I watched a sermon called “How to Get Saved and Why”. If I had heard this man speak last semester, I would have thought it was a great message. However, after reading What is the Gospel? and Counterfeit Gospels, it was almost painful to watch. He began by saying that God has offered for us to live forever, and he said that when you get saved, you get saved from death—he did not mention being saved from sin. He actually never even mentioned that we sin. It was kind of implied, but how could a person who has never heard of Jesus know? This immediately put up some red flags. Without mentioning sin, the listener has no reason to believe that he needs to be saved. But by convincing the listener to be saved from death, he would be missing the whole point of the gospel.
Throughout the video, verses were being loosely thrown around. He never mentioned why those verses were sacred, though. Most people realize that the Bible was written by men, so why should we believe what it says? This video violated almost all of the counterfeits mentioned in Counterfeit Gospels (and it would have given Greg Gilbert a heart attack), but I believe the worst one was the Judgmentless counterfeit. He never mentioned the fact that we are all sinners, which meant he never mentioned that God will judge us by our sin. Trevin Wax describes the Judgmentless counterfeit by saying, “Restoration is more about God’s goodness than his judgment of evil…” The verses that he used all focused on God’s grace and His ability to save. They were great verses, but the way that he used them distorted the gospel. He made Jesus out to be some kind of peaceful hippie.
It seemed like the speaker was doing a great job explaining how to be saved, but he barely touched on why. He mentioned that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But he did not give any further explanation. I believe this man’s intentions were great, but overall, I would give his video a grade of a D.
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