Is the recommendation of, usage of, or belief in modern versions of the Bible, which translate the modern critical text, compatible with or representative of conservative Christianity?   Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) board member Michael Riley writes at their blog site in essence an answer to that question in a series entitled, “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” of which he completed the introduction in a post on October 8, 2019.

Riley explains that a primary motivation for starting the series was a consequence of a sabbatical that RAM executive director, Scott Aniol, took in the UK and found that the conservative pastors with which he found the greatest unanimity also use the King James Version.  These British conservative evangelical church leaders see modern versions clashing or contradicting with conservative Christianity.  RAM uses modern versions.

I have already written here that the modern versions are at variance with true conservatism.  In the most fundamental way modern versions undermine a conservative view.  Riley represents the criticism:

The argument that conservatives should also embrace the AV is not one that is entirely new to us; others have poked at the apparent inconsistency between using old hymns and new translations. 

That sentence, I contend, misses the point.  I can’t imagine that the conservative pastors of Britain think this is the issue.  I will explain.

I’ve linked to the post above, but Riley lists what he sees as three different positions of criticism.  The first he says comes from contemporary worship advocates who criticize RAM for conservative music inconsistent with their modern version usage.  The second he says comes from those who say that RAM loses their natural audience that overlaps on the authorized version and traditional worship.  The third he says are the TR/AV proponents, who also believe in traditional worship and see the RAM position as inconsistent.  Riley is targeting this last group, even as that represents the British conservative pastors Aniol met.

Riley introduces the series by telling us where he will head.  He’s going to deal with the argument of the ecclesiastical text view and its relationship then to worship out of a high view of God, apparently showing a disconnection between those two things.  The second aspect hearkens to the sentence at the beginning of his piece, regarding the clash of modern language with conservatism.  Third, he’ll address the proposition that the Authorized Version is more reverent.   All of these are interesting, but they do not lay at the foundation of the clash between modern versions and conservative Christianity.  The first one comes the closet, but it still doesn’t get it.  Maybe these are what Aniol heard.  I can’t imagine that, but I haven’t talked to pastors in the UK about their support of the KJV.

The essay ends with this sentence:

I want to make the case that there is no necessary connection between conservative principles of worship and the use of the TR/AV as one’s Bible.

And I’m going to follow along with this series and give it a critique and analysis.  I want to start now though, because I’ve written that I don’t see these as the fundamental arguments.  I agree with the parallel between the AV and traditional worship that Aniol and Riley propose, but they miss the connection to conservatism.  I could incorporate the three they gave to an overall presentation, but they don’t buttress the point.  What does?  Not necessarily in this order, at least these do:

First, both the text of scripture and true worship of God proceed from objective truth or beauty, which are inseparably related.
Two, how we know what we know must be presuppositional, assuming that we can apply and are to apply scripture.  Since no one is neutral, knowledge comes from the pure mother’s milk of God’s Word, where there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning.
Three, there is one God, one truth, and one beauty.
Four, the Holy Spirit guides to truth and beauty, so neither will or should change.  This relates to no total apostasy.

As Riley moves along, I’ll deal with what he writes, Lord-willing, but I’ll also bring in those four and more.

I’m intrigued by some of the new terms invented to describe iterations of bad behavior arising from new media:  armchair warrior, call-out culture, concern troll, hashtag activism, social desirability bias, and social justice warrior, among others.  I’m focusing though on virtue signaling, which I contend exists since the fall of man, but exponentially grew out of the rise of media and especially social media.

The terminology, “virtue signaling,” is a pejorative, but it I’ve noticed that is almost uniformly used to describe something really happening.  The dictionary definition is:

the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue

It’s history started with the concept of “signaling,” which is to convey credentials through implicit means, like building an impressive, giant stone bank building to “signal” security to depositors.  The style of building doesn’t mean there is security at the bank, so in its root meaning, to signal carries with it a modicum of deceit.

Virtue was added to “signaling,” it seems, by James Bartholomew on April 18, 2015 in The Spectator, and means “public, empty gestures intended to convey socially approved attitudes without any associated risk or sacrifice.”  I tried to find the combination of words earlier than Bartholomew, seeing that the activity has existed longer, but it took until his essay to give it an official title.

