s salvation. The Bible teaches that it is by the power of God that His people are kept unto salvation and not by what the sinner does or abstains from doing (1 Pet.1:3-5). All for whom Christ has died shall see heaven, for they have had their sins imputed to Him and have had His Righteousness imputed to them (Jn.10:27,28; Rom.4:8; 2 Cor.5:21). There is no such thing as ‘losing one’s salvation’, a doctrine which many who claim to believe in faith alone, cling to. My response via email to pastor F is as follows:

Pastor F’s response to the above email is as follows and in full:

Pastor F’s comments on what is essential to a person being saved would be readily embraced by any Roman Catholic. They, too, use the term ‘faith alone’ and claim to believe in ‘the crucified and risen Savior’ but their interpretation of ‘faith alone’ and who that Savior is does not concur with the teaching of the Word of God. So, to say that salvation is dependant on repentance and faith alone in Jesus Christ, really does not go far enough in defining what it is that a saving knowledge of Christ actually is. This is not an exercise in nit-picking but is in order to draw the reader’s attention to the dangers of such broad non-specific teaching on Christ and His Work. Such teaching leaves room for a person to hold to a false christ who cannot profit them. The saved believe in repentance of sins which includes that of idolatry and dead works, those deeds done before being born again, and their faith is in Jesus Christ alone as the Savior Who came to, and did, save His people from their sins. They believe that nothing the sinner can do either before salvation or after one is saved can in any way to any degree contribute to their attaining or maintaining salvation for they hold to the Truth that Christ has done it all. That gets the Gospel Message across rather than Mr. Diggins’ interpretation. My reply to pastor F’s email is as follows:

Further to my comments to pastor F, I would like to add that to ask whether those to whom Peter preached the Gospel on Pentecost, and the Ethiopian eunuch to whom Phillip preached, all believed in ‘the five points’ is really a nonsense question. The ‘five points’, for those who are not familiar with them, are: (1) Man is dead in sin and cannot come to God in and of himself; (2) God has chosen a people to become His children from before the foundation of the world, not based on their deeds but upon His grace and purpose; (3) Christ died for the elect of God exclusively accomplishing redemption for them all; (4) The Holy Spirit will bring each and every one whom God has chosen and for whom Christ died to a saving knowledge of the Gospel; (5) And none whom God has chosen, for whom Christ died and who have been called by the Holy Spirit and had the Gospel savingly revealed to them, will ever perish for they have been given eternal life. No person who has ever been saved, a true believer in God’s Gospel, has ever or will ever, after their salvation, reject any of these teachings for they form part of the doctrine of Christ that every saved person abides in. The Standard God has set for every man is repent and believe the Gospel or you will perish. Therefore, it is of a certainty that all who are saved, whether it be the Philippian jailor or the Ethiopian eunuch, believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ’s Substitutionary and Atoning Death for His people and that man in and of himself can do nothing to come to God, hence every saved man’s trust in Christ alone as the Savior, and looking to nothing he has done but has rather repented of, and forsaken all his own imperfect deeds of ‘obedience’ and religious efforts and fully embraced the Savior and all HE is and all HE has done for the sinner to attain and maintain his saved state for all eternity (see Phil 3:8-10). The ‘five points of Calvin’ are all Scriptural and did not begin with John Calvin or any other man. These points of doctrine are the basic principles of Gospel teaching and rejection of any one of them is a rejection of the whole and is a sure sign of lostness, for the rejection of any of these principles leaves one with a gospel which conditions some part of salvation on man and leaves room for him to boast, which is something the True Gospel, the Gospel of grace, does not do for everyone of its doctrines attributes ALL the glory of salvation to God alone.

Dear Moreno,

Received you letter, thanks for your replies especially this paragraph:

To the Philippian jailor's question 'what must I do to be saved?' I would answer 'Believe the Gospel and you will be saved'. You and I know that this would not be an act from the free will of man but would be a gift from God. The charge that I may be of those who subscribe to the 'doctrinal regeneration' teaching is a false one for I say there is nothing a man can do to come to God. Believing in God's Gospel is not a condition one must meet to get saved but is the principal evidence that one is saved.

I agree with your statement. Believing the Gospel is not an acceptance of the facts of Christ's death and resurrection, those at cross all saw Him and die and believed it. Those guarding the tomb knew He had rose again and had to be bribed to lie about it. An individual believes because God, by His Sovereign Grace gives them the new birth, what we call regeneration that precedes repentance of sin and faith alone in Christ's substitutionary death and resurrection. A person may truly believe and be saved and yet not fully understand that he was elect, irresistibly drawn by God or that Jesus died only for His church. That is my point. Now, after salvation that same individual will bear fruits that prove the sincerity of his profession of faith. Among those fruits will be an understanding of election, limited atonement, etc. Such knowledge brings about praise in their hearts for God's sovereign grace.

An arminian can and often does preach the gospel of repentance and faith. Yes, if we know the preacher personally and that he does not believe in limited atonement, election, etc. we would say through his ignorance the truth is proclaimed and God may be pleased to use his message to awaken one of His elect to salvation. Is that preacher unregenerate, well, I refuse to place myself in the position of judging another man's heart. I would point out his error to him and urge him to examine himself in the light of the scripture and pray that God does a work in his heart.

My concern is that there are those who would label Spurgeon, Hodge, Machen and a host of other great theologians "unregenerate" because they hold out the possibility that an arminian can preach the gospel and others can be brought to Christ through their preaching. I refuse to be a part of such labelling.

Thanks again for writing. I sincerely hope you will find fellowship, perhaps you should consider planting a church where you are. Surely there must be others who share you conviction and let's face it, accountability is something which we all need. In the mean time be assured of my prayers.

All By Grace

pastor F

Dear pastor F,

Again, I appreciate your taking the time to write to me.

You mention that a person may be saved and yet not understand that Christ died only for His Church. I have nothing against a person's learning and growing in the knowledge of God but for a person not to understand that Christ died for His people alone is to miss the core teaching of the Gospel, the preaching of the cross. If he does not know what he believes then he cannot be said to believe the Gospel and therefore be saved. If he does not understand that Christ died for the elect then he cannot understand and therefore believe in His atoning work upon the cross, he cannot hold to the Gospel truth that Christ accomplished redemption on the cross and not merely made it possible. Who one believes Christ died for shows what one believes Christ did on the cross. And, let's face it, if one has got what Christ did on the cross wrong then one cannot be said to believe in God's only Gospel.

You say that after salvation a person shows fruits etc. This is the type of judgement that Christ forbids. And, this is one of the reasons so many are in such a confused mess today and in history that arminians are saved for they do not judge them according to what they believe but allow a man's gospel to be riddled with error and yet insist the man is saved. They find 'support' for this by judging a man's reputation and/or appearance: his character and conduct. How many Mormons and Roman Catholics would be saved if this were the standard of judgement. They have much error in their beliefs but generally their character and conduct is above board. If this standard were God's standard who is to say that they are not saved simply because they fail to fully understand the Truth? You also mention sincerity in one's profession of faith. I have no doubt that the great majority of people who profess Christianity are very sincere but sincerity is not the key to heaven. Christ said that the TRUTH shall make a man free. A man can be sincere but be sincerely wrong. None will be rewarded for sincere beliefs in a false gospel.

My friend, how can you say that truth can be preached through ignorance? I think the starting point for any discussion about arminians is that they believe and teach that Christ died for all thereby changing the truth concerning what Christ did on the cross into the lie that He made salvation possible for all. You know there is nothing in the Old Testament types that speak of or foreshadowed a conditional atonement but that when blood was spilt it was spilt for a determinate number of people, God's people, and all for whom it was spilt received its blessing. Arminianism is an open attack on the person and work of Jesus Christ the Savior of His people and none who preach the arminian lie are saved nor can anyone be saved by hearing a false gospel. And, it must be said that there is nothing in Scripture to support the lie that a man is saved who claims one who does not believe the Gospel, who does not abide in Christ's Doctrine, is a saved person.

Judging another man's heart is something encouraged in the Scriptures. Christ said that His people are to judge righteous judgement not according to appearance but according to God's Word. John said that the person who did not abide in Christ's doctrine has not God. Paul 'labelled' lost and accursed those who came preaching (and therefore believing) another gospel. Character and conduct was not the primary identifying principal as far as Paul was concerned to a person's saved or lost state but it was what they preached that was a dead give away. Salvation is not something which is mystical. I find it fascinating how so many say they will not judge a man yet they do it every day so long as their judgement is a positive one and not a negative one.

That Spurgeon openly called Wesley's gospel 'another gospel' is testament enough that by also saying that Wesley was saved that Spurgeon was, at best, a confused man, and at worst a lost man. Let us not judge by reputation or by how many books a man has written etc., but let us judge by the Word of God. Christ says no one is saved who does not believe the Gospel. Spurgeon said that many were saved who believed in another gospel. I put it to you that you would not hesitate for a moment in thinking I was mad if I were to have written to you such a view!

I leave you with a question none have answered and I believe none ever can: where is the Scriptural ground that supports such a notion that a man who does not believe the Gospel is saved? And, how can a man be saved who calls saved that which the Holy Spirit of God deems lost?

Thank you again for your time and I look forward to hearing from you again.

Moreno.

Do not allow any religious leader to intimidate you by his stature or reputation or position of authority etc., but always remember that they are just sinful men who are all subject to error. Simply because a man has a title, before his name or letters after his name does not guarantee that what the man teaches is God’s Truth. Christ spoke in a most powerful and clear manner to the religious leaders of his day in whom all trusted and looked to for spiritual guidance. He told the most religious people of His day, the Pharisees, spiritual leaders of a nation, that they knew not the Father and were of their father the Devil: "If God were your Father, ye would love me...Ye are of your father the Devil...because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not...He that is of God heareth God’s Words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God" (Jn.8:42,44,45,47). This, to a people who daily read and meditated upon the Old Testament Scriptures! Christ also told them: "ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep..." (Jn.10:26). I do not advocate that any child of God should go around pronouncing the eternal lostness of any person whilst they are alive, for no one knows that except God. BUT, we do know that a person is at present lost if they abide not in the Gospel of God. The reason being, there is no salvation in any other gospel other than God’s Gospel for IT ALONE is the Power of God unto salvation. It may be said that false gospels are the power of Satan unto damnation.

We now come to the final two gentlemen with whom I corresponded. Their emails contain much longer replies than those thus far quoted. The first of these two gentlemen who responded to my question ‘What is the Gospel?’, is pastor G, a Baptist pastor in the state of Colorado, U.S.A. His first reply to my initial email follows in full:

Dear Moreno, do I know you? How did you get my email address?

Pastor G

Dear Sir,

No, you do not know me. I am from Australia and was sent your email address from a friend.

I look forward to your answer to my question ‘What is the Gospel’ and the others I asked. Thank you.

Moreno.

Dear pastor G,

I am not looking for an argument at all with you or anyone else.

Also, it is not important who gave me your email address. I did not say he was a friend of yours but a friend of mine who gave me your address and those of others.

All I am simply asking you is to tell me what the Gospel is. What is it that must be believed in order for a man to be saved, in light of Mark 16:16, and what is it that if a man does not believe it he gives evidence that he is lost. I am seeking this answer because I want to know for certain that the Gospel I believe in is THE Gospel and not a counterfeit. In light of Scripture any who do not believe the Gospel are lost and only those who do believe it are saved. This is made quite plain in God's Word.

So, I hope to hear from you again but if you really would prefer not to write to me then please feel free to ignore this email and you will not hear from me again.

Moreno.

Dear Mareno,

I am writing to you a personal, private letter to answer your question. Therefore I trust you'll respect my privacy and not make my letter public by posting it on the web, or forwarding it. And please don't put my name on any email lists. If Scott Price gave you my email address, please ask him not to do that any more. For some reason, I can't help thinking that your question was meant to bait people into a debate. But against my better judgment (I've given up on discussing this issue with certain folks over a year ago), maybe there are a few things for you here to think about.

