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THE PETER PACKAGE: A SAVING
RESPONSE TO THE GOSPEL
A Valid Response to the
Gospel
Repent, be baptized, receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit,
and be added
to the Lord’s Church
This is the New Testament
Pattern for being born
again, entering
Christ’s Eternal Kingdom and
being added to His Church.
We see this in
the book of Acts and
throughout the New
Testament!
1. One of the reasons for
the present mess in the
Church is that many
ministers have substituted
the modern invitation system
for “the Peter
Package.”
a. The advocates of the
modern invitation system
would have us believe
that on the
Day of Pentecost Peter
declared,
“Now I want every head bowed
and every eye closed, and
while James dims
the lights and John plays
softly on the organ, if you
want to receive
Jesus as your personal
Savior, I want you to raise
your hand and pray
this simple prayer after
me…”
This is not the pattern of
the Apostles! It is not the
way it was done
in the First Century! Read
the Acts of the Apostles.
Read the Epistles!
There is not one place in
the New Testament where
sinners were told to
simply pray the sinner’s
prayer. The way sinners
called on the Name of
the Lord was by getting
themselves baptized into the
Name!
b. Peter boldly commanded,
“repent get yourself
baptized into the Name
of the Lord Jesus.”
Peter commanded them to obey
the Gospel; He called for
them to repent
and come
to the water that separates
and divides…that they might
be saved from a
perverse generation and the
coming wrath of God,
translated into the
Kingdom of God’s Son
and added to the Church!
(See Acts 2: 37-41; Acts 8:
35-37; Acts 19: 5, 6; Acts
22: 16)
Present Invitation System
Problems and Examples:
• Charles E. Hackett, the
division of home missions
national director
for the Assemblies of God in
the U.S. said, “A soul at
the altar does
not generate much excitement
in some circles because we
realize approximately
ninety-five out of
every hundred
will not become integrated
into the church. In fact,
most of them will
not return for
a second visit.”
• In his book Today’s
Evangelism, Ernest C.
Reisinger said of one
outreach event,
“It lasted eight days,
and there were sixty-eight
supposed
conversions.” A month later,
not one of the “converts”
could be found.
• In 1991, organizers of a
Salt Lake City concert
encouraged follow-up.
They said,
“Less then 5 percent of
those who respond to an
altar call during a
public crusade . . . are
living a Christian life one
year later.” In
other words, more than 95
percent proved
to be false converts.
Page 2 A Valid
Response to the Gospel
• A pastor in Boulder,
Colorado, sent a team to
Russia in 1991 and
obtained 2,500 decisions.
The next year, the team
found only thirty
continuing in their faith.
That’s a retention rate of
1.2 percent.
• In November 1970, a number
of churches combined for a
convention in
Fort Worth, Texas, and
secured 30,000 decisions.
Six months later, the
follow-up committee
could only find thirty
continuing in their faith.
• A mass crusade reported
18,000 decisions—yet,
according to Church
Growth magazine, 94 percent
failed to become
incorporated into a local
church.
• In Sacramento, California,
a combined crusade yielded
more than 2,000
commitments. One church
followed up on fifty-two of
those decisions and
couldn’t find one true
convert.
• A leading U.S.
denomination reported that
during 1995 they secured
384,057 decisions but
retained only 22,983 in
fellowship. They couldn’t
account for 361,074 supposed
conversions. That’s a 94
percent fall-away
rate.
• In the March/April 1993
issue of American Horizon,
the national
director of home missions of
a major U.S. denomination
disclosed that
in 1991, 11,500 churches had
obtained 294,784 decisions
for Christ.
Unfortunately, they could
find only 14,337 in
fellowship. That means
that despite the usual
intense follow-up, they
couldn’t account
for approximately 280,000 of
their “converts.”
What about God’s Word that
says He is “able to keep you
from stumbling,
And to present you faultless
before the presence of His
glory with
exceeding joy” (Jude 24).
Either He wasn’t able to
keep these professed
converts, or His hand wasn’t
in their profession of faith
in the first
place.
We are facing a fall-away
rate of 84-97 percent. Some
believe we need
better follow-up. However,
“following-up” with a false
convert is like
putting a stillborn baby
into intensive care.