Virtue signaling isn’t doing good.  It isn’t even promoting good.  It’s about looking “politically or socially correct,” also new terminology in this day and age.  It’s what Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich, and Lebron James do on a regular basis in the NBA, which Tucker Carlson nicely just exposed (also read here). The China and Hong Kong issue is a real test of sincerity on political and social matters that they flunked royally.  When they have risk involved, money from China, they shut up and dribble.  China says, we’ll cut you off from audience here, and they capitulate (see this video).  No actual virtue.  Real virtue would require monetary sacrifice, but the NBA exists for monetary gain, so free speech goes and the people suffering in China won’t get an advocate.  The NBA elites provide a standard answer of ‘it’s just too difficult to decipher the political situation,’ which is a lie.

When the Apostle Paul commanded, “Be not conformed to this world” (Rom 12:2), which belies presenting one’s body a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1), that applies today to virtue signaling.  The tendency, habit, or culture of virtue signaling in the world has spread to the the church or professing believers.  It reminds me of how the church took up marketing in the church growth movement.  This might be worse than that.

The Lord Jesus Christ commanded, preach the gospel, but people don’t like the gospel.  The preaching of the cross is foolishness to the lost.  It’s embarrassing.  Please stop, they say — don’t want to hear it.  So this makes the professing believer look bad to a favored group of people, which shouldn’t be favored.

Then if the professing Christian won’t preach the gospel, unless maybe it’s very, very convenient and laid out on a silver platter, which it almost never is, then neither will he make disciples, the command of Jesus in the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20).  He rarely to never preaches the gospel and makes no disciples.  He’s disobedient to Christ, but he calls himself a Christian.  Preaching the gospel and making disciples also clashes with a worldly life, one in which the professing Christian dresses immodestly, doesn’t want give up his ungodly or pagan entertainment, or lost friends.  Here’s a person that won’t show practical righteousness that necessarily proceeds from justification by faith, maybe because there isn’t salvation.  Instead he takes his cue from the world, and virtue signals.

I called virtue signaling “careless,” because it doesn’t really care.  This professing believer doesn’t care.  If he cared, he would care about the eternal soul of others.  He would talk about a loving, majestic God instead of almost incessant worldly things.  He cares about looking like he cares without actually caring.  If there is an earthly issue that should provoke care, it would be to care enough to oppose abortion, the way over 860,000 defenseless human beings who were murdered last year in the United States.  That won’t be mentioned, because that isn’t popular either among those it’s important to impress.

Someone who says he is a Christian supposedly understands eternal matters.  He knows why the earth was created by God.  The world itself isn’t going to last.  Bring up Jesus Christ in a biblical way!  I say biblical, because sometimes Jesus is mentioned, but more as an afterword for what makes someone feel good when he’s down.  The world would never know that Jesus is in his life.  The rest of his life doesn’t conform to Jesus Christ.  He doesn’t live like Jesus is His Lord.  Instead of saying, “Jesus,” he says something like “my faith.”

How is virtue signaled?  Evangelicals signal with race, same sex, and other social issues.  I’m not saying that whatever reality is there in those issues, that they don’t matter.  They don’t matter if someone who calls himself a Christian mentions almost only those issues.  Virtue signaling is self-promotion.  No one will suffer for being against racism, prejudice, suicide, PTSD, and sexual harassment.   Both the lost and the saved are against those things.  What about opposing homosexuality?  He might suffer for that and he wouldn’t want anyone to know he’s against it.  He really isn’t for what God is for and against what God is against.  He’s for himself, and when I say he, I mean he or she in the traditional, grammatical way.

In 1 Corinthians 15:33, Paul warned the Corinthian believers, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.”  He commands, be not deceived, because it’s easy to be deceived.  “Communications” is the Greek word, homoleia, which is about speeches.  The vibe of the world through social media, its speeches, corrupts good behavior.  It leads to an imitation of what the world does to look good.  The world doesn’t have righteousness, except self-righteousness, which there is none.

The spirit of this age through social media is a test to the professing believer.  Will he concede to the world or will he take his stand to be a true Christian?  This is the trying of the faith that James talks about in chapter one (James 1:3).  It’s not a difficult trial.  Apostates are allured by fleshly things (2 Peter 2).  It’s not a credible test, just an alluring one.  It’s enough to draw away someone, who just professes to be a Christian, but isn’t one.  A difficult trial is mockery for preaching the gospel.  A difficult trial is the opposition to holy living, where a young lady dresses in a modest, feminine fashion that clashes with the world.  It marks her as a Christian.

