When one is exposed to Protestant theology as a young child and is forced to remain exposed to it until he or she decides for him or herself whether or not to continue attending church, one learns the proper method of getting into Heaven when one dies as codified by a non-Catholic belief system. According to typical Protestant theology, an unsaved soul gets into Heaven when it departs the physical body through a three-step process I like to refer to as “the Protestant plan of salvation.” The Protestant plan of salvation is composed of the following steps:
First of all, one must call upon on the name of the Lord as is stated in Romans 10:13 which is as follows: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Calling upon the name of the Lord goes something like this: “Heavenly Father, I confess that I am a worthless sinner and deserving of an eternal damnation. I ask that you spare me from going to Hell when I die through the sacrifice of your Son Jesus Christ, who came down from Heaven as an atonement for my sins.”
Secondly, one must invite Jesus into one’s heart. This is not actually found in the Bible. It is an invented theology. It actually means to adopt the thoughts, words, and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. It means to make His ways an integral and natural part of an individual’s mode of living, so much so that it could be said the one calling him or herself a Christian has taken Jesus into their heart. It has been my experience that this step never gets explained to the average pew sitter in such objective terms, which means that most Protestants, though they accept and agree with this theology, don’t actually understand it’s meaning.
And last of all, one must accept Jesus as one’s personal savior and have a personal relationship with Him. This too, is nowhere to be found in the Bible. It is the result of “reading between the lines” I suppose of various scriptures. Well, actually the part about Jesus being one’s personal saviour is not that difficult to understand: If you’ve “called upon the name of the Lord,” that means you are saved; and since salvation comes through the sacrifice of Jesus, then why shouldn’t He be considered a “personal” saviour? A personal relationship with Jesus simply refers to a daily routine of prayer, reading one’s Bible, and attempting to live like Jesus of Nazareth lived, as stated in the previous step.
Protestants may disagree with me over the fact that I included the second and third steps in the above three-fold scheme. They might say all that is really necessary to be “saved” is to perform the first step, which is to call upon the name of the Lord; and they would be right, at least according to their belief system. I included the second and third steps because Protestant preachers, deacons, Sunday school teachers, etc., have included these steps in their sermons, discussions, and Sunday school lessons for so long that the second and third steps have become a natural part of Protestant vocabulary.
Baptism is often suggested as an additional option for a newly-saved Christian who has just completed the Protestant plan of salvation; but it is not mandatory. In the Southern Baptist denomination in which I grew up, it is taught that, after one gets saved, he or she should be baptized because Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. If, however, someone called upon the name of the Lord and immediately died, that person would have no problem getting into Heaven whether baptism occurred or not. Usually, baptisms are scheduled within two weeks or so after someone has become saved anyway, which reinforces the belief held by Protestants that the practice is not absolutely necessary. A lot can happen in two weeks right?
To those who have even a rudimentary, basic knowledge of Christian history, a glaring problem should be evident with the above method of salvation. The problem is that this Protestant plan of salvation is a relatively new dogma in the history of Christianity. That is, the doctrine simply did not exist until after 1731. It came into being during The First Great Awakening which was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. Before this movement occurred, the Protestant plan of salvation was non-existent.
According to those who tout it, the Protestant plan of salvation is the ONLY way to get into Heaven when one dies. It is what is referred to as being “born again,” and being re-born is prerequisite for getting into Heaven and avoiding Hell.
So, exactly why is this a problem? It is a problem because before Martin Luther’s Reformation, which eventually resulted in The First Great Awakening, if you called yourself a Christian, you were either Catholic, Orthodox, or Coptic. There was no fourth option; those three were it. These three branches of Christianity do not subscribe to, nor do they teach, the Protestant plan of salvation. Those who are members of these three divisions of Christianity are baptized at birth which makes them members of their church, which in turn means they are going to Heaven when they die. They are, of course, expected to take part in the Sacraments and are expected to be confirmed as a pre-teen, but Baptism is the main qualifier of whether or not one gets into Heaven at death.
The implication is astounding: before The First Great Awakening no one went to Heaven when they died. Prior to the Protestant plan of salvation, not only did non-Christians of other religions burn in Hell when they died (this was taken for granted by non-Protestant Christians as well), it turns out that even those who called themselves Christian burned in Hell also because they had never called upon the name of the Lord, had never invited Jesus into their heart, and had never accepted Jesus as their personal saviour. They had simply been baptized as an infant, and the act of baptizing a baby who is not even aware that the baptism is taking place, doesn’t make the child “saved” according to mainline Protestant teachings. Faced with being in the uncomfortable position of answering the inevitable question raised by critics about the nature of a deity who would be so evil and cold-hearted as to force an eternal torment in Hell upon an innocent baby, Protestants have predictably come up with various explanations about infants and toddlers getting a free ticket to Heaven should they perish before the age of “accountability” because they are still innocent.
Taken literally, this doctrine (if it can even be called such a thing) is absurd. It is one of the reasons there has been an exodus from mainline Protestant denominations over the past couple of decades. Actually, the whole saved-versus-the-damned mentality, which is taught in the majority of Christian churches, has turned many people away from a god who would construct a place of eternal torment and damnation in the first place. This in turn (along with various other reasons) has caused a worldwide decrease in the Christian population because people can no longer bring themselves to worship such a pathetic, evil being. The fact is that, except for Africa, Christianity is suffering from dwindling numbers worldwide; and this is because of a demand on the part of religious zealots that educated, modern people take the Bible and invented doctrines literally.
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The Professor Twist Files 