Concerning your question about Mark 16, you're probably aware that in many of the most ancient manuscripts of Mark, that passage is not even in the manuscript, and that some good Christians think that it is a later addition. So you may not want to build any theology upon it.

But there are other passages in the New Testament which say basically the same thing as the Mark passage. Acts "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved," Romans 10:, "Whoever confesses with his mouth that Jesus is Lord and believes in his heart that God raised him from the dead shall be saved." And even I think early in Mark's Gospel, Jesus said, "Repent and believe the Gospel."

The problem we face is this: If you say one has to believe too many things with all their details, it gets so exclusive that the "Church" which Christ said would turn into a big tree, turns into a cult, where only the fifteen people who believe very much like you do, are saved.

We have groups like that in America who go by the name "Reformed" and pronounce most evangelical Christians and Reformed Christians as "outside the camp." My experience with them is that they are fleshly (continual strife and argumentativeness is a deed of the flesh-see Gal 5). They also are abusive and are filled with evil speaking. Somehow they've confused the work of spreading the Gospel, with their attempt to do the work that Christ said only angels will do at the end of the world, that is, the work of plucking up all the tares and everything that offends out of the kingdom. When one tries to reason with them, they get irrational, jump to conclusions, starting calling brothers in Christ all sorts of horrid names. Maybe you've run into them, but I hope not. They not only say that people who are Arminian in their theology are not saved, they say that if any Calvinist thinks that an Arminian is saved, he's also not saved as evidenced by the fact that the Calvinist spoke "peace" to the Arminian.

Most of us realize that there are doctrinal issues on which Christians disagree that do not determine their salvation status. Some believe each soul of a newborn is created directly by God. Others say the soul is passed down from parent to child. Some believe in baptism by sprinkling and others by immersion. So there does seem to be degrees of truth and error, some things which are really dangerous and totally contradictory to the Christian body of doctrine. Then there seems to be a continuum. For example I know one seminary prof who holds that Adam was created mortal. While I strongly disagree and have my Scriptural reasons for rejecting it, I don't think his belief is equivalent to denying the Trinity. But then there are young Christians who haven't the faintest idea how to explain or understand the Trinity, and if they do try to explain it make spout off some heretical idea. Shall I pronounce that one unsaved?

On the other hand, if you say one merely just has to "believe in Jesus" that's a problem too, because people define Christ in very unbiblical ways. Some deny his deity and others his humanity. Some believe in Jesus but deny the Trinity (United Pentecostals). The Scriptures teach that there is a false faith which has no works, that even the devil possesses (James). It also says that people pass off "another Jesus" and "another Gospel" as the authentic one (Paul's letters).

I tend to base my fellowship around the Biblical doctrines of the faith categorized and listed in the Nicene Creed. I think that's a good start. But having said that, even in that creed, there are ambiguities that are fuzzy. And I wouldn't say that is "the" standard, but for me its helpful. For example on the last days it says we should believe in four things--the Second Coming, the Resurrection, the Judgment, and the Eternal Hereafter. If you deny the resurrection, it's pretty dangerous error. But if you argue about the details of the "man of sin" in 2 Thess, big deal.

The problem I see with choosing the issue of the Gospel, is that people who ask the question that you do, have somehow elevated the doctrine of soteriology above all the others. There are nine major areas of Bible doctrine--Bibliology, doctrine of God, Christ, Holy Spirit, man, sin, salvation, church, angels, and last things (did I forget any?). As I see it, each area has essential truths that are very necessary for Christian health. On the other hand, we can have different views on the impassibility of God, whether man is dichotomy or trichotomy, whether church government should be episcopal or autonomous, and we can haggle over the interpretation of "Where the carcass is, there the eagles will gather" and "A woman should have authority on her head because of the angels." The problem is that so many Christians are not trained theologically or Biblically, that they don't even know what the issues are.

Since I can't see into people's hearts, I usually take people at their word when they say they are a Christian. Then if there are serious moral inconsistencies, I speak to them and open the Scriptures to them. If I know they are holding to a doctrinal error, I try to do as Paul commanded Timothy, teach with all longsuffering and gentleness.

God's normal means applying His salvation to a person is through the preaching of the Gospel. (Rom 10) But how much, what truths exactly one must believe, or the exact heirachy of truths, I don't know. Several passages condemn those who err concerning the Gospel. But several other passages in Scripture seem to indicate that one can believe very little and still be saved. I don't know how much teaching the thief on the cross next to Jesus had, but we know that he was admitted into Paradise. It seems in the Gospel, simple women and blind persons came to Him and were saved, and most of them not only did not have a Bible, but also couldn't even read.

There are other passages in the Scriptures in which people seem to be saved, even when they are in error on major doctrines. Peter erred on salvation yet I don't think he lost his salvation for the period that he was in error (Galatians 2). The Corinthians erred on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Chs 12-14) and on the doctrine of the resurrection (1 Cor 15), yet Paul calls them "the church" in the first chapter. In fact, most of Paul's letters were written to correct soteriological errors that were occurring among people he considered "the church" in his salutation. The recipients of the letter to the Hebrews were in great error on the doctrine of salvation, yet the author says that he is convinced of better things concerning them, namely, their salvation (Heb. 6). I think Paul's followed his own advice. When people were in error, he, with all perseverance, labored to teach them the truth. He didn't try to play Holy Spirit, the searcher of hearts. He just preached the whole counsel of God and left the results with God.

One important aspect of the Gospel that Paul seems to prioritize is the crucifixion of Christ. He said in Corinthians that I claimed to know only one thing, and that is Christ and Him crucified. In the Lord's Supper His death is proclaimed as well. Then in 1 Cor. 15, there is the statement about Christ died, rose, and is coming again. In 1 Tim there's a little hymn about Christ.

So, although this might not be the answer you're looking for, my advice is preach the whole counsel of God. If you're in the pastoral ministry or have opportunity, teach the Scriptures, because God's people really need to know his word, book by book. Also teach them theology by subject matter. If you can teach them church history that's good too, as there are lots and lots of issues that have been debated and hashed out by Christians before us that we can learn from. The Holy Spirit worked in these forefathers, and many of them have much to offer. And then know that God uses His word as a means of saving. But the exact amount of information that He uses in that process, seems to be at His discretion. In some cases, He seems to use a very small amount.

Related issues to think about include the following: Are infants who die, who didn't believe anything consciously, saved? Does God impart redemption or faith beyond the normal means of the preaching of the Gospel in the case of infants? I think the way you answer that question can have relevance to your question, and vice versa.

There are the persons who are half mentally retarded, and with slobbering mouths but very wide eyes, say, "I love Jesus." Somehow they demonstrate a measure of simple faith in Christ, but they can't really understand or articulate much about Him. Whether or not they are saved may help answer your question, and vice versa.

There is the toddler, who is three or four years old, and says he believes in Jesus and asks Christ for forgiveness for when he disobeyed mommy. You know his mental capacity is extremely limited for understanding the Gospel, but did God impart to him faith based on the very little Gospel truth that he can comprehend? That case might provide some light on your question as well.

The next thing I would recommend is that you study up on a movement in the early church called Donatism. These were "puritans" (in the elitist sense of the word) who believed that if Christians weren't as pure as them, they were "outside the camp." There's a volume in the Post Nicene Fathers series of Augustine's writings against the Donatists. This group, and Augustine's biblical correctives, I think have much to say relevant to your question. They were so exclusive, they limited the "true Church" to their section of the world in Africa, and refused to fellowship with all other Christians who did not believe exactly as they did. But Augustine, using the word, exposed their hypocrisy and their misunderstanding of the true nature of the Gospel, especially ecclesiology. Your question is related to ecclesiology, the doctrine of the Church. Who makes up the Church? Is it a pure body of persons who have no doctrinal sin or doctrinal error. Or is it made up of fallible, sinful minds, who although redeemed, don't worship God perfectly on this side of glory? One day we'll see Him face to face, and our worship of Him will not impeded by misunderstanding of divine truth. But now we see in part. Like the ancient Donatists, some Christians today require that in order to be "the Church," the group or individual must exist without spot or wrinkle on this side of glory. The fact is, it won't happen till that side of glory. In the meantime, we labor and teach.

The question also touches upon the doctrine of sin, or depravity. If even redeemed humanity is subject to sin, it follows that many redeemed people (I should say all) do not worship Him in total purity with all of their minds. Praise God, we do have Christ's righteousness credited to our account. But the remnants of sin still darken the understanding. Our mortality also blocks a totally clear vision of the Divine. But we have the blessed hope of one day receiving a resurrected body and see God as He is.

Moreno, I hope this helps. I pray that you do not associate with one of these modern "Donatist" groups. But if you do, my exhortation for you would be that in your search for answers, you heed and exhibit Paul's standards for men handling the word of truth, that a man of God is not to be pugnacious and argumentative, but is to gently teach opponents with all patience and longsuffering. ( 1 and 2 Timothy) It seems many in those groups have ignored that part of the Gospel.

Dear pastor G,

I want to thank you very much for the time you have taken to write to me.

The reason I have asked you and others the questions I have is to hear for myself what people are saying concerning the questions I have asked. I am not debate-driven but seek gentle and civil discussion of the most important issue facing man: what is the Gospel.

Scott Price did not give me your email address and I will not be posting your reply to me on any web site. That is not what I am about. I have no answers to the Gospel I believe in. I cannot find anything in Scripture that supports the notion that any who do not believe the Gospel are saved nor that any who call saved that which the Holy Spirit calls lost are saved. If you are aware of any please let me know.

'Belief of the truth' is the key evidence that one is born again. This is not a belief of every fine detail of the Gospel doctrine but a basic understanding of them and that none can be in a saved justified state by believing anything else.

Many say, as you know, that they 'believe in Jesus' and that they 'love Jesus'. The words 'believe' and 'love' have a far more distinct and exact meaning than that which is assigned to them in our day. To rightly and biblically believe in Christ is to believe in Who Christ is and what Christ has done. And, to love Him is to be devoted to Him, to follow Him and no other. Most who say they love Jesus believe He died for everyman atop the cross. Therefore whether they know it or not they would subscribe to the lie that Christ's atoning work made salvation possible for all and that it is now up to man to make his decision. To believe in Christ is to know Him and believe what He has done: atoned for the sins of everyone for whom He died. It is that simple. This is the central element to right Gospel preaching and right Gospel believing. But from what I have read of those who oppose this is that exactly what was done on the cross is not necessary to knowing Christ and believing in Him!

What I am saying all boils down to this: If Scripture tells us that belief of the Truth is a sign of salvation; if belief of the Gospel is that distinguishing sign evident in every true born of God believer then that truth, that Gospel must be something which is distinguishable from all the false gospels which abound. It is something which can be defined for every believer is told to preach that Gospel to every creature. You mention that the Gospel is necessary but 'what truths, how much, exactly one must believe I don't know'. In light of this may I ask you what is it that you tell a person the Gospel is. From my reading of Scripture I see that it most definitely is something which is definable and distinguishable from all counterfeit gospels. Seeing that the preaching of the Cross and the preaching of the Gospel are the power of God what is it about the True preaching of the Cross which distinguishes it from all the lies said about it? And, what is it that those who do not believe the Gospel count as foolishness about the preaching of the cross. For instance, Roman Catholics would not say Christ dying for sinners is the foolishness spoken of in Scripture yet we know they are not saved. So what exactly is it that the lost count as foolishness about the preaching of the cross: what Christ did and who He did it for? This 'foolishness' that unsaved people frown upon is precisely the truth that all must believe if one is to rightly and biblically state that he is a saved man.

Paul the apostle told the Galatians that any who came preaching anything different to what he preached this was an unmistakable sign that such people were lost. Imagine a person saying such a thing today! They would be called cultist and elitist, yet in reality Paul was a man of God whose written words were inspired by God's Holy Spirit Himself. Paul did not say that any who preached anything different were believers but a little confused or ignorant, he said they were accursed for they did not preach the Gospel as Paul preached it. I do not write this to you angrily or emotionally but to simply present this for your examination to see if my understanding of this passage is faulty. I do not believe it is but am open to Scripture which will teach me I have it wrong.

