The following excellent chapter is taken from Michael P. Bowen's needful book
titled, “I
Never Knew You: The Coming Great White Throne Judgment And How You Can Avoid
It!” ...
The Plan Of Salvation According To Pat Robertson
Before I cross swords with Pat Robertson on doctrinal issues in this chapter, I would first like to provide you with the necessary background concerning his world-wide ministry, most of which can be seen for yourself on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) Website. CBN’s programming reaches approximately 200 countries via cable and satellite connections and operates a 24-hour telephone prayer line. Their popular show, The 700 Club, has been shown on television uninterrupted since 1966.
I used to watch the show everyday and I loved it. They talk about everything from the news, to food, to current events, to fashion, to health, and it is done with a mixture of professional decorum and genuine warmth and laughter. The folks at CBN are really wonderful people who provide a good service in terms of information and entertainment, but when it comes to the issue of a person’s salvation, there are some points that I would like to raise in an effort to get you to both compare and to contrast for yourself the differences between what Christ has to say and what Pat Robertson has to say. The purpose of this chapter is just that — to provide you with both the gospel according to Christ and the gospel according to Pat Robertson; afterward, you can make up your own mind as to whom you will believe when it comes to your eternal destiny. At this point, let us now go to the CBN Website and click on “Do You Know Jesus?” and analyze Pat Robertson’s stance on salvation.
Upon reaching the home page of the CBN Website, the predominant item of choice for your consideration is this gold-colored phrase that asks “Do You Know Jesus?” When this phrase is clicked (at the time this chapter was written) with your mouse you are taken to a page entitled “Spiritual Life” and are presented with a set of four spiritual concepts. I will list them in their correct order. My job, in this case, is to present an initially fair and unbiased look at the original source of information that Pat Robertson presents to the public-at-large and then compare and contrast it with what Jesus Christ says. Again, this is salvation according to Pat Robertson and it is located on the CBN Website for public consumption; however, because of potential copyright issues I will paraphrase what they say.
Under the first heading you will see an assertion that says God loves you and that He wants you to get to know Him and that He wants to bless you (Romans 5:1, John 3:16, John 10:10). It then asks the question of why it seems like so many people are angry or hurting if, after all, God meant for us to have a really blessed life with much peace.
The reader then moves to step two. Within this category a statement is made about how God did not make us to be like robots without the freedom of choice, that He gave us free will, that He made us in His own image, that He wants our lives to be filled with much joy, but that we all disobey God because we are willfully sinful and that the gap between us and God can never be bridged by our own efforts. In solemn resolve, step two ends by telling the reader that there is only one way to reach God.
Step three explains the remedy and asserts boldly that Jesus is the only answer to our problems, that He died for us and came back from the dead and that we must make a choice.
That leads us to the fourth and last step in the sequence, in which Pat Robertson says we must give ourselves to Christ by trusting Him to forgive us and that we must obey Him for the rest of our lives in order to know Him and to find that peace that everyone is looking for in life. This fourth category ends with this three-step process on how Pat Robertson says we are supposed to give our lives to Christ: first, he says we admit that we are sinners and that we need God’s forgiveness; second, we must believe Jesus died on the cross and that He came back to life; third, he says we must confess through prayer that Jesus is the only way to God and that we must promise to live the rest of our lives for Him.
Now, at the bottom of the screen, you are given the choice of whether or not you would like to give your life to Christ right now. When you click upon “yes” you will be taken to a page that presents you with a prayer that mentions all four of those aforementioned steps.
