Billy Graham – very gracious as always, but this interview is very troubling to me. There was no clear biblical gospel message presented anywhere in this interview with Woody Allen.

The Gospel is not that Jesus will give someone the greatest high, surpassing the high drugs can provide a ten thousand times over (sorry Cliff). That is a man centered false gospel, not the one proclaimed in the Bible. Some will think this comment is mean… but as a minister I believe this is THE problem in today’s church – many professing Christians have never heard a biblical gospel and have responded to a very different message (one that says “Jesus is an amazing life coach who will give you meaning, purpose and success and make you feel fulfilled in life”) and have a false assurance because of it. These professing Christians are actually angry when this is pointed out to them and then when the true gospel is presented they are very much offended.

The true gospel is this: God is your and my Creator and all of us as His creatures owe Him total allegiance and obedience. He is absolute in holiness and we are sinners through and through. Every sin we have ever committed is high treason against this holy God and worthy of eternal banishment from His presence. God has every right to banish you, me and all sinners forever to hell – that is what each of us deserves and left to ourselves, it is the end that awaits us all… and yet God in His love sent His Son into the world – His name is the Lord Jesus Christ and He lived a sinless life and died an atoning death for sinners and rose from the dead and now sits on the throne of the Universe and commands all men everywhere to repent and believe in Him…

And the good news is this: all who trust Christ alone and His mercy alone by faith alone will be saved from the wrath of God through Him (Romans 5:6-10). God in His love for us rebel sinners offers to pardon and save us from His righteous, eternal anger and wrath through His Son, the Lord Jesus.. but it is salvation on His terms – an acknowledgement of our sin and full and complete surrender, repenting and believing in Christ, receiving Him as Savior and Lord, by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. The gospel is not “come to Jesus for the ultimate high” and this is true even if I should preach it or an angel from heaven preaches it or even, dare I say it, Billy Graham preaches it.

A message saying Jesus will give you purpose and meaning and make your previous drug induced highs seem like lows by comparison – I have learned this the hard way – is a man-centered, unbiblical and false gospel folks.

Article by Cameron Buettel (original source here)

Our postmodern culture gnashes its teeth at biblical evangelism. Their commitment to subjectivity and relativism cannot accommodate a religion that is exclusive, narrow, and declares non-negotiable truth. And that shouldn’t surprise us—Jesus told us to expect to be hated in the same way that He was (John 15:18).

Moreover, Scripture also warns against appeasing (James 4:4) or imbibing (Romans 12:2) the world’s values. But that’s easier said than done. We are called to separatism without monasticism—being in the world but not of the world. We can’t live our lives and engage our mission field without coming into contact with pagan culture.

For most of us it’s difficult to avoid marinating in the postmodern thinking of our friends, families, and colleagues. And we see signs of this even in the realm of evangelism.

The phrase “share your faith” is now deeply embedded in the evangelical vernacular. Most of us use it as a synonym for our evangelistic encounters, myself included. But those three words reek of postmodern subjectivity—a point not lost on John MacArthur:

It’s not your faith and you can’t share it. . . . That is a not-so-very subtle overture to the post-modern mentality that says my faith is my faith and I certainly would be happy to share it with you.

That’s not at all what we want to do. We want to explain the faith, the Christian faith, truth. And our greatest example for that is the Lord Jesus, who throughout His ministry presented the truth. . . . Jesus was relentlessly committed to the truth. He spoke the absolute truth into every situation. And either people accepted the truth, and rejected error, or they held tightly to their error and began to hate Jesus— because they saw what He was doing as an attack on them. And it was.

We don’t share it, we announce it. And it’s not your faith, it’s the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3 ESV). It is God’s gospel.

I rejoice that the Christian gospel rests on objective historical facts that transcend my own experiences or validation—God’s creation, man’s fall, and Christ’s redemption. I’ve watched in agony as Christians have vainly tried to duel with other religions and worldviews on the basis of personal experience. Those encounters rapidly degenerate into an endless subjective standoff. The experiential evangelist is powerless to refute someone’s experience with his own.

The truth of the biblical gospel crashes through all of those man-made barriers with God’s own written testimony. It doesn’t hinge on our personal skills or powers of persuasion. It is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

Text: John 1:29

EMERGENCY ALERT: Sin is deadly serious in the sight of God. God’s wrath, His ‘holy revulsion against that which is the contradiction of His holiness’ is fully justified. The only way of escape from this inevitable and just judgment is God’s provision in His sin atoning Lamb. This is not fake news! This is not a drill!