When I present the Gospel I do not exclude the various basic facts every believer holds to such as the Virgin birth, Trinity, Resurrection these are all vital teachings which must be believed. There are many side issues which are not Gospel issues that believers can have disagreement over but one thing is for sure the believer in Christ will believe that Christ is his all in all meaning that it is by Christ's obedience unto death which has obtained an elect person's salvation and that that salvation is conditioned on Christ from beginning to final glory.

Man is dead in sin and can do nothing in and of himself to get saved or stay 'saved'. God has elected a people from the nations to be His people. He has given these to Christ Who has died for them all and paid the price for their sins which have been imputed to Him. In turn they have all been imputed with Christ's Righteousness the only righteousness which saves. All these will be effectively called and come to God. All these shall remain saved and forever in a saved state. They will all repent from their sins including dead works and idolatry and from ever having believed that before they were born of that incorruptible Seed of God, His Gospel, they were saved.

That is my Gospel, sir. It is as simple and basic as that. I am sure you will agree that the atonement is the heart of the Gospel message. What Christ has done on behalf of His people must be heard, understood and believed. If one denies the atonement and says that Christ died for all then he cannot believe in THE Gospel; he cannot believe in the Messiah prophesied and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. He believes in a messiah that the Old Testament knows nothing of. In light of this what would you say of a man who claims that a person who does not believe in the Christ Who died for His people and who has changed what God says His Son did on the cross (actually accomplished redemption for all who was given to Him). Is he saved or is he lost. I know why he is lost but have never even heard an answer to the claim that he is saved.

Again, my words to you are written with a gentle spirit and not in anger or emotion. But I feel it is important to discuss the issue of the Gospel for any who do not abide in that Gospel have not God. This language of black and white with no room for any shade of grey is not one I have originated but is the very language of God.

I do hope to hear from you again and that you will honestly face my questions and provide me with an answer or at the least a comment. Thank you for not only taking the time to write to me but to also read my mail to you.

Moreno.

In his second paragraph, pastor G raises the well-worn teaching that the last 12 verses of Mark 16 are not part of the original manuscripts of the Bible and therefore we cannot go to this passage for teaching. However, there is ample evidence that the passage in question is very much part of the Holy Scriptures and is Holy Spirit inspired. (If the reader is interested in obtaining a free copy of an 11-page booklet on the authenticity of the last 12 verses of Mark 16, please write to this author). Suffice it to say that there is nothing in Mark 16 which contradicts any other part of Scripture, and what is contained in it may be found in others parts of the Bible anyway. So to say that it is not advisable to gain sound doctrinal teaching from the passage in Mark 16 is quite an irresponsible and baseless argument. The bottom line is that none who believe not the Gospel are saved, but only those who do believe are saved. This is something to which pastor G readily admits in his next paragraph. Pastor G’s other concern is that we risk falling in with those who say that to be saved, ‘one must believe too many things with all their details’ and that this would reduce Christ’s Church on the earth to ‘fifteen’. Firstly, where is it written that to believe the Gospel is to believe only one or two things? Why is it presumed and taught by many that the Gospel is something which can be presented and defined with a few brief words? Secondly, the Bible does not state how many are to be saved other than it is an innumerable number. Throughout six thousand years many have been saved and these numbers must run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Pastor G’s line of thinking would not have served him well had he been alive in Noah’s day, for though many were religious and believed in many false gods, Noah was the only one saved along with his family. Not fifteen people here but a mere handful, 8 people, were of God and the countless others who believed not Noah, a preacher of Righteousness, were all lost sinners. Men of pastor G’s thinking would no doubt have gone with the majority for how could so few be the ‘true church’. So, we see that going by numbers is not the standard by which we are to judge whether a doctrine is true or not, or whether a person’s Gospel is God’s Truth or not. According to the Scriptures most will not believe the truth (Matt. 7:13,14). Paul stated that "...they have not all obeyed the Gospel, for Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report’"? (Rom.10:16). The same situation prevails in our day, perhaps even worse. It is not so much that none have heard, but that none will even listen to God’s Gospel.

Whatever groups pastor G has met is beside the issue here. The issue is the Gospel and not who pastor G has met and what his experiences with various ones have been. This author has not written to him in a pugnacious or argumentative manner. Does this, in and of itself, mean automatically that what I teach must be the Truth for I do it with gentleness? To judge a certain teaching wrong merely because one or more of its proponents lost their temper and blurted out something in frustration or even anger, or get easily flustered with those who oppose them, is not the standard whereby we can safely judge that man’s teaching to be wrong. I am one man asking one question: ‘What is the Gospel?’, and all I sought from pastor G was a direct answer and not a truck load of words dealing with everything but. Pastor G does correctly state that to merely say all one has to do is ‘believe in Jesus is a problem because there are many lies taught about Jesus’. He also mentions that there is another jesus and another gospel. If we can identify what a false gospel is then surely we, by that same standard, are able to judge what the true Gospel is. If we can judge a gospel as false then surely we may judge the person who believes it to be lost, otherwise we must conclude that one can be just as saved believing in a lie as one can be by believing in the Truth. The utter madness of such reasoning is highlighted in the following statement: ‘the man who believes 2 + 2 = 5 is just as right and is entitled to the same reward as the one who believes 2+ 2 = 4!!!!!’ It’s just ludicrous and illogical thinking. You only get the tick, you only pass, if you have the right answer, not the wrong one. Only those who believe the Gospel are saved, the others will perish (2 Thess. 2:12). If a man preaches a jesus who died for all then we judge him, from the Scriptures, to be preaching another jesus who is not borne record to by God in His Gospel, but is found only in false gospels. God’s Gospel does not talk about a jesus who died for every man, but the Jesus Who died for His people: all those whom God had given Him (Jn. 6:37-40). It talks about His death which obtained and secured redemption for all for whom He died (see Isa. 53:11).

There most certainly are degrees of error, but I am not dealing with those in this discussion. I have not said in my emails to these men that there aren’t degrees of error nor that there are many issues upon which salvation does not depend. Allow me to state quite categorically that there are some doctrinal errors which believers hold to, but they are not salvation issues. The error that will keep a man out of heaven is that which has to do with Salvation. False gospels do not lead people to the true God, but to an idol who can do nothing but provide a false assurance of salvation. Therefore, to talk of ‘degrees of error’ when one holds to a false gospel is misleading at best, and a sheer nonsense at worst. False gospels contain some truth, but it is the lies that are added which makes the whole a lie. Paul said, "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Gal.5:9). 2 + 2= 4, but even if the smallest fraction is added to the right answer, it turns the whole thing into an error. And that is all that Satan has ever done: he has either added to or taken from what God has done and said, thereby producing the Devil’s counterfeit. It appears that pastor G does not base his fellowship with others on the Gospel, but uses as a guide ‘biblical doctrines of the faith categorized and listed in the Nicene Creed!’ Evidently, he has a problem with basing one’s salvation and fellowship on the Gospel, because those who hold to this, according to pastor G, have elevated the doctrine of soteriology above all others. But, my friend, it is plain to see from God’s Word that it is GOD Who has elevated the Gospel above all other doctrines! It is He Who has said that if a person does not repent and believe the Gospel, that person is lost regardless of how moral he might be or how many non-salvation doctrines he believes correctly. A Seventh-Day Adventist is not judged lost by the Scriptures because he believes wrongly about anything in Scripture, except by his belief in a false gospel which tells of a false christ. Paul the apostle based the lostness of a person, and his fellowship with them, on whether or not they believed THE Gospel, and encouraged his hearers to mark those who taught contrary to the Gospel doctrine and avoid them (see Gal. 1 & Rom. 16:17,18).

Pastor G reveals a very perilous attitude when it comes to a person claiming to be saved. He says that as he cannot see into a person’s heart, he usually takes people at their word when they say they are Christian!! And this from a man who calls himself ‘pastor’ and is supposed to be shepherding the flock! This whole argument of our not knowing a person’s heart and not being able to see into a person’s heart is a gross misunderstanding of what Scripture teaches. Of a certainty no man knows what is in the heart of another man, that is his motives etc. (1Cor.2:11), but we do know what a man believes in his heart by what doctrine he holds to and confesses. The apostle Paul could not have rightly judged certain ones lost who preached another gospel if it were otherwise. If one comes to me saying he is a Christian and then states that he is a firm believer in universal redemption—that Christ died for all—then regardless of my abilities or lack of them to mystically ‘see into the man’s heart’, I know for a fact that what he believes is false doctrine and that he has embraced a false jesus. Jesus commended those who tested some who claimed to be apostles and found them to be liars (Rev.2:2). Pastor G prefers to show his concern and doubt over a person’s salvation if he sees any evidence of ‘moral inconsistencies’. But what if he does not? Can he biblically say that a person is saved who claims to be a Christian because he leads an outwardly moral life? I hardly think so (Jn.7:24). Whether it be in a negative sense or in a positive light, judging according to the appearance is strictly forbidden by Christ. One of the reasons for this is that any man can appear righteous to another according to appearance and a man’s opinion of what righteousness is (see Matt. 23:27,28). Go into any false church in the world today and you will see most people acting very morally and looking the absolute epitome of uprightness and rectitude. What else could they be but Christian if our standard was outward appearance? But when we ask the question ‘What is the Gospel?,’ then we see whether or not they truly know God and abide in His doctrine, or whether they have embraced a false god that cannot save. Paul the apostle told the Galatians not to judge any man as a brother by outward appearance or reputation. He told them to not even accept an angel come down from heaven simply because it is an angel, if he does not bring the same Gospel Paul taught them! (Gal.1:8). It is quite significant to note that NOWHERE in all of pastor G’s emails, or those of the others I wrote to for that matter, was there a single comment on Paul calling ‘accursed’, in Galatians 1, those who brought another gospel.

Pastor G reveals his total inability to be a minister of God when he states clearly that ‘God's normal means of applying His salvation to a person is through the preaching of the Gospel. (Rom 10) But how much, what truths exactly one must believe, or the exact heirachy of truths, I don't know.’ Allow me to make it perfectly clear that: God’s ONLY means in applying salvation to a person is through the preaching of His Mighty Gospel!!!! Paul states that "..it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (1Cor. 1:21). What other means, or vehicle, has God provided wherein His Truth is revealed about His Son and His Perfect Righteousness without which no man can be saved? (Rom.1:16,17). God’s Gospel is the power of God unto salvation and no one can come to God without having heard and believed in that Gospel. Pastor G adds that there are several passages in Scripture which condemn those who err concerning the Gospel but that there are also other passages which ‘seem to indicate’ that one can believe very little and still be saved. But if one cancelled out the other then Scripture would be at odds with itself. There would be contradiction and confusion in God’s Word. The wise person knows that there is no contradiction in the Word of God and that God is not the author of confusion, so pastor G’s point of argument, fuelled by his lack of Scriptural understanding, is a very empty one that has no biblical support. He attempts to convince me by making reference to some passages which he alleges prove his latter point, but does not deal with the stark reality of the ones which show conclusively that a person IS LOST if they do not know and believe the Gospel of God. The Bible does not ever contradict itself. So either it promotes belief in very little and a substantial amount of remaining ignorance but salvation nonetheless, or pastor G is the one who is confused and contradicting himself.

