Meet Paul Washer

Hi Dear in Christ:) One thing i don't understand why bro. Paul Washer says Jesus says to the church in Rev. 3:20. He says this invitation is not to the individuals but to the church. Could you please explain me. Thanks.
May God bless your ministires.

hello pastor paul my name is Rosa y have a question that y still don't understand , well y heard so many christian said that jesus took them to hell to see how really was and that they has seen friends and family down there burning in hell, but look at what John 5:28-29 has to say ,when somebody dies if it was save it goes directly to heaven at that moment or go to hell at that moment, if you can answer this question for me y would aprecciate , y don't have a church and y am studing the word of God on my own.

Hello Rosa, I'm not Pst. Paul, But as no-one has answered you I would like to respond. The scriptures you are quoting are in fact true and correct and not what people are sometimes saying. There is great confusion today about what is true and not true. Nobody in this new testament age, ie from the time of the resurrection of Jesus, 2000 years ago till he comes back, goes either to heaven or hell. The time is coming when there is a first resurrection and then the final judgment where the people who will go to hell will be sent with the devil and his angels. I'm really sorry Rosa but in the broad sense Christianity has gone astray in many places. Keep you heart with pure intentions and desires and pray every day and ask Jesus to start taking your problems away. Read your bible even a little bit every day and it will have an amazing positive effect on your life and those around you. The bible tells us if we draw near to him he will draw near to us and we need him. I've heard some of those stories as well but you'll find as you start putting bits of the bible together you will hear someone say something and inside a little response and scripture will come into your mind and you'll know that's true or not true. Keep studying your bible. There is much more Rosa and I hope you don't lose heart.

You are dead wrong. I don't know what doctrine you've been taught, but according to scripture, people either go to heaven or hell immediately after they die. There is a temporary hell, that sinners go to until the Great white throne judgment. You speak of the hell when the scriptures says the lake of fire.

Actually Monte, I'm alive and the scripture is right. 1 Thesalonians 4
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are ALIVE and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
The people who are saved and have passed away sleep in Christ until the second coming. They rise from there graves and from their sleep. That is scripture not religion.

Please pray for me and my husband we have separated he is lost and has told me today he has been thinking of taking his life. Please we need prayer badly thank you all

Tess,
I definitely will pray for you and your husband. I do want you to know that there is only so much that you can do for him. You can pray, you can be submissive, you can love him as Christ has called you to, but you cannot save him. Cast yourself upon the love and power of God and plead for your husband's salvation. I have been in the depths of anguish before in fear and prayer for a loved one and God is faithful in all things.
Grace, love, and peace,
Charles

Tess, This sounds very serious, A great many men today lose heart because they lose all they have in life that is valuable. Jesus said, You beleive in God, beleive in me also, there are wonderful steps forward. I am happy to help with straight forward simple biblical steps, my friends and I will pray for you looking for the miraculous in scripture to take away piece by piece the problems, all of them. If I / we pray for things and look for God to do the things he did at the words of Jesus and the early church, that is where he wants us to be. Tess I have prayed for amazing things and they've happened. Too many to mention. The only place to go is before God which Jesus has given me access to and for everyone who continues forward asking, seeking, knocking, the answer will come. When Jesus first stood up in a synagog to read, he turned to the book of Isaiah and read, The spirit of the Lord is upon me........to heal the broken hearted to heal the bruised etc etc. Read Luke 4;18. This is for you and your husband. I want to you to start there and take hold of what is being offered. Where are you living, what continent will do. Otto

(Aside: My 11 year old has yet to go forward and be baptized at our church and it worries my mother tremendously. I know he has a personal understanding of the issues in number 3 above. I know he believes and has faith. Yet my mother insists upon sending "Child Evangelists" to the house to prod him forward. I've told her, if that's all it took, I could talk to him and have walking the aisle during the invitation in about 2 minutes. I don't do that, because I want him to make that commitment. I pray for it daily, but I will not force it, for the fears expressed by Pastor Washer.)

If you know your son has faith and believes, then why do you think he is lost? What could he possibly do to "merit" salvation. Walk the aisle? No.. commit to Christ? No... If your son believes and has faith, then he is saved. He is 11... He probably hasn't committed many gross sins of the flesh. What is it you are waiting for him to do, especially in the light of the fact that IT IS FINISHED :)?