It isn’t even a trial to give up virtue signaling.  Virtue signaling is the replacement for trials that would come through real virtue.  Someone is not better when he virtue signals and doesn’t obey the actual Bible.   Peter commands in 2 Peter 1, add to your faith virtue.  He isn’t saying, add to your faith, virtue signaling.  No.  Those are different.  If you are going to be morally excellent as a practice, you have to do what Paul taught in Philippians 4:8, when he commanded, think on these things, one of which was, “if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.”  Virtue signaling doesn’t effect virtuous thoughts and then actions, just the opposite.

Scripture says a lot about the relationship with or responsibility of parents to children and children to parents.  Much instruction exists for the husband and wife relationship.  The Bible says less about siblings.  Overall, the Lord Jesus Christ taught something to siblings in Matthew 12:

46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. 47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. 48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 49 And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

That is akin to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:29:

And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Brothers and sisters should meditate on this, when they put their so-called relationships ahead of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Their relationship is headed for disaster when they do so — the worst possible disaster.

I don’t see anything unique about a sister and sister relationship in God’s Word that is any different than a relationship with anyone else.  They feel a natural commitment to one another, which I understand through observation and reading.  It must be natural or else Proverbs 7:4 wouldn’t say:

Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy kinswoman.

That’s about it though, besides several verses in the Old Testament that prohibit sisters from seeing each other in their nakedness.

As little as there is about sisters and sisters, there is little to nothing about brothers with brothers.  Like the sister, brothers have a natural closeness.  Proverbs 18:24 reads:

A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

I have a brother, and I understand this.  Brothers might fight with each other, especially as seen with Cain and Abel.  Mine was a little brother (although he became bigger than me), and we fought, but if someone threatened him, I was there for him.  I still am.  I want the absolute best for my brother.  What we do have is the example of Jesus with His brothers, and what did He do with them?

In the beginning of John 7, we see Jesus with his brothers.  They weren’t aligned with each other in the truth.  They didn’t believe in Him.  He told them the truth in verses 6-7:

My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready.  The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.

The world could not hate them, because they were compatible with the world.  The world hated Him.  Jesus told them the truth, a general no-no, it seems, for families with different beliefs today.  It’s what Jesus did though, whom we are to follow.  He didn’t try to get along with them — again, told them the truth, as a basis for whatever unity they would have.

However, the Bible has instruction for brothers and their sisters, all of it directed toward the brothers.  Brothers have a responsibility to their sisters.  When one considers everything being said in the Bible about this subject, it really is one responsibility of a brother to a sister:  protection — and in particular protection of her purity.  A brother isn’t there to entertain his sister, he’s not there to give her a fun time, and he is not there for her to cheer him up or validate him.  We can point to Miriam saving her very, very little brother Moses, but that isn’t laid out as a responsibility for a sister with her brother.

The brother to the sister shows up all over the Bible and all the same type of lesson.  I’m going to start with Song of Solomon 8.  In the context, the virginity of the Shulamite woman, Solomon’s potential mate, is compared to a beautiful garden.  She is to protect it like disallowing a garden to be trampled by defrauders, but not just her.  Her brothers are also responsible by what we read in verses 8-9:

8 We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? 9 If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.

They will be happy if she will take responsibility, but they also will be a part of it, by enclosing her with boards of cedar.  Are you doing this brother?  Are you allowing laxity to your sister?  Are you a window or a screen door, not paying attention to the ways your sister is being or might be defrauded?  Are you helping her spiritually to be submissive to her father (1 Corinthians 7:36-38), because that’s what you would do if you were obedient to God?  What I’m writing is that there isn’t just the physical protection, but the spiritual guidance that a real man, a biblical, godly man would provide.

This job of protection of a sister by brothers or a brother is seen in the example of Laban with Rebekah in Genesis 24:29-30:

And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban: and Laban ran out unto the man, unto the well.  And it came to pass, when he saw the earring and bracelets upon his sister’s hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spake the man unto me; that he came unto the man; and, behold, he stood by the camels at the well.

Later she got permission from the brother to go and marry Isaac.  Of course, there was no father alive there, but this indicates the responsibility of the brother.  The worst example of this is Amnon with his sister Tamar in 2 Samuel 13.  I’m not going to get into the details of the story, but the brothers did not protect Tamar in the worst possible way.  All brothers should make sure that the reputation of their sisters are kept pure in the most complete way.  At one time in our culture, this meant a lot.  If that’s not happening, that correction should be made, because in scripture that is the most important task of the brother.