To use the thief on the cross as an example of one who did not believe or know much of the Gospel and yet made it to Paradise, is to present a case that would be laughed out of court. Seeing that Scripture clearly teaches that a man must believe the Gospel to be saved, would it not be right and proper and biblical to conclude that whilst on the cross for several hours this thief, who at first derided and mocked Jesus, later came to trust Him as the Messiah because Christ Himself taught this man the Gospel Message? Why else the sudden change in this man? Some may say that this is an argument based on the silence of Scripture on the matter, but whilst the passage in Luke 23 does not say Christ taught the man the Gospel, is it not right to conclude, that belief in the Gospel was the standard that Christ judged this man to be saved and entitled to all of heaven? After all it was Christ Himself Who told the multitudes: "repent ye and believe the Gospel" (Mk.1:15; 16:16). Did He mean here ‘repent ye and believe the Gospel, except the thief on the cross? How ridiculous! To say the thief knew nothing and was told nothing by Christ but that he suddenly and mystically ‘believed’, or that his acceptance into Paradise was based on a remorseful attitude towards the Savior, is the true argument from silence. True repentance can only come after right doctrine. To say that the thief was accepted as a believer merely because he referred to Christ as ‘Lord’ and asked to be remembered, is really stretching things too far. If that is how the thief was saved, then why can’t we all be saved by simply calling Jesus ‘Lord’ and asking Him to remember us? One cannot isolate the thief on the cross from the Bible’s explicit teaching: Believe the Gospel and thou shalt be saved.

In a vain attempt to find support for his ‘many are saved despite their not knowing much’ stance, pastor G mentions ‘simple women and blind people’ who did not own a Bible, and who could not even read anyway, but who were saved. There is no problem for God to save His people. Whether they be blind men or simple women, God’s elect are given the understanding of His Gospel and they believe it. The Faith of any saved person is given to them by God and that Faith believes the Gospel of Christ and no other. Saving Faith, of necessity, believes in that which saves, otherwise it cannot be the Faith which saves. All His people are saved through one means and one means only: the Gospel of God. The Bible says that if that Gospel is hid from a person, if it is covered up and concealed, it is evidence that that person is lost: "...if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost" (2Cor. 4:3). That is the Scriptures’ proclamation and that is the Word this author stands by. This author’s argument is not based on a platform of emotion and sentimentalism, or the unscriptural desire to have all men saved regardless of who or what they believe, but on the Word of God alone. Men such as pastor G raise all sorts of ‘arguments’ to justify their speaking peace and calling saved those people who do not know the Gospel and have embraced another jesus. They look for, and base their opinions on, a variety of man-made standards to prove a person saved but all these people do, as one man has wisely remarked, is ‘ they reason their way right into hell.’ Their judgements about salvation are not based on Scripture but on a mix of Scripture and man’s ideas about God and how He saves. IF ONE ADDS TO OR TAKES AWAY FROM GOD’S WORD, THEN ONE NO LONGER HAS WHAT GOD HAS SAID. Though pastor G makes reference to several Scripture passages in an effort to prove that even the saved are in error on salvation issues, he refuses to deal with the Scriptures this author raised such as Galatians 1:9,10 where Paul labelled lost all those who preached and believed in any other gospel than his own. It is vital that you, the reader, put your ‘pastor’ to the test and ask him directly what he believes the Gospel is and by what standard he judges saved and lost. Never accept a man and his gospel as come from God, or true, simply because he names the name of Christ and utters familiar Christian terminology with a smile (Matt. 24:4,5). Ask him to define the words and phrases he uses so there can be no mistake as to which gospel he is preaching.

In a later paragraph, pastor G mentions the importance of the crucifixion of Christ but then fails to say anything else about it. He is long-winded about other matters but devotes only a word to Christ’s crucifixion. The crucifixion of Christ means many things to many people. But the Scriptures have only one teaching concerning it and if one does not hold to what God’s Word says, then one simply does not have the Christ Who was crucified or the Gospel that God has declared is the only one that saves. Paul said he came to preach not only the name of Christ but the Person Christ AND Him crucified (1 Cor. 1:23), in other words what He did and accomplished by His death. Therein lies the heart of the Gospel Message. The preaching of the cross is the power of God unto salvation and Paul preached it every time he proclaimed the Gospel, and if any did not know and believe the preaching of the cross—what Christ has done and for whom He has done it—they evidenced a lost state. Many agree that Christ was crucified, but what was His crucifixion all about? It is not enough to simply know what happened to Christ, but to know and believe what He has done and for whom He has done it. Who did He die for and what did He do by that death? You see, if you do not believe that Christ has done everything necessary to eternally save all for whom He died, then you have a gospel which leaves room for a man to boast, for it conditions salvation to some degree on what a man does and not on Christ alone. This is not the Gospel of grace which comes from God, but a man-made gospel of works which does not save.

In an effort to escape the demands of this vital issue, some say that it is simply enough to ‘believe that Christ died for YOU’. This may sound plausible to some but it is not biblical, for such a belief is not in accord with the Scriptures which expressly teach that Christ died, made atonement for, all His people. This doctrine teaches what Christ has done for His people. Who you say Christ died for reveals and identifies the christ you believe in. If any think that all they have to believe is that ‘Christ died for me’, it is evidence that they either have not heard the Gospel properly taught or that they cannot see the importance, and thereby do not deem it necessary to believe, the vital doctrine of Christ’s atonement for His people, or that they simply ‘do not want to be caught up in a doctrinal debate’. One must be properly taught, understand and believe in, the Christ Who died for His people in order to know and believe what the Messiah has done to save His people (Matt. 13:23). After all, to biblically know (identify) and believe the True Christ is to understand and trust in what He has done. There are many arminians who ‘simply believe’ that Christ died for them, but again, such a belief leads the person to think that it is not that important to know who exactly Christ died for but what is important is that ‘I believe he died for me’. The focus or emphasis is shifted from Christ’s atoning death to one’s ‘believing’. The central issue is no longer Christ crucified, His saving His people from their sins, but ‘I believe’. Such a belief allows room for the person to believe that his salvation is conditioned on his ‘believing’ rather than wholly on Christ and what He has done for the sinner. This is not Scriptural and it is not what the Gospel teaches.

Pastor G encourages me to preach the whole counsel of God and I would agree with him, for this is what the Bible states (Acts 20:27). But how can one even begin to preach the whole counsel of God if one does not preach the whole Gospel of God? Are we to attempt to preach the whole counsel of God every time we raise an issue with another? If so, we would have time for nothing else and our discussions would become rather long-winded. I am not endeavouring to preach the whole counsel of God in my emails to these men, nor am I required to, but am simply dealing with the life and death issue of the Gospel. I wonder if I had asked a question about baptism, would I have gotten a reply stating that I should preach the whole counsel of God and not just baptism? How silly would that sound? Pastor G also raises the very emotive issue of children and their eternal destiny. One thing the Word of God is very clear on is that every child is conceived in sin and under God’s curse (Psa. 51:5; 58:3; see also Job 15:14-16; Rom. 5:12). Sinners beget that which is sinful (Jn. 3:6). Scripture asks "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one" (Job. 14:4). If one does not believe the Gospel, it is a sure evidence that one is lost. That is the Standard which God has set and we must not allow ourselves to compromise and be moved away from that Standard, regardless of how unbearable its implications may be. We cannot make up doctrines of our own in order to render the doctrine of God more palatable. We must never forget that man is not a neutral creature. We are all born in sin (Rom.3:10-18,23; Psa.53:1-3). We are born children of wrath under God’s curse and if our sins have not been paid for and a perfect Righteousness established by the Savior for us then we shall perish in eternal fire (Eph.2:1-6). We are sinful creatures in need of a Savior. Not from the age of 12 or 18, but from the womb! (Psa.51:5; 58:3). We must also not allow ourselves to get tangled up in conversation about matters which the Bible does not expressly teach on (2Tim.2:23).

Pastor G also mentions those mentally retarded persons who cannot understand very much at all but utter the words ‘I love jesus’. He claims that perhaps this is somehow a demonstration, a measure, of simple faith in Christ. My friend, to which Christ are these people declaring their love? Who are these people? Are they children of Mormons who say they ‘love jesus’? What evidence is there that such people are true believers in the true Jesus of the Bible? Pastor G has already admitted that to say one merely has to ‘believe in jesus’ is not enough, for there are many false teachings about Jesus. Pastor G also talks of the three or four year old toddler who says he believes in ‘Jesus’ and asks ‘Christ’ for forgiveness when he disobeys mommy. My question to this sort of ‘argument’ is, ‘whose child is this toddler?’ Is he the child of an arminian couple or a JW couple? What has he been taught about Jesus? Has he been taught the True Jesus or another jesus? Does it mean that, because one is of a certain age, that one can believe anything about Jesus and still be considered to be referring to THE Jesus? How old then would one have to be before right doctrinal belief is the only acceptable standard? And, where does the biblical evidence for such lie? Surely the child of a Roman Catholic couple cannot be praying to the true Jesus when the jesus he has been taught, and in whom his parents believe, is the counterfeit jesus of Romanism? How could this author have been saved at the age of 8 when praying to the Roman Catholic jesus and then lost at 18 by still praying to the same jesus? No, my friend, this author was just as lost at the age of 8 as I was at the age of 18. It is not the age that matters, but which gospel and which jesus has been taught and believed in. Were the children of the Egyptians or the Syrians in the Old Testament saved and heaven bound after they were taught, worshipped and believed in the gods of their fathers? Were these children saved because they were unaware that none of the gods they were taught and believed in was the True God? To illustrate this, is a dog not ‘a dog’ because it does not realise it is a dog? Can it be deemed unfair to call a dog ‘a dog’ because it is not to blame that it was born a dog? For argument’s sake, how foolish would it be to say that though only cats are saved, a dog may also enter heaven because it is not its fault that it was not born a cat? Sentimentalism and an optimistic attitude has never passed any person into heaven. In the Old Testament one was not of the people of God if one was not of the nation Israel. Simply because one was a child, did not enter the equation. ALL other nations were called HEATHEN and that included the children of those nations. Only the truth of Christ’s Gospel will set a man free from eternal damnation. No good intention, optimistic reasoning, kind, inoffensive word or judgement, ever saved anybody. It may all sound nice and charitable, but these things, if not accompanied by God’s Truth, merely give a false assurance which will be shattered by the Rock of reality come Judgement Day. I am sure the reader can see that this situation is far more complex than our friend, pastor G, would like us to believe.

Pastor G goes on to mention a cult from many years ago called ‘the Donatists’, who claimed that if people were not as pure as they were, they were lost. I know nothing of the Donatists, but one thing I do know is that the Word of God expressly teaches that a belief in any other gospel than the one God bears record to, and which tells of the True Christ and His Righteousness, is a false gospel which has never, and can never, save anyone. The Standard by which I judge is not one of my own making, but is the very Word of God. Paul the apostle did not state that those who brought a false gospel were lost simply because he believed they were ‘not as pure as he’, or because he did not approve of the way they ran their church services. He made such a statement because he was judging by the Word of God, by God’s Standard, that if any believe or teach any another gospel other than the one Paul had received from Christ Himself, such people, according to God’s Judgement and not according to Paul the man, were lost. I do not promote a particular group, or push people into belonging to any organization or to attend any group’s meetings if they are to be saved, nor am I elitist. I simply believe the Gospel as taught by Christ which tells me that all are lost to whom this Gospel is hid. Allow me to state quite clearly that the true Church (called out ones) of Christ on earth at any given time does hold to some doctrinal error, but never to error concerning the Gospel. We do all worship God imperfectly. We all have sinful minds and sinful bodies and are far from being infallible on some of what we believe and teach. But, this does not mean that we do not all believe in the one true Gospel that saves. Christians are all of like mind when it comes to the Gospel for they have all been taught of the Father (Jn. 6:45). Scripture teaches that to be born again one must be born of the incorruptible Seed of God which is His Word, which is defined as His Gospel in many Bible passages (1 Pet.1:23-25; Jas.1:18; Eph.1:13). Every true believer is born of that Gospel, knows and believes that Gospel and is saved by that Gospel. We err in many things and sin in many ways, but all of God’s children have been given the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), know God and are obedient to his Gospel. If we were to believe anything which contradicted the principle of the Gospel Message, that all of salvation is Christ’s doing and none of ours, we would then believe imperfectly and would show that we were lost. The reason for this is that anything added to or taken away from God’s Gospel turns the gospel into a system of works, leaving room for a man to boast (Rom.11:5,6). But the true believer believes what the Gospel says about man, God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and God’s only way to salvation. The type of argument raised by pastor G and others like him who do not know the Gospel is, we are all subject to error because of our sinful, fallen state. What they would have us believe is that the fallibility resident in all of us even stretches to the point where we cannot even trust in the Gospel we believe aright, for we are all prone to error and even our belief in the Gospel is riddled with error! If this is the case, then how can any rightly say that they are truly preaching the Gospel of salvation and that any are rightly believing the only Gospel that saves? Also, how can any say anything is what God’s Word teaches if we cannot understand and teach it without our teaching being sprinkled with error due to our sinful nature? How can we be certain of anything in God’s Word if we cannot understand it aright? Man is most certainly sinful and spiritually depraved but this does not mean that he cannot make a statement or believe that which is absolutely true. If this were so then the mathematician could not rightly teach arithmetic and pastor G could not teach anything from the Word of God and say it was absolutely true. All these sorts of arguments lead one into a spiral of confusion which causes all sorts of doubt in a person’s mind and ultimately to the lie that there are no absolutes. That is one of the reasons that sinful man prefers to base his salvation on his change of life and moral uprightness and a general knowledge concerning the matter of salvation, rather than on knowing intimately, and abiding biblically in, the doctrine of Christ.