God bless
Luke

I am a penticostal! Nothing like a Southern Baptist as far as I know. I received the baptism of water unto repentance many are familiar with and the baptism of the Holy Spirit a week later and it was very powerful. What Paul Washer was saying in the what now seems famous sermon 2002 is unfortunatly absolutely true. He that loses his life shall find it, only if God build the house will it stand all others labour in vain.Yet all who seek will find and this is where our wonderfull God serches our hearts. The bible tells us in him we live and move and have our being. If we choose to live as a servant of sin dont expect to enter the Kingdom of heaven. God loves people but he hates sin. What was paid for our sin, the Son of God didn't just pay somthing he paid with all he had. Start.... be born again. Water and spirit. Walk in the spirit, which absolutely is acording to theWord of God. You will not look like sound like and behave like what the bible calls the world. What may seem a big cost cannot be compared to what God has put on the table. It is our choice if we want our own way or God's. He is leaving the final choice to us but we need people like Paul Washer who are prepared to risk popularity and ridecule to be sober about our future.

PS. I clearly got the year wrong. I live on the other side of the world so we get things upside down sometimes.There are only a few problems we all face they come from the fact we are human or [flesh] after some time we reduce our prayer life to about zero and forget to read our bible. Both of these are vital to our spiritual health and must be done everyday. After a while our Pastors think they need to carry us excite us and solve our problems. They can only encourage and encourage and encourage. Jesus said come unto me and i will give you rest etc. I am the true vine and the door, the good shepherd etc. If we pray every day read our bibles every day enormous and wonderful things take place because it was the Word that moved from the beginnig and separated the darkness and light. Unfortunately our nature no matter how we see our conversion and I've wittnessed many in 30 years. Our nature is dark and selfish and lazy. Jesus and the Kindom is not, it is Light, also the Word is Light and God himself is Light. Whatever one perceves the devil as he sure is not happy about you being a happy and content person praying and reading our bibles and supporting and playing an active role in a fellowship. So we have our flesh nature the world with its temptations and the devil all against you and me walking as a new testament person. Move close to him and he says he will move close to you. Boy he is the person we all need in our teem on our side moving us forward.

Amen! To those of you who "get it", Allisha,ronda and ariel. I had discovered one of Mr. Washers' c.d.s
at a truck stop and he's right on. Jesus said (when ask by a disciple) that FEW would be saved. I, once
prayed "the prayer" half way thru my military career; I was sincere, but there was no change. God CALLED me to salvation a few years later and there WAS CHANGE! It's not out of works or some sense of bondage we desire to be holy and live right. When we are CHANGED BY HIM, we just want to please him more. The reason people have a problem with Paul W. is the same reason the RELIGIOUS PEOPLE
of Jesus' day were offended. TRUTH CUTS like a knife. Many people are SELF-CHANGED. They have not been GOD-CHANGED. We must desire to humble ourselves and not be offended by truth. Our souls
are at stake.

Truth is much weightier than false assurance. Many people who profess the name of Jesus will woke-up in doom in hell, the event that will make them unhappy forever! Let's cry for them... That preaching is vital for every one, for family, for society and the rest of the world who are going, marching for eternal death and misery. This kind of preaching should not only be sounded mightly in america as well as to the rest of the world. Brethren, pray for us here in the philippines we need bold men of God to preach great truth of God! Pray for us...

i am in awe...without reservations.i feel like falling on my face before God everytime i hear one of his sermons. he is not afraid to tell the world and christians that the devil is a liar and we had better get real and get right before God. I praise The Lord just for allowing me to be within the sound of a voice who is of God...pleading with us to repent.

I'm surprised to see such animosity toward Mr. Washer. I wanted to know if folks like M. Field really know Mr. Washer or have at least listened to multiple sermons before drawing any damning conclusions against him? I would hope that such ppl would give at least as much grace as they would hope to receive...