In the comment section of a post about music, someone commented:

Is there any place in the Bible where God condemns Daisy Dukes? Being a dishwasher at a strip club?

But until we can agree that God’s Word is sufficient to give us the tools to evaluate all aspects of human behavior using the discernment that Paul prayed for on our behalf – even if not specifically addressed in Scripture – there is no point of pursuing this further.   If God provided us specific instruction in the Scriptures regarding every little detail of life, what would be the purpose of having discernment?

Daisy Dukes – not sure – but I think that’s tiny pants. The Bible does condemn indecent exposure. It speaks of women who come “dressed as a prostitute.” Now, it doesn’t address how tiny pants have to be to be indecent. But it does teach a category of illicit dress, even if today we don’t know what exactly was illicit about it. And Jesus taught that looking with the purpose of lust is sin.

So I assume by your response then that you care nothing about discernment, that the only things you don’t do are those things specifically spelled out in the Bible? I can’t see how a Christian could possibly live in that manner.

Regarding Daisy Dukes, you’ve got the (Leviticus 18, the prophets) question of exactly how much nakedness one can uncover before one is being seen as “available for a Biblically unlawful relationship”, to put an idiom around it.  Regarding “being a dishwasher at a strip club”, that’s pretty straightforward as well; you’re enabling the degradation of the women “performing” there, not to mention destroying the minds and morals of the men who watch.

Country music arose in the 1920s from the American South, also the so-called Bible belt, beginning with the first family of country music, The Carter Family.  The Carters were raised under the influence of gospel music, an earlier iteration than even country.  However, their “gospel” also influenced country.  “Gospel,”  which was a distortion, and increasingly so, of the actual saving gospel, originated from late nineteenth century revivalism, even as did the Charismatic movement in the United States.  Revivalism, Gospel, Charismaticism, and Country dovetail at the Carters.  One of the original three Carters, Maybelle, had a daughter, June, who married Johnny Cash, her second husband and his second wife.

One of the most notable of the Carter songs remains one of the most famous ever country songs, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.  The song is sung every year at the induction ceremony of the Country Music Hall of Fame.  Its lyrics concern the death, funeral, and mourning of the narrator’s mother, the hope being that she went to heaven.

Some of the earliest country “hits” were explicitly religious in nature.  The Grand Old Opry, the longest running radio broadcast in United States history, was held at Union Gospel Auditorium in Nashville, TN from 1943 to 1974, with its peaked, stained glass windows and wooden church pews.  The Johnny Cash Show ran 58 episodes from 1979 to 1981, each ending with a “gospel song” in honor to a promise he made his mother.

For education purposes, I watched the just produced Ken Burns’s documentary on PBS, Country Music.  Maybe he misrepresents country.  For the most part, I don’t think so.  Nothing in country is a true gospel.  Country isn’t reverent at all.  I don’t see any indications of biblical sanctification in a single country singer in the history of country music.  Many of the stories are alcohol, fornication, foul language, divorce, drugs, and partying.  For some, church follows on a Sunday morning after a Saturday night of lasciviousness.  It is not a gospel of actual repentance or a true, scriptural Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus is a placebo.

Many country stars and heroes learned music in religious homes and honed in revivalist churches, only to use it for sin and self-gratification.  I don’t know every history, but it would break my heart as a parent.  No Christian, country western star or legend, Kenny Chesney, recorded the song, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, that matches the philosophy of country.  Nancy Pearcy in her book, Total Truth, writes, “Artists are often the barometers of society, and by analyzing the worldviews embedded in their works we can learn a great deal about how to address the modern mind more effectively.”  Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven is a song about a man explaining his life to a preacher, one of alcohol and immorality, and Chesney sings first as the preacher:

“Don’t you wanna hear him call your name
When you’re standin’ at the pearly gates?”
I told the preacher, “Yes I do
But I hope he don’t call today.”

Chesney knows of what he speaks.  That sounds like country to me.  Just keep kicking that can down the road, or even better, conform your view of the grace of God and even God Himself to your licentious desires or tastes.  Michael Ray sings a song, titled, Real Men Love Jesus, with this chorus:

They like Saturday nights out on the town,
Sunday morning coming down,
A pretty girl out on the dance floor spinnin’,
Round and round and round,
Cold beer and a dirty hand,
Calling home every chance they can,
To say, ‘I love you’,
They don’t need a reason,
Real men love Jesus.