Pastor G’s next response is as follows and in full:

Greetings in Christ,

I thought I'd take a few moments and answer your email. I'll respond a little at a time, as you scroll down. In this note, I will exhort you in two areas. 1) Taking into account the entirety of the Scriptures when searching for the evidence of salvation; and 2) An encouragement to make sure your doctrine in this area (soteriology) is consistent with all of the other areas of Biblical theology, particularly harmartiology (the doctrine of sin) and ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church).

(The following statement is by this author, MD) ‘I have no answers to the Gospel I believe in. I cannot find anything in Scripture that supports the notion that any who do not believe the Gospel are saved nor that any who call saved that which the Holy Spirit calls lost are saved. If you are aware of any please let me know.’

No, I don't know of any either. But the question of toddlers and borderline mentally retarded is still something that we must reckon with the question of whether there is an impartation of the gift of faith in Jesus to those of such limited intelligence. Faith comes by "hearing" (Rom 10), but I don't exclude the physically deaf from the kingdom. I trust that "hearing" the Gospel may take another form. Perhaps there is a mysterious way in which God imparts faith in the Gospel to toddlers and borderline mentally retarded who seem to express faith in Jesus, but in a very limited way. It's somewhat related to your whole argument, because if one of them has limited intelligible faith, and is saved, but doesn't explicitly believe in limited redemption, than your theory falls.

'Belief of the truth' is the key evidence that one is born again, MD.

The first point of exhortation, is that I would caution you, Moreno, not to build a doctrine that belief of the truth is "the" key evidence. There are many evidences, which believers manifest in different degrees "some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, and some ninety fold." (Matt). Jesus said "You will know them by their fruit." (Matt. 7) And what is the fruit of the Spirit? Gal 5: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Belief in the truth may come under the heading of "Faithfulness," but it is just one evidence. The end of Matt. 25 seems to present other evidences of a believer, does it not? The whole first epistle of John was written "that ye may know that ye have eternal life." In that epistle, John gives seven evidences--1) walking in the light (1:6-10); 2) keeping his commandments (2:3-6); 3) loving the brethren (2:9-11;3:11-19; 4:20); 4) Not loving the world (2:15-17); 5) Confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (2:22-23; 4:1-6,15); 6) Practicing righteousness (2:29-3:10;4:18); 7) Overcoming the world (5:4). Can you find any more evidences that I did not list?

The point is that I don't think it's right to take one Scripture passage and make that one thing "the" key evidence, in light of all of the other Scriptures about evidence. I pray that you would take all of these Scriptures as a whole in answering the question of what is the evidence that a person is a believer.

But why all the concern about evidences? I understand there is the passage "Examine yourself to see whether you be in the faith." But there are a bunch of people here in the States that feel Gospel ministry is not preaching to those who have never heard the Gospel or building up the saints. They think it is their ministry to weed the tares and false brethren from the Church, a ministry which God reserved for the angels on the last day. I just pray you did not fall under their spell. They're real elitist, somehow have confused knowledge with salvation (which is gnostic), have a Donatist view of the church, and are regarded as a cult. My advice is to flee far from them, and spend your time doing all the things Christ says in those passages about evidences--love the brethren, overcome the world, practice righteousness, cultivate self-control, be faithful to the responsibilities God has given you whether that be to your wife, children, job, relatives, or congregation, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned. You won't have time to obsess about how to detect who is really a believer and who isn't.

I don't know that "all" Roman Catholics are not saved. Luther got saved in the Roman church, and learned predestination from his abbot in the monastery, Van Staupitz, who never joined Luther's break with Rome. Read Augustine On the Predestination of the Saints and tell me he wasn't a saved man. Was there a church from 500 to 1500 A.D.?

This brings me to my second exhortation. God's truth is unified. Every doctrine should be congruous with every other doctrine. Your doctrine of salvation is linked with other doctrines. If one holds that one must believe in limited atonement to be saved, what does this do to your doctrine of the church? Is the church only made up of those who believe in limited atonement? Is that how Scripture defines the church?

What does it do to your doctrine of sin and depravity? We know that depravity affects all humans totally, in their minds, wills, and affections. The view that the evidence of salvation is belief in limited redemption, is not in harmony with this doctrine of sin. It implies that a saved person might sin or be in error in all other areas, except this one doctrine. Regarding this one tenet, total depravity will always be overcome. It singles out this one sin (not believing in limited redemption) as worse in degree to all the rest. It implies that the error of not believing in limited redemption is the unforgivable sin.

When I have written to others on this issue in the past, they never deal with the relationship of this doctrine to the other doctrines of the faith, namely the doctrine of the church and the doctrine of sin. I pray that God will open your eyes to do so.

The Bible shows that the Church is filled with sinners (every one of Paul's epistles), who sin not only in the area of moral action, but in matters of faith and doctrine as well. It's no excuse for it. That's just the nature of the church on this side of glory. We haven't been totally sanctified experientially nor have we received our resurrection bodies when it will be impossible to sin. As I said in my last letter, we are to correct, exhort, rebuke with all patience and longsuffering. Scripture show that some "saved" people erred on the matter of salvation. Peter for one, Gal. 2. The whole church to which the Apostle sent the letter to the Hebrews. I gave the specific passages I believe in my last letter. The recipients of the letters to the Romans and Colossians were also erring regarding the faith. But Paul was writing to the churches, to the company of God's people who unfortunately sin in many ways. Who in those assemblies and who wasn't saved in the end, I don't know and neither did Paul. But "the Lord knows who are His." (Timothy) Paul is saying, it's not our business to know. Rather, he says, our human responsibility is that "every one who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."

I hope the Lord uses the Scripture passages that I quoted in this note to help your understanding regarding evidences of salvation, and how the doctrine of salvation much harmonize with the Scriptures regarding ecclesiolgy and the doctrine of sin. I pray that you read the whole New Testament and get a feel for what the church. And again, I would encourage you to read Augustine's writings against the Donatists. The Donatists were this exclusive group that tried to say that they were the only true church, and Augustine really opened the Scriptures to their situation. It helped me tremendously in my own personal deliverance from a very small church who had the only true church syndrome. I hope it helps you too. They are in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Church, First Series, Volume 4. Also stay clear of the Hyper Calvinists and those who condemn all other Christians as "outside the camp." If they are already your friends, I would encourage you to drop them and find new ones. "Bad company corrupts good morals." If you keep hanging with them, you will end up like them. And God deliver us all from more of them.

Best wishes, and go with God.

pastor G

Dear pastor G,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my email. My response to your comments will follow underneath your replies.

Toddlers, the mentally retarded and other such people I cannot comment on because the Scriptures say nothing of these. To hear the Word is to understand it and believe it. One does not need to physically hear the Word with their physical ears but to understand it and believe it from the heart.

Scripture says that we are sanctified through the Spirit and belief of the truth. If there is no belief of the truth there is no sanctification. The reason the Spirit of God is connected with the truth in 2 Thess is because He is the Spirit of Truth and no matter how loving and kind and gentle etc., a man may be if he does not have the Truth, if he does not abide in the Doctrine of Christ then he has not God.

I do not believe I am taking one passage of Scripture and making a doctrine out of that but have read the entire Bible and see that if one does not have a belief of God, THE God and His Truth then one is in a lost state. It is His Gospel that must be understood for everything outside of that Gospel is man's 'truth' and every religion out there in some way and to some degree conditions salvation on man thereby leaving room for man to boast and denying the only Gospel which gives all the glory to God.

I really care not for the wacky religions and cults out there. I am sad that there are people who see that it is their role to pronounce who is saved and who are lost. This is not what I do or promote. I simply believe that to be a saved person means that one has heard and believes in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The core message of that Gospel being that Christ came to save His people from their sins. That He died on the cross for His people and that they shall all be saved. Those who fail to believe this are lost for they deny Him: Who He is and what He has done. My main focus is not on saved and lost but on Christ Jesus and His Gospel by which we are to judge ourselves saved or lost. How can I separate myself from those lost people who believe not and care not for THE Gospel if I do not judge them lost based on that Gospel. I want to make clear to you that I am not obsessed with who is saved and who is lost but am consumed with a love for God and His Truth and I will not speak peace to any who deny His Truth, who abide not in His doctrine and yet count themselves and others like them, saved.

I would much prefer if we stick to THE issue. If the Gospel is a term which is too general for you then allow me to replace it with 'the preaching of the cross'. All those who are lost count the preaching of the Gospel as foolishness. All those who are saved see it as the power of God. What is the preaching of the cross? Please, sir, if nothing else answer me this question. Preach the cross of Christ to me and tell me what it is that all those who are lost count foolishness about it.

Luther believed in salvation conditioned on baptism and prayed to mary. How could this man be saved when he believed in a 'mary' he believed he could pray to? names and reputations have swayed many men to believe this one was saved and that one was saved. But what did they believe the Gospel to be. 'If any come to you preaching another gospel let him be accursed'.

Those who believe in Christ's death that is who believe that He died for His people accomplishing redemption for everyone for whom He died on that cross are members of His Body. Those who deny His effectual atonement and replace it with a conditional one know not God. The Scriptures make this perfectly clear.

Of course Christ's Church is made up only of those who hear His voice. The field is the world not the Church! The tares are sown by the devil who is their father and not God.

Let us make one thing clear. The term 'limited redemption' is a man-made one. What we are really speaking about is Christ's death, His atoning for sin. Who one believes Christ died for shows exactly what one believes Christ did on the cross. If you are trying to tell me that one can be in error concerning what Christ did on the cross and for whom He did it and still be called a believer in the cross of Christ, then I am afraid you are sadly mistaken. Those who count what Christ did as foolishness the Bible describes as lost along with all those to whom the Gospel is hid. These are not my words but the language of God.

Yes, many in the Church are wrong in many areas. I am wrong in various areas and am far from perfect. But, I, like every other member of Christ's Church believe THE Gospel otherwise I could not be born again. A Christian is born again born of that Gospel Seed. If there is no seed there is no plant and if there is no Gospel there can be no true believer.

Again, I appreciate your well-meaning etc., but I can assure you that I follow no man. There is nothing I believe because a man said it. I believe the Gospel because I see it in the Scriptures. It is what God teaches and it is His Standard of judging saved and lost. I have examined this Gospel every way I know how. I have not shut myself away from those who do not believe it but have gone to them asking them what the Gospel is and to please show me where I am wrong. But I have yet to read or hear anything that you or others have told me that has proven anything to me. I do not say this with any arrogance at all but in all honesty I cannot shake this Gospel off for I see it as the very Gospel of God. It matters not what any man says be it a pastor preaching today or an Augustine or a Luther from the past. What matters is what does God say. He is the only one I refer to.

Again, I want to assure you that I appreciate your time in reading my mail and writing to me and that I have carefully read what you have said. But I have yet to see direct answers to my questions. I shall always look forward to hearing from you and will happily read all that you would kindly share with me.

Moreno.