Here's a link to a clip that might give some insight to Mr. Washer. I hope it is helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=340x_QEsBA0

I really like Paul Washer.And if you would listen to more of his sermons he is not in any way saying that it is by works that we get into heaven.What he is saying however that true conversion comes with a change in your life.I dont see how you could be the same person you were before conversion.I cant do or even listen to the same things I did before...I cant.He is also saying that change is a continual process.No we arent going to be perfect but we arent going to be like the rest of the world either.I listened to one of his sermons today called the Grace and Mercy of God.It was wonderful he in no way implies that God is against us.He expresses in many of his sermons the goodness of God and how much God loves us.To me what he is trying to get across is that with conversion comes a change in your life which is very clear in the Bible.You cant serve two masters.You just cant.If you got a heart transplant because you had a bad heart Im sure that the doctors wouldnt give you another heart that has the same things wrong with it.It would defeat the purpose of giving you a new heart.Just as when God "gives you a new heart"it is not going to be the same.You will desire different things.In no way am I saying that you will never sin again but you wont be the same person, you wont delight in doing wrong.

I'm getting sick of this Washer guy being praised around the web.

As far as I can see he is a loud, manipulative, fear-inducing bully whos message is conform to his narrow brand of reformed fundamentalism or burn in Hell.
He doesn't quite match Jonathan Edwards (puritan fire and brimstone preacher who was in love with the doctrine of Hell) though he's still pretty awful. The word 'Pharisee' came to my mind quite a bit when watching his sermon.

I fear that the forceful and generalised way he puts across his message might turn many Christians obsessively introspective, asking themselves questions such as ‘Am I Holy enough?’ and wondering if maybe they are on their way to hell because they forgot to pray on one occasion or had a negative thought that day or because they think they don't love Jesus enough or because they’re not out in Peru, Kenya China etc. being a missionary etc.
Our works are not sufficient for our salvation – Christ’s blood is.

To quote N.T. Wright:

"I don’t find in the New Testament any suggestion that the visible church ought to be composed of guaranteed one-hundred-per-cent soundly converted keen Christians. If it had been, half of the epistles would not have been necessary. Yet people are always hankering after a false security, such as you would get from belonging to a church that could be seen to be all right, seen to be ‘sound’…seen? We walk by faith, not by sight. Any attempt to get a purer church, or Christian life, than we have been promised this side of heaven, runs the risk of attempting to base security, assurance of salvation, on something other than the free grace and love of God."

I think washers kind of preaching has probably caused more folks to walk away from faith than do the opposite.

Now, I'm certainly not into prosperity preachers or easy belivism (whatever that is). The Christian life is all about discipleship and costly grace. However, I find that Washers approach turns God into some angry tyrant who is ultimatley for us rather than against us. A strap line for such a God would be 'get out of line or I'll bash you!' After all, it was becasue God so loved the world, not hated, that he sent his son.

If u like Paul Washer, this video might floor u, dont watch it, unless youre ready to question things.

Paul Washer- Is American "Christianity" really Christian?

http://www.livevideo.com/video/5C242031BEB04738...

The problem is identify is indeed prevalent. I think the problem exists because there is no inquiry as to why a person is coming forward. Do we ask what their understanding is. When I went forward, (June 13, 1967), I was given six weeks of instruction and had a confirmation-like meeting with the pastor before I was baptized. What’s wrong with that?

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think the important thing is that we treat the decision to follow Christ at least on the same level as applying for a home loan (and no I don't mean that we should introduce paperwork into the process ;) )

Thanks for the reply!

Regarding this though, I think I agree with you in part that often people mean it as shorthand for faith and repentance, but what frequently happens, is the phrase is used as if everyone hearing it understands what it means, and plenty of times they don’t.

I know so many people who say, “I prayed the prayer, and it didn’t work for me”, but when I ask them about Jesus Christ as Lord, they say, “yeah, I prayed the prayer, it didn’t do it for me.”

The problem is identify is indeed prevalent. I think the problem exists because there is no inquiry as to why a person is coming forward. Do we ask what their understanding is. When I went forward, (June 13, 1967), I was given six weeks of instruction and had a confirmation-like meeting with the pastor before I was baptized. What's wrong with that?

Yes, I know Phillip baptized the Ethiopian immediately, but I perceive the Ethiopian understood what was going on.

Cheers.

Randall,
You, sir, are quite welcome to "hijack" my post any time you like. I have the same reservations about a message like this, if it were the only one ever heard every Sunday in a church. I hope Reverend Washer is not that type of preacher.

I think the audience that he was speaking to, needed to hear it very much.

Third, I must confess, that while I’ve heard the phrase, “ask Jesus into your heart,” it has been used as a shorthand for the concept of individual sin which leads to individual judgment which in turn necessitates individual faith in the grace of Christ’s atonement and leads to an individual desire to live a life pleasing to Him, i.e. Repentance.

