Of course, I am generalizing, based upon my experiences as a Baptist preacher, and my experiences as a Baptist preacher convince me that it is most unusual for someone to be converted in a Baptist Church these days. Professions of faith seem to be a dime a dozen, but life-changing conversions of the type that reflected John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress are almost unheard of today.[1] I say this with regret, as one who is a Baptist by personal conviction. I am not alone in my conclusion since even the Southern Baptist Convention reports a decline.[2]
What does this have to do with a discussion of baptism? Baptist Churches most frequently baptize people they claim have been converted as a result of their evangelistic efforts. So, the people Baptist Churches baptize are people Baptists claim they have led to Christ in one way or another. However, when you keep in mind what Baptists do to get their conversions, what their converts typically believe, and how their converts are typically saved, you, too, would conclude that Baptists do not typically see anyone converted anymore. Even if you disagree with my conclusion, you cannot disagree with statistics produced by the Southern Baptist Convention showing a decline in baptisms.[3]
The angel Gabriel said,
“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins,”
Matthew 1.21. The Lord Jesus Christ said,
“the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,”
in Luke 19.10. Typical Baptist converts these days have only the most superficial grasp of their sinfulness and are likely to have no real awareness of their lost condition. This is why Baptist evangelism over the last 100+ years always seems to have been in a rush, for fear that the sinner’s conviction will “wear off” before he is saved. It sadly looks so much like selling used cars or life insurance.
As well, it is extremely common for Baptist evangelism these days to urge sinners to “ask Jesus into your heart,” even though no such act is sanctioned anywhere in Scripture, and such instruction conveys a confusing picture of the “outside work” of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross. Justification by faith takes place based upon what Jesus Christ did for the sinner, not what Jesus Christ does to the sinner.[4] But asking Jesus Christ into your heart portrays a saving experience based upon an infusion of grace to make the sinner good enough to go to heaven, which perfectly portrays the confused Roman Catholic view of salvation.
It is also extremely common for Baptists these days to evangelize sinners without taking the necessary steps to persuade them to abandon their unscriptural notions about a false christ for the Savior as He is presented in God’s Word. Many today who are supposedly converted are exposed for false professors by a few properly phrased questions asked by an experienced Gospel minister to which their answers show that they have not placed saving faith in the Jesus of the Bible at all.[5] Rather, these poor misguided souls are trusting in the false christ of some cult, or a christ who is not a coequal member of the Triune Godhead, or a christ who has not risen from the dead in a glorified physical body. Such false christs do not save sinners. Only the Jesus Christ of the Bible saves sinners.
I could go on and on, but perhaps the best reason for concluding that Baptists do not typically see sinners converted anymore comes from talking to many members of Baptist Churches. When you hear someone make a comment that no one who believes in the Trinity would make or a comment that betrays a personal conviction that justification is by works and not by faith, then there is reason to be suspicious about the genuineness of that person’s Christianity. After all, Psalm 107.2 says,
“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so.”
[1] Though conversion such as is portrayed in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is not the experience of everyone who comes to Christ, it is common enough that even Christians who held quite different views than did the Calvinist Bunyan made it the most popular book read for several centuries (second only to the Bible). See R. L. Hymers, Jr. and Christopher Cagan, Today’s Apostasy: How Decisionism Is Destroying Our Churches, (Oklahoma City, OK: Hearthstone Publishing, Ltd., Second Edition, 2001), pages 55-58.
[2] http://bpnews.net/44914/sbc-reports-more-churches-fewer-people
[3] http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2012/june/sbc-2011-statistical-realities--facts-are-our-friends-but.html
[4] Romans 5.1.
[5] Matthew 24.24; Mark 13.22.
[6] I am convinced the concept of perpetually carnal Christians is an invention of C. I. Scofield to explain the large numbers of clearly unsaved professing Christians resulting from Charles G. Finney’s new approach to evangelism. Prior to Finney neither Arminians or Calvinists believed those Christians who were long term examples of carnality were Christians at all.