Notice also that pastor G is another who knows of no biblical evidence which supports the notion that one can be saved without the Gospel (an admission which contradicts other statements he has made) or that those are saved who call saved those which the Holy Spirit calls lost. He then returns to the argument of toddlers and the mentally retarded in an effort to qualify his admission. I believe I have dealt with the issue of toddlers etc., sufficiently in my comments already. He states that he does not exclude the physically deaf from the Kingdom of God and suggests that ‘hearing’ the Word of God may include some ‘mysterious way in which God imparts faith in the Gospel’. Mysticism plays no part in salvation. A man is saved by hearing, which means understanding, and receiving the Gospel. There is no other way a man can be saved (Rom.10:16,17). To raise the matter of deaf people and hearing the Gospel suggests a quite childish understanding of Romans 10:17. To hear the Gospel implies something more than the mere sense of hearing with the physical ear, but rather the receiving of a message. Christ said several times in the Book of Revelation ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear...’ Rev. 2 & 3). He was not talking of physical ears for we all have those, but Christ was speaking ‘metaphorically of the faculty of perceiving with the mind, understanding and knowing’. Such teaching does not exclude the physically deaf from ‘hearing’ the Gospel, but the spiritually deaf. The Bible says nothing about toddlers or the mentally retarded or the aged who now have dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease or other such afflictions. To cancel God’s way and means to salvation simply because every human being cannot, for one reason or another, properly understand the Gospel, or even hear it preached, is to open up a Pandora’s box of excuses as to why one considers this or that person saved. I am sure that man throughout history has devised, to his satisfaction, many and acceptable reasons as to why most of mankind will be saved, beginning with one’s parents and other much loved family members. Why not say that all those who have never heard the true Gospel can be saved anyway? Many ecumenically-minded false preachers, such as Billy Graham, actually teach this! If a toddler is saved merely because he cannot understand or grasp the Gospel, then why not the drunkard who cannot even remember his own name? Such ‘reasoning’ is madness and a nonsense which has no biblical support or precedent. According to this line of thinking, a person would be far better off if he never heard the Gospel or if he was an imbecile without the capability of understanding. Perhaps our strategy before preaching the Gospel to a person should be to clunk them on the head causing them brain damage so that their ability to understand becomes greatly reduced and their simple ‘I love Jesus’ will be enough to qualify them for heaven! Pastor G’s conclusion that my ‘theory of believing in limited redemption being necessary to a saving knowledge of God falls’, is based on nothing but his hypothetical argument that ‘IF (emphasis mine) one of them (such as a toddler or a mentally retarded person who) has limited intelligible faith, and is saved, but doesn't explicitly believe in limited redemption, then your theory falls’. That is a very big ‘IF’, pastor G! How can one suggest a man’s teaching is wrong by saying that IF... then his theory falls? Where is his evidence that I am wrong? Where is his proof? What pastor G is in essence saying is that if you are wrong then your theory falls! How infantile can a man’s reasoning be? This author is truly surprised at the calibre of flimsy ‘arguments’ presented by pastor G and others. To say one is saved who does not know or believe in the doctrine of Christ is to go beyond the Word of God, can produce nothing but a false assurance of salvation and can lead nowhere but a miry pit of confusion out of which one’s standard of salvation is founded on the mystical and sentimental, rather than on God’s Word.

One of the most astonishing statements pastor G made to me was his exhortation to do with salvation that I was ‘...not to build a doctrine that belief of the truth is the key evidence’. This is truly an astounding statement in light of the fact that the Scriptures state plainly that the true believer has been chosen by God "...to salvation THROUGH sanctification of the Spirit AND BELIEF OF THE TRUTH: whereunto he called you BY OUR GOSPEL..." (2 Thess.2:13,14). There are dozens of other Scriptures which testify to the same (eg. Jn. 8:32; 17:17; Eph. 1:11-13; 2 Thess. 1:8,9; 2:10,12; 1 Tim. 2:4; 6:3-5; 2 Tim. 3:1-8; Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:22-25). If one believes a lie concerning the Gospel of Christ; if one does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, one has not God and there is nothing that can change this immutable and God-Authored fact. Yes, there are many evidences of a man’s saved state. Never once did I say to pastor G that belief of the truth was the only evidence, but rather the key evidence. But the evidences alone that pastor G mentioned—the favorite one of the masses being a moral change in their lives—mean nothing and are of no worth if they are not accompanied by a sound belief in the Gospel of God. Of what use is it for a man to be gentle and loving and kind and patient if he does not know and believe the Gospel without which no man will be saved? Without the doctrine of Christ there is no salvation. Every man, woman and child on this earth could change their lives right now and live as morally as they could, but if they do not have the Gospel, if they do not hold to God’s Testimony concerning man’s sinful state and the only Savior Who can save any, they are as lost as the most immoral and amoral man who ever lived.

Pastor G also asks the rather inane question, ‘why all the concern about evidences?’ My friend, evidences are how we judge ourselves and others to be saved or lost. We make judgements every day based on evidences! If we cannot find any biblical evidence as to whether we are saved or lost, then what a world of confusion, anxiety and fear we would live in? What a terrifying existence it would be to know of the God Who punishes sinners and yet to not be sure that one is saved and will never feel that Holy Wrath! How could we separate ourselves from false preachers and how could we ever be sure that what was being preached to us was the Truth, if we could not judge based on biblical evidence? God’s Word speaks much about evidences of salvation. It says that he who believes the Gospel is saved and he who believes it not is lost. There is your principal identifying evidence. Belief of the Gospel is the key. Have you been made free by the Truth of Christ or do you remain in bondage? How can we know whether we are saved but by a belief of the Gospel and a repentant life? A repentant life on its own is no evidence of salvation. Most people of every religious persuasion lead repentant lives, but all are lost if they do not repent of trusting in false gospels and believe the Gospel of Christ. Jesus spoke of many who would call Him ‘Lord’, yet He knew them not for they believed not His Gospel but had their houses built on the sands of works and false gospels and sincerity of belief, trusting in who they were and what they did (Matt.7:21-23).

Pastor G says that he does not even know that all Roman Catholics are lost! He claims Luther got saved in the Roman Catholic Church and learned predestination from his abbot in the monastery. But what predestination is he talking about? Certainly not the predestination which the Bible teaches which says that God has predetermined all those whom He has chosen from before the foundation of the world to believe in His Son and that all of salvation is conditioned on that Son from beginning to final glory and that man can contribute nothing to his attaining or maintaining salvation. The Roman Catholic Church pronounces a curse on any who believe these mighty Biblical truths. Romanism has always fiercely opposed the Biblical teaching of Predestination. The Jewish nation believed firmly in predestination but obviously knowledge of even this doctrine alone is no evidence of salvation, for Paul the apostle would then not have prayed for the salvation of that nation (Rom.10:1-4). As I wrote to pastor G, Luther believed in baptismal regeneration and also prayed to Mary. Luther also counted many saved who believed not in Christ’s death for His people exclusively. Pastor G asks ‘is the church only made up of those who believe in limited redemption?’ By this he shows that he really has only a fleshly understanding of things Scriptural, for he cannot see that the death of Christ and what was accomplished in and by that death, is the central teaching of the Gospel Message and must be believed if one is to rightly consider oneself a believer in His name, and saved. The Old Testament is full of prophecies concerning Christ’s atoning death, as well as types and forshadowings and ceremonies that showed what the Messiah would do in His Office of Great High Priest and who He would do it for. To teach and believe that Christ did more or less than what He actually did do on the cross, is to believe another gospel and another christ. To believe in a gospel which is not according to the Scriptures (Old Testament) is to believe in another gospel (1Cor.15:1-4). Pastor G claims that my doctrine leads one to believe that unbelief in the exclusive death of Christ for His people as an essential to a saving knowledge of Him, is the unforgiveable sin. I would like to know how anyone can be saved of God—believe in His Word about His Son—by holding to the Christ-denying lie that Jesus died for every man. This doctrine, which changes what the Lord Jesus did from saving His people to making salvation merely possible for all and basing that salvation on a man’s decision, is anti-Gospel. No one has ever entered heaven a saved person by having their sin of unbelief in the Gospel of God overlooked. Ignorance of the Gospel will not be excused but will be dealt with firmly by a wrathful God, just as it was on the cross of Christ for all those for whom He paid the price of this sin (2Thess.1:7-9; Col.2:13-15). Unbelief in the Gospel of Christ is unforgiveable, for Christ Himself has said that all who believe not WILL perish! (Mk. 16:16). So ends the ‘case’ of pastor G, a man who, like the empty wagon, made a lot of noise but really said nothing in answer to my questions and statements. I say this, not to belittle the man, but to reveal his words as erroneous and to show his deep lack of understanding of what the Gospel is all about. Such a man should not be trusted.

Finally, we come to the last gentleman I wrote to. He is pastor H of the Sharon Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Florida, U.S.A. Pastor H’s first reply to my question, ‘What is the Gospel?’, follows in full:

Dear Mr. Dal Bello,

You don't share much information regarding who you are, where you live, how you got my e-mail address, or why you're asking the question, but I'll be happy to answer your question anyway. You will find my response to your question in the form of a sermon on our church's website: http://www.forministry.com/33015sopc

From the home page click on "Message from our Pastor," and you'll go to a sermon on the book of Jude, dealing with "The True Gospel & The False Gospel."

Not only must one believe the true Gospel in order to be saved, he must also "be baptized," that is, he must enter into the visible covenant with Jesus Christ through church membership, placing himself under the authority of Christ. But that's the topic of a whole other sermon.

Regards in Christ,

pastor H

Dear pastor H,

Thank you for your reply.

I have just read your article on the true Gospel and false and it would appear that we hold to the same Gospel and that we would be in agreement with the following: that none are saved who believe not the Gospel of Christ, this would include arminians, and tolerant calvinists who claim that though the arminian gospel is a false one those who believe in it are saved Christians nonetheless.

I have written several booklets on the Gospel and would like to share with you my first one: 'God's only Gospel'. I hope you will make time to read it and I look forward to your comments.

I am from Australia and was given your email address by a friend.

Moreno.

Dear Mr. Dal Bello,

Thank you for your comments and for a little more information regarding yourself. I would be happy to read your booklet, but I was unable to download it as sent. Perhaps you could save it in "Rich Text Format," and re-send it? I use Word '97 as my word processor, but most word processors can read documents sent in "Rich Text Format" (.rtf). It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

In His grace,
pastor H

Dear pastor H,

I'm glad to hear from you again. I do apologise but I thought I had sent the booklet in rtf format. I have attached it in that format now for you and I pray the booklet will be a blessing. I must mention that several things you said in your article on the Gospel I have said in my writings such as the arminian gospel and the true Gospel being diametrically opposed. How any can say that arminians are saved when they well know their gospel is a false one is beyond me. These peace speakers are as lost as the arminians are for they do away with the essentiality of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ for His people.

Thank you for your kindness.

Moreno.

Dear Mr. Dal Bello,

I just received your booklet in .rtf format. Everything downloaded just fine. Thanks for resending it. I shall look forward to reading it soon.

As for Arminians being saved or lost, I believe there are definite gradations of error within the Arminian camp and I don't know how much error God is willing to put up with in a person's understanding of the Gospel. That's why, rather than to state, categorically, that all Arminians are lost, I prefer to put the matter this way: we should not give Arminians any assurance that they're saved and we should not treat them as though they're saved brothers and sisters in Christ, based on the fact that they profess a certain amount of human cooperation with the Gospel rather than 100 percent God's working. This leaves the matter of their salvation in God's hands, but at the same time keeps us faithful to the proclamation of the Word. I certainly agree with you that we should not speak peace to them if they profess an Arminian understanding of the Gospel.

Joy to you in His grace,
pastor H

Dear pastor H,

I want to thank you for your response and I am glad that the booklet got through to you ok. I also would like to mention that my replies to you come from a gentle heart and not from an argumentative debate-driven spirit. I appreciate your time, sir, and look forward to future correspondence with you.