The conclusion of the chorus reflects nothing that is sung before it.  Real men dance and drink beer and call home, and, oh, love Jesus — not the Jesus of the Bible.  Trace Adkins in his song, Jesus and Jones, ends with the words:

I need to find a little middle ground
Between ‘let ’er rip’ and settlin’ down

Christianity is not a pursuit of middle ground, although this is what I witness of the professing Christians who are also country music fans.  The faith of the Bible is not a resolution between one side and the other.  It is the choice of just the one and the rejection of the other.

Country music always has been and especially today is an attempt at validating a selfish lifestyle that is in no way biblical or honoring to God.  It cheapens faith and distorts the gospel, leaving its adherents twice the children of hell they once were.

The new gratitude isn’t grateful to or for anyone, including God.  It separates gratitude from an object.  It is a psychological ploy, a game that subjects play in their minds.  It’s looking into the mirror and saying, ala Stuart Smalley, “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”  It is redefining gratitude, actually shaping ingratitude into merely professed, “gratitude.”  It revolves around self, a kind of self-congratulation for being grateful, except to no one.

The Apostle Paul ends the first chapter of Romans in 1:28-32

28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Because those Paul describes “did not like to retain God in their knowledge” and were given over by God to and with “a reprobate mind,” they “committed such things” “worthy of death,” as a practice.  This is why in the list of “such things,” we read adjectives, because it describes a lifestyle, not individual acts.  One in the list in verse 31 is “implacable.”  Saved people will not be “implacable.”  So what’s that?  Who is “implacable”?

BDAG, foremost New Testament lexicon, says the Greek word, aspondos, means:  “of one who is unwilling to negotiate a solution to a problem involving a second party, irreconcilable.”  Louw-Nida Lexicon agrees:  “pertaining to being unwilling to be reconciled to others ”  John Gill in his commentary writes:  “when once offended there was no reconciling of them.”

“Implacable” is an English word I have never used in my vocabulary except when I have read aloud Romans 1:31 and explained the word.  I have used “placate” rarely, but I have heard it more too.  It’s a related English word.  Merriam Webster says “placate” means:  “to soothe or mollify especially by concessions.”  Someone implacable can’t be mollified, will not be placated, has decided to stay resentful, unforgiving, and irreconcilable.  This is unchristian behavior, no matter what the proponent says about himself and his belief in Jesus Christ.  No one, who says he wants to grow as a Christian and is close to Christ, remains implacable.  It relates to a lot of other biblical teaching.

The Lord Jesus preached about “implacability” in His Sermon on the Mount.  He was illustrating a lost condition manifested by irreconcilability.  In Matthew 5:21-26, Jesus says that not reconciling with someone is hateful and as much as being guilty of murdering someone.  The foundational point of this is the second table of the law.  If someone loves God, He loves His neighbor.  Love for God manifests itself in loving the neighbor.  A person is required to attempt reconciliation, even looking for mediation if necessary (cf. Philemon).

Other related truths are forgiveness and then the negative traits that are found in the same verses in Romans 1:  “maliciousness,” “despiteful,” “without natural affection,” and “unmerciful.”  If it is children with parents, it is “disobedient to parents.”  Other passages list similar traits, such Ephesians 4:31-32:

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

When God created man, He created man in His image.  He said, “Let us make man in our image,” which shows the relationship within the Godhead — “let us” and “our image.”  The Persons in the Godhead wanted men to be like them.  Jesus brings in this teaching in His prayer in John 17 to the Father.  A fundamental violation of God’s purpose of mankind is an unwillingness to reconcile based upon the truth.  It isn’t just “getting along,” but a surrender to align with God in a relationship with others.

Why does someone remain “implacable,” in rebellion against God and His Word?  He loves himself.  He’s a lover of his own self (2 Timothy 3:2).  His lust or love for the world supersedes his love for people.  He doesn’t want to be hemmed in or pent up or held back from anything that he wants or likes.  He is unthankful.

Implacability should not be allowed in a true church.  It isn’t allowed in ours.  People have to reconcile with one another.  It is at the root of Christian behavior, to both get things settled with other people and to want others to get things settled with you.

I have the youtube app on my phone, which feeds me what it thinks I want to watch.  Toward the top of the offerings today as I ate my lunch was a post by Wretched, entitled, “John MacArthur:  Your pastor has NO authority over you.”  Todd Friel played a clip from a Q and A, where a lady asked MacArthur whether pastors have authority in a church:  “To what extent a member of a church is required to obey his pastor, how much authority does a pastor have in the lives of his congregants?”

