Now might be a good time to discuss the beginnings of the sinners prayer…just where did the sinners prayer come from?  If it isn’t in the bible, should we even practice the sinners prayer as a method to obtain salvation? Perhaps a more important question is, can one be saved by saying a sinners prayer, given it cannot be found in scripture? If you answer yes, then does this mean, anyone can make up their own plan of salvation? Okay, lets take a look at the birth of the sinners prayer.

The Cane Ridge Meeting became the paradigm for revivalists for decades. A lawyer named Charles Finney came along a generation later to systemize the Cane Ridge experience through the use of Wheelock’s Mourner’s Seat and Scripture.

Charles Finney

It wasn’t until about 1835 that Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) emerged to champion the system utilized by Eleazar Wheelock. Shortly after his own conversion he left his law practice and would become a minister, a lecturer, a professor, and a traveling revivalist. He took the Mourner’s Seat practice, which he called the Anxious Seat, and developed a theological system around it. Finney was straightforward about his purpose for this technique and wrote the following comment near the end of his life:

“The church has always felt it necessary to have something of this kind to answer this very purpose. In the days of the apostles, baptism answered this purpose. The gospel was preached to the people, and then all those who were willing to be on the side of Christ, were called out to be baptized. It held the place that the anxious seat does now as a public manifestation of their determination to be Christians”

Finney made many enemies because of this innovation. The Anxious Seat practice was considered to be a psychological technique that manipulated people to make a premature profession of faith. It was considered to be an emotional conversion influenced by some of the preachers’ animal magnetism. Certainly it was a precursor to the techniques used by many twentieth century televangelists.

In opposition to Finney’s movement, John Nevin, a Protestant minister, wrote a book called The Anxious Bench. He intended to protect the denominations from this novel deviation. He called Finney’s New Measures “heresy”, a “Babel of extravagance”, “fanaticism”, and “quackery”. He also said, “With a whirlwind in full view, we may be exhorted reasonably to consider and stand back from its destructive path.” It turns out that Nevin was somewhat prophetic. The system that Finney admitted had replaced biblical baptism, is the vertebrae for the popular plan of salvation that was made normative in the twentieth century by the three Bills — Billy Sunday, Billy Graham and Bill Bright.

Dwight Moody and R. A. Torrey

However, it wasn’t until the end of Finney’s life that it became evident to everyone and himself that the Anxious Bench approach led to a high fallout rate. By the 1860s Dwight Moody (1837-1899) was the new apostle in American evangelicalism. He took Finney’s system and modified it. Instead of calling for a public decision, which tended to be a response under pressure, he asked people to join him and his trained counselors in a room called the Inquiry Room. Though Moody’s approach avoided some of the errors encountered in Finneyism, it was still a derivative or stepchild of the Anxious Bench system.

In the Inquiry Room the counselors asked the possible convert some questions, taught him from Scripture and then prayed with him. The idea that prayer was at the end of the process had been loosely associated with conversion in the 1700s. By the late 1800s it was standard technique for ‘receiving Christ’ as Moody’s influence spread across both the United States and the United Kingdom. This was where a systematic Sinner’s Prayer began, but was not called as such until the time of Billy Sunday.

R. A. Torrey succeeded Moody’s Chicago-based ministry after his death in 1899. He modified Moody’s approach to include “on the spot” street conversions. Torrey popularized the idea of instant salvation with no strings attached, even though he never intended as much. Nonetheless, “Receive Christ, now, right here” became part of the norm. From that time on it became more common to think of salvation outside of church or a life of Lordship.

Billy Sunday and the Pacific Garden Mission
Meanwhile in Chicago, Billy Sunday, a well-known baseball player from Iowa, had been converted in the Pacific Garden Mission. The Mission was Chicago’s most successful implementation of Moody’s scheme. Eventually, Sunday left baseball to preach. He had great public charm and was one of the first to mix ideas of entertainment with ministry. By the early 1900s he had become a great well-known crusade leader. In his crusades he popularized the Finney-Moody method and included a bit of a circus touch. After fire and brimstone sermons, heavy moralistic messages with political overtones, and humorous if not outlandish behavior, salvation was offered. Often it was associated with a prayer, and at other times a person was told they were saved because they simply walked down his tabernacle’s “sawdust trail” to the front where he was standing. In time people were told they were saved because they publicly shook Sunday’s hand, acknowledging that they would follow Christ.