I believe your answer to the matter of the lostness of arminians really says it all. The fact that you will not and cannot speak peace to them and give them any assurance shows that you obviously believe they are lost because, based on your not speaking peace to them, you know they believe and promote another gospel wherein is no salvation.

Galatians 1, which you referred to in your article shows plainly that Paul was absolutely certain of the lost state of those who would come preaching another gospel which did not promote the work of salvation as being 100% of God. Therefore, I believe it is right and biblical to consider a person in a lost state at the time of their confessing a false gospel. We know that all arminians say that Christ died for everyone and that it is now up to us to receive what Christ has done. That is where the line between error and truth, saved and lost is drawn. Who one believes Christ died for shows what one believes He did on the Cross. If what one believes Christ did on the Cross coincides with God's Testimony then they are saved, but if it does not correspond precisely with what God says His Son did then we have another gospel for it is guaranteed they have either added to or taken away from Christ's atoning work.

I will always be interested in your comments.

Moreno.

Dear pastor H,

I have not heard from you for nearly 3 weeks now and was wondering if you have been able to make time to read my booklet 'God's only Gospel'. I am still very interested in your comments.

Also, I am still interested in your comments regarding my last email to you and have posted it at the end of this email in case you have misplaced the original.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Moreno.

Dear Mr. Dal Bello,

I have just finished reading your document and have attached it to this e-mail with my comments at various intervals in "Revisions" format. I hope you can open and read it.

I appreciate your kind spirit of interaction and agree with that same spirit. I hope you won't take offense to my putting it this way, but "Please do not put words in my mouth." My response to the above paragraph is fleshed out in my response to your paper. In essence, I do NOT "obviously believe they are lost." I believe they have a false profession, but I do not presume to know whether or not they are saved or lost since I do not know how much error God will allow in His people. Suffice it to say that the Scriptures give us the true Gospel and that I believe your summary of what those Scriptures teach is a correct summary of the true Gospel. Making judgments as to whether or not a person gives a true profession is an act committed to the officers of Christ's church. I agree with you that the 5 points of Calvinism are part of a required profession for membership in Christ's church. But making judgments as to whether or not a person is actually saved by God or lost is not for us to determine. To say that all those who profess any Arminian doctrine are lost goes beyond the scope of what God has revealed to His church, in my humble opinion. Yet I believe we certainly should not give men false hopes and make them think they're saved when they have serious error in their doctrine of salvation.

Yours in Christ,
pastor H

Dear pastor H,

Thank you for taking the time to read my booklet and for commenting here on my last email to you.

I cannot understand how you can call anyone saved if by that same standard you are unwilling to call someone lost. Again, Paul the apostle before meeting those men he referred to in Gal. 1 said that they were in a lost state if they did not preach his Gospel. It is a biblical thing to call someone lost if the Gospel is hid from them. The Gospel is tangible and not some mystical thing and salvation is something which may be judged according to what gospel a man believes.

For the sake of simplifying things let us leave aside all the doctrines which make up the Gospel Message except the core ingredient: the death of Christ. You know that arminians believe that Christ died for everyone. You will also know that this changes everything about Who Christ the Person is and what Christ has done. You know that the Old Testament has nothing to say about an atonement which was conditioned on those for whom it was made. Atonement was always made for God's people. They were referred to as God's people not only after the atonement but before it as well. Any who say that Christ died for everyone denies the central message of the Gospel that Christ came to save His people from their sins. Christ accomplished redemption for His people on that cross and not merely made it possible.

I believe you know all this and would agree with it but I see that you will not go that one step further which is the only logical step one can take if one believes these things that all who do not believe Christ died for His people exclusively are those to whom the Gospel is hid and at the moment of their disbelief are in a lost state. This is not to say that they are eternally lost but that they are currently lost. This is not to deny anyone's sincerity in their religion or their zeal. Paul said that Israel the nation had great zeal but it was not according to knowledge. So it is today, if one's zeal and sincerity for God is not according to knowledge, the knowledge of His Gospel about His Son and what He has done for His people, one evidences a lost state.

Paul's calling some 'enemies of the cross' and 'accursed' was not because he could in some mystical way see into their hearts. He knew that it was not God Who had taught them simply by hearing what they taught and believed.

The bottom line is what is the Standard? What is the Gospel that must be believed? The Scriptures speak clearly as to what it is and Who Christ is. One cannot have salvation if one does not believe in HIS name and that name signifies that He would save His people from their sins. To deny this is to deny His very name. One cannot have salvation if one does not abide in the doctrine of Christ and the core doctrine of the Gospel is the preaching of the cross: Who was on that cross and what did He do. If one has this wrong then one is in a lost state.

No, it is not for us to determine whether one is eternally saved or lost. This is not what I am doing nor do I promote it in any way. But, in order to distinguish the false preachers from the true, the saved from the lost one must know the Gospel. I do not believe I am saved because of a changed life nor do I base my salvation on my sincerity or level of zeal but I base and ground my salvation on Who Christ is and what He has done and the glorious grace of God which has opened my eyes to see and believe the Gospel.

You say that we should not give men false hopes etc., that they are saved if they are in serious error. What would you call serious error. I would call the most serious of errors the fact that a man denies that Christ died for His people but that He died for everyone. Every arminian holds to the lie of universalism and it is on that ground I conclude that they are lost. They cannot be saved for they do not believe in the preaching of the cross.

Would I be correct in assuming that you would readily accept the fact that every Roman Catholic is in a lost state? And, that every Seventh-Day Adventist is currently lost along with every Mormon and JW. The reason they are lost is because they have not been taught and therefore do not believe in the one and only Gospel wherein is salvation. They have never been taught the true Christ and what He has done therefore how can they be saved believing in a counterfeit gospel and a counterfeit Christ. Ignorance is not a sign of salvation but one of lostness and darkness. The Gospel has come to bring us out of that darkness and into Light.

I do not say someone is lost, that is, I am not declaring their state of lostness I simply observe it. I am not pronouncing the lostness of anyone. I simply hear what they believe and, if it is not the Gospel of God that they confess Scripture declares they are lost and I simply agree. When I first heard the Gospel after 14 years of religion I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not saved through all those years based on the fact that I did not believe the Gospel because I had never heard it. To believe one was saved before hearing the Gospel shows that one is yet to understand and believe what the Gospel is.

Going back to some other things you mentioned: you said that 'I believe they have a false profession'. You also spoke of those who have a true profession. Going by this I can see that you have a standard upon which you discern whether or not a man's profession is a true one or a false one. If one has a true profession then one evidences a saved state and so based on this same reasoning if one has a false profession one must be in a lost state for how can one be saved whilst holding to a false profession. Every saved person 'God hath from the beginning chosen (you) to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and BELIEF OF THE TRUTH' (2 Thess. 2:13). No one is led of the Spirit to belief of a lie.

You also said that those 'who profess any arminian doctrine are lost goes beyond...' I was sticking to the core teaching of the Gospel, Christ's death, but I am glad you mentioned 'any arminian doctrine'. Let us look at what they believe. Now, not all believe everyone of the following lies but they do hold to most. Firstly, they say that man is not dead in sin and totally depraved but that man can come to God by his own free will. This flies in the face of God's declaration of man's state which is that he is dead in sin, there is none righteous and that none can come to Christ unless the Father draws them. Secondly, they say that salvation is not unconditional but conditional on a person's faith. They say that God did not elect a people based on His purpose and grace but on His foreseeing who would choose Him. They also say that a man can lose his salvation unless he continues in doing good and staying away from sin. The whole arminian doctrine bases things on man. It puts him at the centre and not God. This devilish theme is seen throughout the religions of the world. But THE Gospel of God bases it all on Him. Who He chose; Who His Son died for and to whom His Holy Spirit savingly applies this Truth.

I have written several other booklets which you may read at my friend's site: http://users.bigpond.com/mnscott/ The titles are: God's only Jesus; God loves doctrine; Atonement for whom?; who are the lost; I have recently written a sixth booklet 'Born of the Gospel' which will be on the site soon.

I have had the Gospel I preach confirmed by you and some others in reformed churches but many just cannot come to the point where they admit that one who does not believe it is lost. They cannot get over a person's morality and 'love of Jesus' and the number of years they have been church goers. None of these things is any evidence in and of themselves that one is saved. If one does not have the true Christ how can one say they love Christ? What do arminians say about the Jesus Who died for His people exclusively and not for everyone. I'll tell you what they say: they hate Him and they hate those who promote this Christ. They prefer Satan's counterfeit who died for everyone and accomplished nothing. Whoever heard of people for whom a sacrifice was made going to hell regardless?

To me it is clear: believe the Gospel and you are saved. Fail to believe it or deny even one of its doctrines and you call God a liar and evidence a lost state.

Thank you for your time again.

Moreno.

What follows now are the comments made by pastor H regarding this author’s booklet ‘God’s Only Gospel’. Included with this will be the portion of the booklet upon which he is commenting. His comments are included here in full:

(Portions from my booklet are in italics. Pastor H’s comments are underlined:)

Dear pastor H,

I have just read through your comments on my booklet and am glad to see that you have no problem with the doctrine of Christ as such.

Basically, what you do have concerns about is how serious does one's error have to be to evidence a lost state. I remember having asked the following question to a friend in my lost days and more recently to a Presbyterian pastor: 'How wrong does one have to be to show that they are in a lost state'. Neither man was able to answer me. Neither one, not even the pastor, mentioned the Gospel. He just said 'I don't know'. The Bible tells us clearly doesn't it? Believe the Gospel and you will be saved; Believe in Christ and you will be saved; Believe in His name and you will be saved; Believe in the preaching of the cross and you will be saved. If one does not believe then one is lost. What must one believe and what is it to believe?

Every religious person out there believes some truth. The Roman Catholic says he believes in salvation by grace, but is it the grace which is taught in Scripture? Obviously not. The Roman Catholic as well as every other religious person who does not abide in the doctrine of Christ believes that salvation in some way and to some degree is conditioned on man. The whole arminian teaching may be summed up by the fact that in some way and to some degree salvation is conditioned on man. No religion teaches that all of salvation from beginning to final glory is conditioned on Christ except the Gospel of Christ. False gospels teach that somewhere along the way man's salvation is conditioned on what he does.

May I share with you an excerpt from a booklet of mine 'Who are the Lost' in which I deal with the Pharisee and the publican:

The True Gospel is the ONLY Message which gives ALL the glory for salvation to Christ. NO GOSPEL OF MAN'S DOES THAT! Every false gospel leaves room for man to boast. They all teach that at least some part of salvation is conditioned on man. The best argument that believers in false gospels can come up with in defence that their beliefs do not take any glory away from God, let alone leave room for a man to boast, is, ‘though salvation is conditioned on man to some degree, it does not give man room to boast or glory and does not take away any glory from Christ, because anything man does to meet any of the conditions is attributed solely to Christ and His enabling a man to meet the criteria.' This sounds so reasonable but it is devilish to the core, and could only come from the depths of a man's depraved heart and his fleshly insistence that he play some part in his salvation. Listen to how Christ Jesus, in a few short verses, wipes out this type of thinking: "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I THANK THEE, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I FAST twice in the week, I GIVE tithes of all that I possess.' And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful unto me a sinner.' I tell you THIS man went down to His house justified rather than the other: for everyone that EXALTETH HIMSELF shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Lk.18:11-13). Notice here that the Pharisee thanked God that he was not like other men. He then proceeded to boast of what he did, obviously believing, in light of his attitude towards the publican, that his acts of obedience in some way contributed to his gaining God's favor, even though he evidently attributed all the good he did, not to himself, but to God. The publican, however, did not mention even one ‘good' deed that he had done. He brought none of his righteousnesses with him, but humbly asked for God's mercy, not seeking or expecting to be justified by any of his own works, whether he attributed them to God or not. He did not expect his works to make the difference between Heaven and Hell, but only God's Mercy. And Christ said this man, rather than the Pharisee, was justified. Notice also that Christ referred to the Pharisee, who attributed his good deeds to God, as one who exalted himself. Be not deceived. Those who claim that salvation is conditioned on man to some degree, yet say that they do not take any of the glory for salvation away from Christ because they attribute their meeting certain conditions to God's enabling power, are exalting themselves, according to Scripture. Their gospels teach a salvation by works, for they leave room for a man to boast even when he is attributing all his obedience to God. Such people are LOST. By this we see that boasting is not excluded by a gospel which teaches that salvation is conditioned on a man's works, but it is only excluded by THE Gospel Message which teaches that salvation is by grace through faith in the Person and Works of Christ Jesus the Lord (see Rom.3:24-28). Such a Gospel leaves a man no room in which to boast. Faith in this Gospel seeks not to exalt the believer but humbles the believer, excluding all boasting, for it conditions all of salvation on Christ. (See Rom.3:24-28).

