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Some readers might be thinking, “Of course, Brother Cloud, it is wrong to claim people are saved who merely pray a prayer without evidence of regeneration, but does anyone really make such a claim?”
The answer is, absolutely, there are large numbers of men making such a claim. Every man who claims that hundreds of people got “saved” through a church outreach or a county fair outreach or a missionary outreach when most of those “statistics” are nowhere to be found is making the claim that people can be saved by merely praying a prayer.
I was discussing the doctrine of repentance with a missionary a few years ago in England. He had told me that many people were being saved through their soul winning outreach, but when I asked about the church services, he said that they had a small number of people in the services and admitted that most of the people being “saved” were not attending. I challenged him about the claim that the people were actually being saved. I said, “How can you say they are saved when there is no evidence of it in their lives.” He become very upset at me and strongly countered that I had no right to judge the salvation of people who were making professions through his ministry. This man had attended Hyles Pastor’s School only a few weeks before we met, and he said the featured topic that year was repentance!
The idea that you cannot tell if someone is saved is unscriptural nonsense. It is possible, of course, for a person to show false signs of salvation and to deceive people, as Judas did the other apostles. And we are not saying that a genuinely saved person will suddenly be sinlessly perfect or that every true believer is equally zealous to serve Christ. But on the other hand the Bible is clear that if someone is
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