Rescuing The Perishing: A Defense Of Giving Invitations -- By: Kenneth D. Keathley

Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 01:1 (Spring 2003)
Article: Rescuing The Perishing: A Defense Of Giving Invitations
Author: Kenneth D. Keathley


Rescuing The Perishing:
A Defense Of Giving Invitations

Ken Keathley

Assistant Professor of Theology
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
3939 Gentilly Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70126

Giving his testimony of his conversion while listening to Billy Graham on television, Jim recalled the night he and his wife prayed to receive Christ, and then called the telephone number on the screen. Follow-up by counselors resulted in their public profession of faith in a local Southern Baptist Church. With a mixture of sadness and confidence in his voice, Jim tells me that six weeks ago he lost his wife to cancer.

Jim and his wife are just two of the multitudes who have responded to the invitation to receive Jesus Christ by either walking an aisle, calling a telephone number, or any number of ways through the ministry of Billy Graham. Yet there are those who criticize the approach of Graham and others like him. Author David Engelsma accuses Dr. Graham of doing incalculable damage. He says that people like Jim and Chloe are done a disservice in that they are given false hopes; more than likely they are still unsaved. In his book, Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel, Engelsma writes, “The message of Graham is the doctrine of Pelagius out of hell.”1 He goes on to label the altar call “the most atrocious abomination before God and man.”2

Engelsma is convinced “that God eternally hates some men; has immutably decreed their damnation; and has determined to withhold from them Christ, grace, faith, and salvation.”3 He makes “the exact, explicit denial that God loves all men, desires to save all men, and conditionally offers them salvation.”4 (Incidentally, Engelsma wrote these words in an attempt to prove that he is not a hyper-Calvinist). His main complaint about giving invitations is that it infers that there is a “well meant offer” of the Gospel to everyone who hears, when in his opinion there clearly is not. Engelsma’s attitude is reminiscent of an old Particular Baptist Hymn:

We are the Lord’s elected few,

Let all the rest be damned

There’s room enough in hell for you,

We won’t have heaven crammed!5

Not everyone opposed to invitations would embrace Engelsma’s sentiments, but his arguments are repeated with alarming fre...

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