How wrong does a man have to be. How serious would an error have to be to show that the one who believes it is lost? Any gospel which conditions salvation, the attaining or maintaining of it, on man is a false gospel. It gives glory to man and not wholly to God. Those who believe in such gospels do not go to their homes justified but abased. Only he who believes in THE Gospel which attributes all of salvation to God is justified. The gospel which leaves room for a man to boast is a false gospel for it is not based on grace as described in Ephesians 2. I believe you will find that every false gospel and every false religion out there gives the glory to man to some degree. This cannot be the Gospel that comes from God and in light of this they cannot be saved. I believe that maybe this is the answer to your question about how serious does error have to be etc.

I'll leave off for now thanking you sincerely for your time. I am so appreciative that you have not simply brushed me off as others have but have remained in discussion with me on this most serious of issues. I shall always look forward to hearing from you again.

Moreno.

There are two gospels one can believe in: one a gospel of works, the other the Gospel of Grace. The Bible states emphatically that election is according to GRACE and not works "And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace..." (Rom.11:5,6; 2Tim.1:9). Any work which is attached to the Gospel of grace, does away with grace, and one is left with a gospel of works. Paul speaks of liberty in Christ in Galatians 5:1-5 and says that if one includes a seemingly minor act, such as circumcision of the flesh, as a necessary element to one’s salvation or in the maintaining of it, one would be nullifying the work of Christ, and Christ—His Person and Work —would not profit such a person: "...if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:2-4). Later in this chapter, and in the context of what he has been speaking of—adding anything to the Person and Work of Christ—Paul states that "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (5:9). This shows clearly that no true believer in God’s true Gospel has added anything to it which conditions any part of salvation on what they do or abstain from doing. THERE is your proof that a true believer holds to the pure Gospel and cannot hold to one which has errors in it which teach that a man has to ‘play his part’ in salvation. Such a gospel is not the Gospel of Grace but a gospel, a system, of works which cannot save. If you hold to a gospel which conditions any part of salvation on man CHRIST SHALL PROFIT YOU NOTHING. You cannot hold to the True Gospel which conditions all of salvation on the Grace of God and the Son of God. I am not speaking here, nor have I written pastor H of, the necessity to believe and understand and comprehend every minute detail of every doctrine which makes up the Gospel of salvation, nor have I taught this in any of my writings. I am simply trying to draw attention to the fact that most who name the name of Christ do not believe in even the basic tenets of the Gospel, the heart of which is Christ’s Atoning Substitutionary Death for His people which fully accomplished their redemption. It is the very heart and soul of the Gospel that most people reject. The issue is not that a few people are a little confused, or even ignorant of some finer points of the Gospel Message, the issue is that most who profess to be Christians do not believe that salvation is wholly conditioned from beginning to end on Jesus Christ ALONE! Despite their claim to believe in grace, most believe that man must meet certain conditions in order to be saved, and then must hold to various other conditions in order to stay ‘saved’. This author is not picking at minor insignificant errors but am shining the Light of God’s Word on the most serious and subtle deception ever perpetrated on man!

Pastor H admits that we must not treat as Christian brothers those whose doctrine is in serious error, but in the same breath adds that he does not know how serious one’s error has to be to show he is lost! Upon what then does pastor H base his stand in not calling someone a Christian brother, if he has admitted that he does not know how serious one’s error has to be to disqualify him as being saved? He asks ‘would there have to be no error at all?’ The answer from Scripture is clear. Paul the apostle told the Galatian people that if any preached not the same Gospel he had preached to them, this was a most sure and certain evidence that such people were lost, not eternally necessarily, but at the time of their false profession and promotion of a false gospel. PAUL JUDGED THEM LOST BY THEIR FALSE PROFESSION!!! Paul does not even hint that some Gospel error was permissible. Anything added to or taken from Paul’s Gospel made it another gospel, and the one who believed it lost. It all seems rather simple and clear to this author. Pastor H points out that he asks those who attend his Sunday services who do not believe in salvation by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, to not partake of the Lord’s Supper. Obviously he must count such people lost, for if not, he would be going beyond the bounds of Scripture in prohibiting a saved person from partaking in the Lord’s Supper. He says to such people ‘We hope you'll join Christ's true church soon...’ By this he is stating that he does not believe they are part of Christ’s true church, yet he will not call such people lost!! Are any saved who are not part of Christ’s Church? If so, what need is there of Christ? He says by such a statement that he does not recognize such people, who teach that man has a part in his salvation (which every arminian holds to), as fellow believers. But he simultaneously insists that this is not the same as saying he believes they are all lost!!!!!!!! Christ says they are all lost! We have seen in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican Christ’s teaching that any who believe they have played a part in attaining their salvation, or think they can, or are to, contribute to maintaining their salvation, whether they attribute their efforts to God or not, are not justified at all but do exalt themselves, believing in a gospel which leaves room for a man to boast. No gospel which includes any work or effort by man has, or will, save anybody. For it cannot be God’s Gospel of Grace which is pure and free of any man’s works, which draws attention and exalts only those Works of the God-Man Jesus Christ the Righteous. Every man must appear before the Holy God either with Christ’s Righteousness or his own. It is either one or the other. Either you appear before the Holy God with the Perfect Righteousness of Christ, imputed, or your own imperfect righteousness. You cannot come to Him with both. If you come to Him with Christ’s Righteousness, you will not want anything to do with your own righteousness (Phil. 3:9) and if you appear before God on Judgement Day with your righteousness, you must stand alone and your eternal future will depend on your imperfect obedience to God’s perfect Law. You cannot appeal to Christ, if you look to anything outside of Christ and His Perfect Obedience, for all of salvation. If you trust in your efforts at obedience as forming any part of the ground of salvation, to any degree, you will be accursed forever (Gal. 2:16). If you depend on anything which you have done, will do, can do, don’t do or never have done etc., as forming any part of the ground of your salvation, you are a LOST person and your righteousness before the Holy God is as filthy rags (Isa.64:6). If Righteousness before God is obtainable outside of His Gospel Message by an act of obedience on man’s part, in addition to what Christ has done, then the redemption of man did not require the death of the Son of God as Savior, Mediator and Representative of all whom God had given Him. If the gospel you hold to requires the work of Christ to be supplemented by an effort on your part, then it is a false gospel you have been taught and believe in and you are currently lost. You do not believe in God’s Savior but in an impotent, Satanic counterfeit, who needs your cooperation and your efforts to complete the work of ‘salvation’ which he started. Such a hellish teaching states that Christ and His Work is in some way deficient and that salvation was not secured for anyone solely by what Christ has done. Christ’s very Death was for the Redemption of the elect of God, the Precious Blood which He shed was for the remission of all of their sins (see Heb.9:15;10:18). If salvation comes by a work of obedience to God’s law on the part of sinful man, then it must be a perfect obedience to the WHOLE of God’s law (Gal.5:3). The best a man can do is offer to God an imperfect obedience to some of His laws and complete disobedience to most. Such an offering is unacceptable. God’s Gospel is not one which demands man play his part in order to get saved or stay saved, for God’s Law and Justice, both demanding to be fully satisfied, have been FULLY and ETERNALLY satisfied by the Person and Work of Christ Jesus the Lord! The Gospel teaches that many are saved by the Perfect Obedience of ONE, not by the individual imperfect efforts of the many (Rom.5:19).

Pastor H adds that he does not know whether some men are saved or lost and that he leaves that up to God. How then can he judge himself saved? If a man believes the Gospel he is saved and if he does not believe it then he is lost. If we cannot judge others saved or lost, how can we presume to be saved ourselves? Upon what standard would we base such a judgement? This just sounds like a cop out. God’s Gospel is the Standard by which we measure saved and lost. If one refuses to judge anyone saved or lost, then he must not judge himself to be saved and must cease to preach what he thinks the Gospel is. For in preaching the true Gospel, one is proclaiming God’s Standard of saved and lost. In 2 John 9-11, the apostle John warns believers not to have spiritual fellowship with any who bring not, and abide not in, the doctrine or Gospel of Christ. If any hold to a gospel which leaves room for a man to boast, that is, conditions any part of salvation on the sinner, the believer is not to fellowship with such a person. He may invite the person into his house for the purposes of instruction, but he cannot pray with such a person or leave that person any room in his mind to think that they are considered brethren, for in doing so he would then be a partaker of the false professor’s evil deeds.

Finally, pastor H ends up showing that he, like most, is swayed by the reputations of men when he says that some say that even some of the ‘greats’ of the past were lost, for they spoke peace to those who came preaching another gospel. I believe I have already covered this subject in the booklet. Suffice it to say, Paul the apostle has clearly stated that it matters not if an angel from heaven comes to us or a person of great renown and widely respected as a preacher, if they bring another gospel they are lost. So sure was Paul that the Gospel he had taught the Galatians was THE only Gospel of God, that he even says that if he himself were to return at a later date and present them a different gospel to the one he had already preached to them, they were to consider him accursed. IF THEY DO NOT BRING PAUL’S GOSPEL, LET THEM BE ACCURSED!

Pastor H’s next email came several days after my last one to him:

Dear Mr. Dal Bello,

I'm not ignoring you. My son broke two bones in his hand and I've spent the last 3 days in hospitals, doctors' offices, and pharmacies... WAITING... WAITING... WAITING.

I hope to respond to your last two e-mails but need to catch up on some sermon work, etc. Thanks for your patience, brother.

pastor H

Dear pastor H,

I was sorry to hear of your son's injury. I hope he will be well again soon.

I appreciate your letting me know that you do intend to reply to my last 2 emails. I look forward to hearing from you again.

Moreno.

There are some matters which were mentioned in the correspondence I received from these men to which I did not respond in my emails, nor in the additional comments made in this booklet. The reason being that regarding the email correspondence, my aim was to keep our attention focused on the issue of the Gospel and not allow discussion to be lead into other areas of theology which really have no bearing on the salvation issue. No comment was made on these matters in this booklet either, because of limited space. But I can say that my previous 6 booklets do deal, in very fine detail and provide a vast array of Scriptures which adequately deal, with these matters and many others which are often raised by the enemies of the cross of Christ. There are many Scriptures in this booklet, too, but my other writings have a much greater assortment, both from the Old and New Testaments, which show clearly that the Gospel we teach is the only one wherein Christ’s Righteousness is revealed.

I believe the Message of the Gospel has been made loud and clear in this volume and that the objections raised by these men have been dealt with in a biblical manner and have been tested with God’s Word. To this day I have yet to hear from any who would even comment on the Cross of Christ and what I have said concerning it, that one must know what Christ has done on the cross to show that they do know the Savior Who came to save His people from their sins. I do not claim that everyone who names the name of Christ must know every minute detail of every doctrine which makes up the Gospel Message. All I am drawing the reader’s attention to is the fact that every false religion and false gospel conditions salvation in some way upon man and that every false religion and false christian embraces a gospel of this kind, rejecting the truth that what Christ did upon the cross for His people was sufficient to save each and every one for whom He died, and that eternally. I encourage you, the reader, to examine the gospel you have been taught and see whether you abide in the doctrine of Christ or in the doctrines of men. May the Lord bless all who read this booklet and may I encourage the reader to contact this author to discuss further the vital life and death issue of the Gospel, or simply to ask for further material which teaches and defends God’s only Gospel.

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