Regarding this though, I think I agree with you in part that often people mean it as shorthand for faith and repentance, but what frequently happens, is the phrase is used as if everyone hearing it understands what it means, and plenty of times they don't.

I know so many people who say, "I prayed the prayer, and it didn't work for me", but when I ask them about Jesus Christ as Lord, they say, "yeah, I prayed the prayer, it didn't do it for me."

Anyway, thanks for the great reply.
Take care,
Charles

Sorry for the long comment. I didn't mean to hijack your post.

Cheers.

I still need to listen to the whole thing, but I have some preliminary thoughts. (I prowled around a few web sites, as well.)

First, I agree with Pastor Washer, that for many "evangelical" the Gospel is being watered down. Think Rick Warren and his ilk, who concentrate on the "positive" and omit references to sin, judgment, repentance, blood atonement and the like in favor of filling the pews on Sunday.

Second, as a church, we tend to be less mindful of the influences of the world, especially on our children. Clearly, we and they must be vigilant and we need to teach them that certain things are not appropriate. Stated differently, the influences are there; we all succumb to them time and again, but continued repentance is necessary. We must listen to the Holy Spirit when He convicts us and act accordingly.

Third, I must confess, that while I've heard the phrase, "ask Jesus into your heart," it has been used as a shorthand for the concept of individual sin which leads to individual judgment which in turn necessitates individual faith in the grace of Christ's atonement and leads to an individual desire to live a life pleasing to Him, i.e. Repentance.

Fourth, where the problem lies is not in the profession of faith, but the lack of proper discipleship afterwards. I'm afraid my own church is lacking in that, especially when it comes to the youth. The reason for this is that we're more concerned about entertainment and "keeping young people engaged" than we are in nurturing new Christians. Studying the Gospels or Epistles is "boring" so in lieu thereof, we have basketball in the new "Family Life Center."

Fifth, (a subset of "fourth") there is too much emphasis, at least in the Baptist Church with "coming forward" and saying a specific prayer followed by Baptism, than with assuring ourselves that the new "convert" understands the items in Number 3 above. I think we've reduced a specific set of words to a "magic spell" which works wonders.

(Aside: My 11 year old has yet to go forward and be baptized at our church and it worries my mother tremendously. I know he has a personal understanding of the issues in number 3 above. I know he believes and has faith. Yet my mother insists upon sending "Child Evangelists" to the house to prod him forward. I've told her, if that's all it took, I could talk to him and have walking the aisle during the invitation in about 2 minutes. I don't do that, because I want him to make that commitment. I pray for it daily, but I will not force it, for the fears expressed by Pastor Washer.)

All these things said, I wonder whether Pastor Washer's comments might not be misconstrued in certain circumstances. That is, could they lead to Christians who are struggling with their walk; who are trying to live as they should but who stumble more than they want to believe that grace is insufficient but that "post conversion works" are what get you to heaven?

My sins taint me forever. No work will change that. Yes, I need to bear good fruits but they are nothing compared to Christ's sacrifice.

I mention these reservations, because in my younger years I was desperately trying to live the Christian life. There were areas of sin which I was dealing with but which haunted me. I kept praying for a healed heart; a healed mind. I wanted to be able to resist and be victorious more often than I failed.

Alas, I met a pastor with a the same message as Pastor Washer. In dealing with him and his telling me that my repentance was insufficient over and over again, I became convinced that a) it was no use and b) I was going to hell no matter what I wanted or no matter how much I prayed. This in turn sent me into a long period of depression and a time when I didn't go to church.

Obviously, I got over it.

Thus, do I worry about those Christians who are trying, who need encouragement from the Shepherds, those who need to hear John 3:17 once in a while.

Cheers.

Randall,
I think you'll find it worth your while.
Let me know what you think!
(You should also check out Voddie Baucham's sermon Closing the Generation Gap It's a killer.)

Sam,
Thanks for the links! I'll try to check them out.

Truly powerful stuff. I have bookmarked the full sermon and will reserve comment until I've listened to it all.

Cheers.

Encountering Paul was quite pivotal in my salvation some months ago. He has many other great sermons as well, particularly the 'Spiritual Emphasis' and 'Faith' series which you can find here: http://www.grantedministries.org/