When did this problem (this
new system) begin?
While there is debate over
the exact origins of this
practice, most
agree that it came
into prominence in the
1830’s with Charles Finney
(1792-1875),
who popularized
it through the mourner’s
bench or anxious bench (some
today call it the
“altar”).
Dr. Albert B. Dodd, a
professor of theology at
Princeton Seminary at
the time of
Mr. Finney’s ministry,
pointed out the newness of
the practice and
showed that this method was
without historical
precedent. In his review
of Finney’s Lectures on
Revival, Professor Dodd
stated that one will
search in vain for a single
example of this practice
before the 1820’s.
[4] Instead, history tells
us that whenever the gospel
was preached men
were invited to Christ—not
to decide at the end of a
sermon whether or
not to perform some physical
action.
Finney believed that the new
birth and revival were not
miracles (i.e.
something only God can do)
but were states accomplished
by means of the
proper use of the will. He
knew that to arrive at
regeneration and, on
a larger scale, revival, the
will must be excited to
action. Hence he
developed the “new
measures,” one of which was
the “anxious bench.”
Page 3 A Valid
Response to the Gospel
In many ways, this anxious
bench is the mother of our
modern day
invitationalism. Reacting to
Finney’s method, theologian
R.L. Dabney
commented: “We have come
to coolly accept the fact
that forty-five out of fifty
will eventually
apostatize [fall away].”
On the other side of Finney
was the veteran evangelist
Asahel Nettleton
(d. 1844), whose converts
stood. For instance, in
Ashford, Connecticut
there were eighty-two
converts, and only three
spurious ones. In Rocky
Hill, Connecticut, there
were
eighty-six converts and they
all were standing strong
after twenty-six
years, according
to their pastor. Nettleton
rigidly refused to offer
public altar calls,
believing that
it prematurely reaped what
would turn out to be false
converts. C. H.
Spurgeon,
the Victorian “Prince of
Preachers,” thought
similarly.
Billy Sunday, D.L. Moody,
and Billy Graham are other
evangelists who
contributed to the
widespread acceptance and
use of the altar call.
Certainly, Graham is the one
who is most related to the
contemporary
form
of the altar call in use in
many churches today.
What does the Bible teach?
Look at Acts 2:37ff ; please
note Peter has
just preached the Gospel of
the Kingdom, and now he is
telling the Jews
how to be saved.
Ern Baxter called this, “the
Peter Package”.
Five definite steps involved
in full Kingdom Initiation:
First, "Repent…renounce all
right to
self-determination…renounce
Satan,
the world, and the
self-life…" My friend Don
Atkin defines repentance
as “changing governments.”
Second, “Get yourself
baptized into the Name of
Jesus Christ…” This is
something you do as an act
of obedience. It is the way
you actually
receive Jesus Christ as your
Lord and Savior. It is the
N.T. way that
you activate or release your
faith. You may believe the
Gospel fully,
but until you actually do
what God commands, it is not
faith! Saving
Faith is acting on the
Gospel; it is obedience! And
the way you
actually obey the Gospel is
you get yourself baptized.
Peter was an apostle of the
Lamb, commissioned by the
Lord Jesus
Himself to preach the Gospel
of the Kingdom.
Surely, he
understood what it takes for
a person to be saved or born
again? He
commanded his fellow
Jews, "Repent and get
yourself baptized into
the Name of Jesus Christ" or
baptized into the death and
resurrection
of Jesus Christ.
Today, we must rediscover
what Peter and the early
apostles understood:
Verse 37, please note Peter
has just preached the Gospel
of the
Kingdom,
and now he is telling the
Jews how to be saved!
(See verse 40)
How many believe Peter was
an apostle? How many believe
he knew
what to do to be saved?
a. "Repent…renounce all
right to
self-determination…renounce
Satan, the
world,
and the self-life…"
Don Atkin defined repentance
as “changing governments.”
b. “Get yourself baptized
into the Name of Jesus
Christ…”
Page 4 A Valid
Response to the Gospel
(Ron’s note: The Name is the
Person. The Trinity is
represented
in His Name.
The Father, Son and Holy
Ghost are Persons united in
Divine PURPOSE.
They are not one Person in
Jesus. Jesus said that what
is the Father’s
is His.