Hebrews 13:7, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.”
Hebrews 13:17, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.”
1 Thessalonians 5:12, “And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you.”
1 Timothy 5:17, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour,, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.”
Titus 2:15, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.”

When you read the four gospels, you see several “calls” of the twelve disciples.  There isn’t one of them that says, this is when he was saved.  When was John saved?  Well, it was, um, I’m not sure.  He was saved, but I’m not sure when it was.  What about Peter?  The same.  They were all saved, but Judas, but it isn’t clear what the moment of their salvation was, like someone would know when the Apostle Paul was saved.  That is clear.

I’m guessing that there are readers that think they do know the exact moment when some of the twelve disciples were saved.  For the sake of argument, let’s say that Andrew, John, Peter, Philip, and Nathaniel were saved in John 1, which one might call the first call.  I would be fine with that.  I don’t know, but I would be fine with calling those five saved in John 1.  John 1:37 says, “they followed Jesus,” confessed that He was the “Messias,” “the Christ” (1:41), and “thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel” (1:49).  Jesus said, “Follow me,” and they did.

The second calling, however, sounds very similar to the first, just like it was a first calling, and I bring you to Matthew 4, just after Jesus began His ministry (4:17-20):

17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 18 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20 And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

That also sounds like a salvation call, which also reflects what the Lord Jesus taught in Luke 9:23-25:

23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. 25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?

“If any man will come after me” is salvation language.  Someone who “comes after Jesus” is a saved person.

I direct you though to the Matthew 4 passage.  When someone follows Jesus, He keeps following Him.  That doesn’t mean he will never sin again, but he’s given up His life.  His life is Christ’s, and the language for that is “deny self,” “take up cross,” “follow me,” and “lose life,” as in Luke 9.  In Matthew 4, Jesus adds, I will make you fishers of men.

I’m asserting that if Peter really started following in John 1 that he would continue following Jesus in Matthew 4.  Someone following will keep following or else he wasn’t saved, and the Lord Jesus Christ will make him a fisher of men.  Following Him meant becoming a fisher of men.  Everyone following Jesus He will make a fisher of men.  One is supposed to assume that genuine believers will be fishers of men.  If they are not fishers of men, this implies that they are not saved.

Most churches have no expectations of their members to evangelize.  Most professing Christians have never won anyone to Christ.  They rarely to never preach the gospel, but their salvation isn’t doubted.

The judgment of someone’s salvation has moved away from what scripture says is following Christ.  Jesus preached the gospel in Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Caesaria-Philippi, Perea, and Tyre and Sidon.  He preached it everywhere, but His “followers” preach it next to nowhere.

Church members, as I see it, are less concerned about following Christ and really helping people in an eternal way, which is actual help, as they are into sentimentality and feelings.  Their Christianity is about whether the church makes them comfortable and happy, a place to make friends in a mainly non-judgmental fashion.  The idea of following Christ is hardly in their vocabulary.  They don’t think they should be expected to be a fisher of men.

Following Christ is not some arbitrary arrangement, based upon a personal whim.  It includes all the Lord and Jesus and Christ activities, what He would be doing that we would be doing if we would be following Him.  Instead, people set up a Christianity that they favor and submit to that.  When real Christianity clashes with the replacement, they treat that like the violation of following Christ.  In fact, it violates them.  They aren’t getting their way.

Some would like following Christ to be the music of their choice, not the kind that pleases God, but some kind of worldly rhythm that’s fun for them, that makes them feel good.  They turn following Christ into that which will still be popular with the world, solving people’s social or societal problems.  Following Christ doesn’t have to be much different than not following Christ.

Can leaders expect fishing for men, or do they need to turn following Christ into something else?  They know.  It’s got to be something else.  They’ve designed church around very few to no people being fishers of men.  What’s really important is not hurting feelings and being sensitive, especially to felt physical or psychological needs.

As a result, people who don’t follow Christ think they follow Christ.  They don’t answer the call, because it is a call to be a fisher of men.  It is a salvation issue.  Salvation is not by works.  You don’t get saved by being a fisher of men.  No.  You come after Christ, deny self, follow Him, and He makes you a fisher of men.  You know that when you follow Him, that He’s called you to be a fisher of men.  You want that, because it’s also what Christ Himself does.