1. The altar call is simply and completely absent from the pages of the New Testament. 2. The altar call is historically absent until the 19th century, and its use at that time (via Charles Finney) was directly based upon bad theology and a man-centered, manipulative methodology. 3. The altar call very easily confuses the physical act of “coming forward” with the spiritual act of “coming to Christ.” These two can happen simultaneously, but too often people believe that coming to Christ is going forward (and vice-versa). 4. The altar call can easily deceive people about the reality of their spiritual state and the biblical basis for assurance. The Bible never offers us assurance on the ground that we “went forward.” 5. The altar call partially replaces baptism as the means of public profession of faith. 6. The altar call can mislead us to think that salvation (or any official response to God’s Word) happens primarily on Sundays, only at the end of the service, and only “up front.” 7. The altar call can confuse people regarding “sacred” things and “sacred” places, as the name “altar call” suggests. 8. The altar call is not sensitive to our cautious and relational age where most people come to faith over a period of time and often with the interaction of a good friend. 9. The altar call is often seen as “the most important part of the service”, and this de-emphasizes the truly more important parts of corporate worship which God has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing). 10. God is glorified to powerfully bless the things He has prescribed (preaching, prayer, fellowship, singing), not the things we have invented. We should always be leery of adding to God’s prescriptions for His corporate worship (Ryan Kelly).
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LXIII. Faith at the End.

LUKE xviii. 8. “When the
Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth? ”

I. WHAT is the feeling with which this saying was uttered?
Christ was like other teachers—now accepted, now rejected
of men. Now he seemed to feel a sort of inward triumph,
and yet at the last He experienced a depth of darkness
and desolation with which no sorrow in this world can be
compared. He did not lose faith in the truth, but he was
inclined to despair of His fellow-men.
II. If Jesus Christ were to come again, what judgment
would He pass upon us and upon our lives, and how would
He apply the truths of the Gospel to modern society? All
things would appear to Him secondary in comparison with
one question—Are men becoming better? What would
He say about our religious parties? about those who draw
remote inferences from those words? about those who
exaggerate the importance of days? He would teach the
new commandment which is also old. He would not
decide authoritatively disputed points, nor would he utter
the shibboleths of rulers or statesmen.
III. What prospect is there of any great moral or reli-
gious improvement among mankind?
We do not suppose that the condition of the poor is
always to continue amongst us as at present, or deny that
the blessings of education, health, and comfort may be
equally diffused among all. Are not our large religious
differences regarded differently now from what they for-
merly were? Are they not in some instances become
ridiculous?
Again, there seem to be signs that the opposition be-
tween religion and science, faith and knowledge, of which
we have heard so much, is fading away.
Benjamin Jowett, D.D.