An old divine one day, who had fought through many a battle for the souls of men, sat down and wrote to a young preacher in these words, "Never represent faith as being an act so SIMPLE that the work of the Spirit is not needed to produce it." Yet this is what is being done all over Christendom today. The majority of evangelists for the past hundred years have manifested a zeal for God which is not according to knowledge (Rom. 10:2).
Out of this preaching of the simplicity of the way of salvation, there has grown up today in our midst the doctrine of "BELIEVINGISM," which ignores Holy Spirit conviction and sets aside Bible repentance, and leaves the poor sinner resting upon a faith of his own that has no foundation. Out of the doctrine of "Believingism" has grown the stepchild of "DECISIONISM," a practice which is even more shallow and more deadly in its effect upon poor unawakened sinners. This has all grown out of one fact -- man's blindness as to WHO he is by nature, WHAT he is by nature, and the JUDGMENT he is under. In other words, man is failing to know and understand THE DOCTRINE OF TOTAL DEPRAVITY -- which is laughed at, made fun of, and denied in practically all religious circles of today -- is the underlying cause of the shallowness and mistaken conception of God's way of salvation.
L. R. Shelton, Copied from The Baptist Waymark, July-September 1998, p. 4
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