Billy Sunday died in 1935 leaving behind hundreds of his imitators. More than anything else, Billy Sunday helped crusades become acceptable to all denominations, which eventually led to a change in their theology. Large religious bodies sold out on their reservations toward these new conversion practices to reap the benefits of potential converts from the crusades because of the allure of success.

Both Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday admitted they were somewhat ignorant of church history by the time they had already latched on to their perspectives. This is highly significant because the Anxious Seat phenomenon and offshoot practices were not rooted in Scripture nor in the early church.

Billy Graham, Bill Bright
Billy Graham and his crusades were the next step in the evolution of things. Billy Graham was converted in 1936 at a Sunday-styled crusade. By the late 1940s it was evident to many that Graham would be the champion of evangelicalism. His crusades summed up everything that had been done from the times of Charles Finney through Billy Sunday except that he added respectability that some of the others lacked. In the 1950s Graham’s crusade counselors were using a prayer that had been sporadically used for some time. It began with a prayer from his Four Steps to Peace with God. The original four-step formula came during Billy Sunday’s era called in a tract called Four Things God Wants you to Know. The altar call system of Graham had been refined by a precise protocol of music, trained counselors and a speaking technique all geared to help people ‘accept Christ as Savior.’

In the late 1950s Bill Bright came up with the exact form of the currently popular Four Spiritual Laws so that the average believer could take the crusade experience into the living room of their neighbor. Of course, this method ended with the Sinner’s Prayer. Those who responded to crusades and sermons could have the crusade experience at home when they prayed,

“Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.”

Later, in 1977 Billy Graham published a now famous work entitled, How to Be Born Again. For all the Scripture he used, he never once uses the hallmark rebirth event in the second chapter of the book of Acts. The cataract (blind spot) kept him away from the most powerful conversion event in all Scripture. It is my guess that it’s emphasis on baptism and repentance for the forgiveness of sins was incompatible with his approach.  This section was borrowed from Here

Now, back to the big question. Can one be saved by saying a sinners prayer?

If God saves one from hell, granting the sinner “new life” from above, how does one become unsaved if he lacks the ability to save himself to begin with. I mean, if we lack the power to save ourselves then it seems reasonable that we cannot unsave ourselves. Least this is how some arguments go on this topic from those in favor of Once Saved Always Saved.

If a sinner can become a saint, how many sins does it take before he becomes a sinner again? Most all professing Christians acknowledge their weakness in regards to sinning thus a need for a continual cleansing as they walk in the light. Those I have been affiliated with rest upon 1 John 1:9 as a means to clean the slate or walking in the light. They say as long as you ask for forgiveness, you’re in the light, but once you start “practicing sin” and refusing to confess them—-ask for forgiveness, at this point you are not walking in the light, but in darkness. God forbid you forget about some sins or maybe not even be aware of a sin committed, I’m not sure how those sins are covered.

Since some say we must continually ask for forgiveness, it seems Jesus’ Blood wasn’t enough as a one time event for cleansing. Either He provided a sacrifice pleasing to God or He didn’t. Having to constantly ask for forgiveness seems like trampling the Blood of Christ, making a mockery out of His work. When they put blood on the door post in the Old Testament, were they covered and protected or were they covered only if they were without sin. Was not the blood the thing looked for or was in sinlessness? If one had not blood on their door post what became of them vs. those who applied blood to their door post. Now bring this to the Blood of Jesus. Is not His blood much more than blood on a door post? When God looks at the saint—the one He saves, does he look at what Jesus done or is he grading them on how well they live without sin?

Before anyone gets the notion that I am promoting lawless behavior, I will repeat the words of Paul. God Forbid! May it never be so. I am not saying one should profess Christ and then live like the devil. Matter of fact, I am not even saying I agree with Eternal Security. I am merely laying out some of my thoughts on the subject. Obviously, Paul preached Grace to such extreme that people misunderstood him thus his need to correct their thinking when he addressed the Roman Christians. Some obviously were thinking they could sin that Grace would abound. They understood how Jesus covered sin, but misunderstood what being a Christ-like person is all about. In his letter to the Romans he seems to shoot for balance on this subject. He didn’t want to go so far that people would resort to legalistic thinking nor did he want to go to the opposite extreme and cause people to think “shall we sin that Grace abounds.”