The Father has given all
power and authority to the
Son.
Jesus said that the Father
is greater than the Son. The
Father Son and
Holy Spirit
are separate Persons ruling
in unity as one God.)
This is something you do as
an act of obedience. It is
the way you
actually receive
Jesus Christ as your Lord
and Savior. It is the New
Testament way that
you activate
or release your faith.
You may believe the Gospel
fully, but until you
actually do what God
commands,
it is not faith! Saving
Faith is acting on the
Gospel; it is obedience!
And the way you actually
obey the Gospel is you get
yourself baptized.
Baptism is the means by
which you put off the old
man and put on
Christ!
You get yourself baptized
into the Name of Jesus
Christ, into His death
and into
His resurrection! Baptism is
the way in which you enter
experientially
into Christ’s death
and resurrection which took
place 2000 years ago!
It is the circumcision of
your heart. (Baptism is the
cutting off of
the flesh
and the receiving of a new
heart. See Colossians 2:
10-13)
It is the way in which you
are translated out of the
Kingdom of
Darkness and into the
Kingdom of God’s Dear Son
(Col. 1:13). (By
the way, if we are already
translated
into the Kingdom of God’s
Son at conversion, then
according to the
Apostle Paul,
the Present Kingdom must be
the promised Messianic
Kingdom of David’s
Son,
rather than some future
earthly Jewish Millennial
Kingdom! How many
Kingdoms
does The Lord Jesus have?)
c. Then you receive the Holy
Spirit…
This is God’s promise to the
fathers of Israel. All the
prophets of
Israel promised
that in Messiah’s Day, the
age of Messiah’s Kingdom,
God would pour out
the Spirit upon all flesh!
This is the promise of God!
It is one of the essential
benefits of the
New Covenant
and the birthright of every
believer! Everything Jesus
did He did so
you might receive
the Holy Spirit! (John the
Baptist’s testimony) The
Holy Spirit is the
indwelling Christ;
The Lord Jesus is enthroned
at the right hand of God in
heaven; it is
the Holy Spirit
who actually comes to dwell
within our human spirit, not
the Lord
Jesus.
The Holy Spirit Himself is
the seal or witness of God
the Father that
we are the children of God!
When we obey the Gospel and
get ourselves
baptized, we are actually
entering into the New
Covenant and setting
our seal of obedience to the
New Covenant.
When God fills us with the
Holy Spirit, He is setting
His seal to the
covenant.
We don’t need a minister to
confirm or assure us that we
are born again
or saved.
God Himself assures us by
filling us with the Holy
Spirit.
d. Then we are added to the
Church…
It is important to note,
that we are immediately
added to the general
assembly or
the Church in heaven… (Turn
to Hebrews 12:22-24).
Page 5 A Valid
Response to the Gospel
When we repent, get
ourselves baptized into
Christ’s death and raised
into His life, we become
members of the
General Assembly, the Church
of the first-born Son of
God…the body of
Christ.
This is automatic! You don’t
join the Church of your
choice; No, no,
the Holy Spirit Himself adds
you to the general assembly,
the body of
Christ!
But after the Holy Spirit
adds you, He puts you in the
body as it
pleases Him!
You find placement in a
locality or city in an
allotment of believers
under true apostolic and
pastoral oversight. (I
Cor.12: 18; Psalm 68:
6, 18, Eph.4: 16; John 14:
1;
II Sam. 7 10; I Peter 5:3)
How many understand that the
Church is one? But it is
made up of many
allotments
of believers. It is
important to understand that
the true Church is
General assembly, before it
is local.
e. Once you have find
placement in an allotment
(congregation) in a
locality (City),
then you voluntarily or
freely submit yourself to be
discipled or
taught to obey Christ’s
commands, “teaching them to
do all I have
commanded you…(Matt.28:
19-20).”
l. Paul left Timothy at
Ephesus to set in order the
things that were
lacking and to teach the
disciples there, the sons
and daughters of the
Kingdom of God, “how to
behave in the House of God.”
Il. The Epistles all have a
doctrinal section and a
practical…See
Ephesians…
The practical sections teach
the sons and daughters of
God how to
behave in the family of God
or the "household of faith."
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