When did the Gospel message change from telling others of the need to ‘personally’ recognize one’s sinful condition and believe in Christ as savior to telling them they need to ‘accept Him as their ‘personal’ Savior? One concept is founded in and specifically presented in scripture and the other is not. One focuses on God and what He has done to save sinners and the other on a person’s decision. One presents the sovereignty of God while the other makes the individual’s decision the final event in the chain of events leading to salvation, which would mean that God shares His sovereignty with man (even if it’s just a decision).
No scripture here yet, just the question “When did it change?”, followed by the next logical question “WHY did it change?”
The Battle Cry 
Interesting question. Certainly sometime in the 20th century I would think, but I’m not sure you could pin an exact date on it. Maybe the Jesus Movement of the Sixties? When Did Billy Graham get started, the Fifties? Maybe it goes back to Camp meetings and revivals of the Twenties and Thirties? Maybe Azusa Street? Did the shift even occur in the United States?
I’ll stay tuned…
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“Repent and believe” was the appeal in the apostolic church.
The change doesn’t seem to have been connected to Charles Finney and mass evangelism altar calls.
Billy Graham invited people to come and ‘receive’ Christ.
The 4 Spiritual Laws used ‘receive Him’ erroneously based on Rev 3:20
that’s as far as I have been able to research so far.
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I typed in “when did altar calls begin?” for a google search and came up with a number of interesting-looking pages.
I’ll be back later after I’ve read.
First glance at one says “less than 200 years old.”
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When? about 175 years ago.
Why? because the truth of the Gospel was lost in the rush to keep numbers.
Let us not forget that David sinned when he counted Israel.
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I really think it’s origins are more readily found in Schleiermacher, that the word of God does not become so until the soon-to-be-disciple reads it.
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While the rush to keep/boost numbers is certainly a factor in diluting the message so that it is more palatable and less offensive to folks who hear it, perhaps an earlier denial of orthodox Christianity was a needed precursor. It’s not as easy to trace as an observable phenomenon in the church like mass evangelism.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) has been called the father of modern protestant theology.He rejected orthodox Christianity and its doctrine, elevated emotion and the imagination, denied the vidarious atonement of Christ (penal substitution), propposed than an eternal Hell was not compatible with the love of God. He said religion develped from a deep need in man (the God shaped hole?) instead of man being dead in sin and in need of a savior.
It’s not difficult to see how his huge impact on Protestant theology (he turned it on it’s head) would one day lead to “accepting God as personal savior”, as well as the current man centeredness of American Christianity.
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I was thinking the Great Awakening, more Wesley than Whitefield though. Maybe that’s because I grew up under Wesleyan doctrine and heard that plea my whole life. *shrugs*
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I think we all have heard that all or most of our lives. I have used it frequently, but have found that ‘accept’ needs to be fully explained in terms of sin, just punishment and Christ’s sacrifice so that the hearer will know what it really means. ‘Accept’ can be defined as mental assent which falls far short. ‘Personal’ needs to be also explained in terms of sin being a personal issue and needing to be confronted on a personal basis, not just ‘personal savior’ as in MY possession, as if I was somebody special and worthy.
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That leaves us with the issue of what is explicit (clear) in scripture contrasted with what implicit (possible meaning from what is clearly written).
“The need to ‘personally’ recognize one’s sinful condition and believe in Christ as savior” = EXPLICIT
“The need to ‘accept Him as ‘personal’ Savior” = IMPLICIT and a more palatable message to the human senses
Is that a fair analysis?
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Dan, I have no idea….so I’m just gonna sit back and learn…thanks! 🙂
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Deb,
I knew of Schleiermacher as the father of modern Protestant theology, but had not really dug into the specifics of what that meant until Jason mentioned him here. The tremendous impact he had on Protestantism has to be significant to the discussion. If what I found (came from Britannica) is true, most of the weakened gospel presentations could be traced to him. If he died in 1834 and his impact was wo broad across the Protestant church, we have a couple of generations who only know a ‘diminished’ God and flawed theology.
The stage was set for the acceptance of pop-psychology and humanism into the church before it became all the rage in the 40’s and 50’s.
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Dan,
That’s my tendency as well, when you or J speak a new hame, which at this point is most, 😉 I dig…There is definately alot of flawed theology, too much…I am in the process of starting from the beginning, so thank you for doing this.
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The ‘diminished’ God of which you speak is at the heart of all our problems as a church and as a nation.
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So while we can’t pinpoint a specific ‘1st use’ of the phrase ‘accept Jesus as your personal savior’ we can point to a major shift in Protestant theology that ‘opened the door’, so to speak, for the change in what we tell people is necessary for them to be saved. You might even be able to surmise the WHY of the change – it was necessary to accommodate the change in Protestant theology.
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Interesting that its origins at least in part were a “marketing technique”. But this begs a couple questions – What was happening that led to this shift? What should have been done instead?
In case that’s fuzzy, let me try to ‘splain:
Something was happening in the Church that was perceived as bad/wrong/deviating from right/good. Changing the message was at least in part the response (developing the accepting Jesus as personal savior approach).
Today, reformed theologians say that this approach is wrong/incomplete and that there needs to be a return to true/correct doctrine/theology.
It would seem then that we need to go back a little further in our review of the history of the church – not only to trace the beginnings of the ‘accept Jesus’ approach, but to understand why it came about; to what was it responding; and what should have been the proper response.
This is an interesting topic – I hope my questions make sense.
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In case you missed it Bad, or I worded it poorly, an individual at the epicenter of a major shift in Protestant theology goes back farther than the “we need numbers’ ‘marketing technique. That shift, marked by Schleiermacher’s deviations from orthodox Christianity. Do away with the scriptural doctrine that drives what we tell people about how salvation is appropriated through the vicarious atonement/penal substutition of Christ, and you have to change the message.
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Dan,
Haven’t you learned not to mess with Bad preassembled point? He puts so much work into making stuff up, at least you can do is sit back and appreciate the mosaic of his mind.
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so was this a rhetorical question? What started the accept Jesus approach was this Schleiermacher guy rejecting orthodox doctrine? Then the solution would be return to orthodoxy.
Why was the abandoning of orthodox doctrine so popular? What was its appeal?
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That is a very strange question. Have you read the bible?
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One of the ‘Solas’ of the Reformation was ‘Sola Scriptura’.
Sola scriptura (Latin ablative, “by scripture alone”) is the assertion that the Bible as God’s written word is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter (“Scripture interprets Scripture”), and sufficient of itself to be the final authority of Christian doctrine.
The ‘change’ in Protestant theology placed human experience in the front seat and scriptural doctrine/dogma in the back seat. In effect, that change birthed the ‘me’ centered Christianity that pervades the church today.
The manifestations of change are legion, one of which is ‘what this verse means to ME bible study’ that has been pervasive in American evalgelicalism for years, and can be readily observed in a certain ‘Blogged Bible Study’ with which we are familiar. Attempts to be faithful to the text of scripture and what it actually says (or does not say), are greatly frowned upon!
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“Attempts to be faithful to the text of scripture and what it actually says (or does not say), are greatly frowned upon!” Not by everyone… 🙂
Jason: LOLOLOLOL Ok, carry on…..
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I knew that! 🙂
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