When you watch the 700 Club show on television, Pat Robertson, or his son, Gordon, or co-host Terry Meeuwsen will, without fail, present their version of salvation during each episode. The first thing you will notice is a genuine sense of care in their voices and in their facial expressions. Without any doubt at all, it is a pleasure to see the warmth and honesty of their countenances and to hear what they have to say. When I was unsure of my salvation I would be so comforted as they told me of God’s love and of how much He desires to have a relationship with me that I hardly ever missed a show. I did exactly what they told me to do, too. I asked Jesus into my heart, I asked Him to forgive me, and I truly did my best to live for Him through what I thought was the power of the Holy Spirit; however, as warm and as caring as these people are, and as heart touching as their plan of salvation truly sounds, it is not the gospel of the bible and I was never born again as a result. In fact, nobody has ever been born again by believing in the plan of salvation presented by the 700 Club because their gospel is different from the gospel presented by Christ in the bible. Since both cannot be the gospel, one of them is wrong and falls under the curse that is mentioned in the book of Galatians. Specifically, I would like to draw your attention first to Galatians 1:6-8, which states, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” What the Holy Spirit is saying through Paul in these verses is that false plans of salvation are crafty and that they lead people away from the true plan of salvation that can save them once and for all. We learn that these other gospels actually pervert or pollute the true gospel of Jesus Christ. We are told that any person with whom we cross paths or even an angel from heaven who teaches any other form of salvation than that which Paul and the other apostles taught is, in fact, giving us an accursed message that cannot save a lost person from death and eternal separation from God. But how do we know what plan of salvation Paul taught to us? Let us look at what Paul and Silas told the Philippian jailer who asked how he might be saved in Acts 16:30-32: “...Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.” What we see here is the command to “believe”on the Messiah, Jesus Christ, alone for the gift of salvation. These men of God did not tell the jailer to believe and forsake his sins, or to believe and crown Christ as the Lord of his life or to follow Jesus in discipleship. Believing on Christ always implies that He is the Messiah who was promised to the world by God all throughout the Old Testament as the one who would die for our sins, be buried in a grave, and walk out of that grave alive after three days. Never does this act of belief in the savior require any behavioral changes on our part or promises to follow Him for the rest of our lives in order to receive His gift of everlasting life in heaven. When you hear a bible teacher tell you that you must promise to follow Christ for the rest of your life, remember the words of Christ immediately from John 3:18: “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Jesus is telling us clearly that anyone who believes on Him alone for their salvation is not condemned (will never be eternally damned), but those who do not believe Him, which includes both those who reject Him outright as well as those who place partial faith in Him and partial faith in living the Christian Lifestyle to get them into heaven, these people are “condemned already” according to Christ because they have not believed in Him. Did you notice how Christ said “the name of the only begotten Son of God” in this verse? This wording explains the authority given to Christ by the Father; in fact, all power and authority have been given to Christ by the Father. In old black-andwhite movies from the past, even in old cartoons we watched as kids a long time ago, when the police were chasing a criminal, it was common to hear, “Stop! In the name of the law!” The criminal being chased by the police knew exactly what that meant because the “name” of the “law” carries the full weight and authority of the law. The name and the object of that name are one in the same. Maybe that is why Christ said if you have seen Me you have seen the Father? Look at John 14:8-9: “Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?”
A surefire way to success in the Christian business is to present a false plan of salvation that sounds like the real thing. Satan will then bless the ministry financially so that masses of people will buy into the lie that he, the father of lies himself, has been propagating ever since he brainwashed Cain with murderous jealousy toward Abel over God’s denial of his harvested offering and His acceptance of his brother’s animal offering. It does not matter how successful a false ministry may become over time because that success is not a measure of God’s blessings upon that ministry. For instance, let us examine Jesus’ temptation while fasting at the beginning of His ministry. Satan tempted Christ to show off His power by throwing Himself from a high place knowing all along that He would not sustain injuries from that fall. Satan also tried to make Christ turn stones into bread. And Satan also offered to give Christ ruling power over earthly kingdoms. You see, Satan had the power to give Christ all the kingdoms and wealth of the world if He would just bow down and worship him. In a similar manner, Satan has the power to bless financially all the ministries that promote false plans of salvation for the sole purpose of making people think they are saved by living the Christian Lifestyle without ever actually being born again in the first place. It is a most cruel form of deception from which few are ever rescued, no matter how many times they hear the true plan of salvation after they have been indoctrinated by this satanic deception; likewise, those who trust in CBN’s plan of salvation, rather than in Christ’s plan of salvation, are at a tremendous disadvantage and are apt never to pay attention to what the Lord Himself says about being born again because they have been convinced by satanic deception, i.e., the “genuine warmth and compassion of the voices and the faces to which they are drawn” that, in reality, only draws them away from Christ’s simple, solitary requirement of “belief in Him alone,” and toward the false path of instructing them to commit their lives to Christ in discipleship “in addition to” partial faith in what Jesus did for them at the cross, despite the fact that Robertson contradicts himself with his own words initially when he says outright that our own efforts do not count toward this gift of salvation; yet, because he employs a bait-and-switch technique that first says “no works” and then subtly “adds works” later in his fourstep process, thereby canceling Christ’s grace with the corruption of human works, Robertson’s gospel is not the true gospel of the bible. It is a counterfeit gospel; it will never save those who place their trust in it.
“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).
That is the sad reality of adding human works to God’s grace, yet, of course, you are free to choose this day whom you will believe.
SOURCE: I Never Knew You (.PDF book), by Michael P. Bowen, chapter four, pp. 47-52; ©2009.
Remember, Satan's greatest weapon is to con people into living the Christian life without ever being born-again. More than ninety-five percent of professed “Christians” today are merely going through the motions, living a religious life that's all centered around the name of Jesus. Unfortunately, they have never been born anew by the Holy Spirit of God (John 1:12-14), which is by faith alone in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:26). You need God's righteousness, because you have none to offer God (Isaiah 64:6). Philippians 3:9, “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”
