One of the great things about America is the Freedom of Choice; the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the bank you do business with, even the cars you drive. In restaurants you get many choices and sometimes you can make substitutions. Instead of French fries you might pick applesauce or soup instead of salad.

People often think that these substitutions also involve the Bible. To accommodate divorce people will overlook Matthew 19:9, "And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery." And one of the more twisted verses is Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned." Many churches replace immersion baptism with sprinkling and then some say you can be saved without baptism.

Going back to the 1700s certain preachers created "The Sinner’s Prayer" or what I call "The Great Substitution". Based on Revelation 3:20 preachers use this passage as a substitution for baptism to help sinners to gain salvation.

A simple request to ask Jesus into your heart and you are saved. They say you can be baptized but it’s not really important to be saved. Jesus said in John 3:5, "Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God!" So why the change? Let’s look at the first time people got baptized into the church.

In Acts 2:41 it says three thousand souls were added to the church. How? Acts 2:38 has the answer. Peter said, "Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." That means Peter and probably the other apostles baptized all 3000, one at a time most likely, in full immersion baptism. That’s a real long time! But to them it didn’t matter. Everyone wanted to be saved and they followed what the apostles said as they used the pattern left by Jesus.

The only reason I can think for the change is to save more people and faster. Simultaneous recitation of the Sinner’s Prayer and then everyone’s saved. WRONG!! The Sinner’s Prayer does not exist anywhere in the Bible nor do you read anyone in the scriptures praying for salvation. There’s a prayer for forgiveness (Psalm 32) and one for repentance (Psalm 51) but none for salvation.

If you truly want to be saved: Follow the Bible, learn God’s Five-Step plan for salvation and be baptized as stated in Romans 6:3-4. And remember what Paul wrote in Eph. 4:5, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism."

www.bible.ca/g-sinners-prayer.htm