(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

So I want to read you a clip from an article that I've found. It's called, When and Why Did the Custom of Conducting Alter Calls Begin? So I'm just going to read you a portion of it, not the whole thing. It says, but as the 19th century dawned, popular American Methodist preachers, Methodist preachers, not Baptists, Methodists, wanted a method to help them determine who of their listeners had been converted. So that's what they want. They want to know who really made the decisions, right? Anglican churches featured an altar in front of the communion table. So did the Baptist get this practice from other Baptists? No. Do they get it from the Bible? No. They get it from Methodist preachers, and Methodists don't even believe the Bible anymore. They think it's all an allegory, that it's just made-up stories. And the Anglicans are like Catholic light. They're like the king. I think they're like the king of England made up the Anglican Church, because he wanted to divorce his wife. But anyway, so I'm going to go back to the article, sorry. Ministers often encouraged parishioners to come to the altar if they needed prayer or an encouragement. Methodist preachers inherited this tradition, but changed its purpose, calling rather those under conviction to come forward to the altar. In 1801, for example, itinerant Methodist pastor or preacher Peter Cartwright told women at a camp meeting that if they promised to pray to God for religion, they might take a seat at the altar. Cartwright further accused parents who discouraged their children from going to the altar of hindering their salvation. So apparently these guys are teaching that the only way you're getting saved is if you come up to the altar after they preached, which is not biblical. How many of you here got saved at the altar? Not me. I mean, I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm not saying that, but you know, that's not the only place people get saved. So the altar called gained popularity in the 1830s with the preaching of Charles G. Finney, who was not saved, by the way. And Finney rejected Calvinistic teaching and human nature was irreparably depraved. He believed only men's wills, not their natures, needed to be converted. His new measures then set out to make regeneration as easy as possible. A revival is not a miracle, Finney wrote. It's purely a philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means. In other words, preachers might create revival if they use the proven methods, chief of these being the anxious bench. That's what they called it, or the seat of decision. You know, they'd call them up and then they'd have these anxious benches and these seats of decision where they'd sit them off and they would just preach like, preach sermons at them right there. And the object of our measures is to gain attention, Finney said, and for that you must have something new. So he's saying that you must have something. So he instituted something new into churches back at that time. Sounds kind of like New Cart Christianity, right? You know, he introduced this new thing and prominent evangelist since Finney's time, most notably D.L. Moody, who was not even an ordained pastor by the way, and Billy Graham, aka Billy Balaam. You know, he says everybody's saved. Everybody's saved as long as they're just following the light that they're following, right? And then pastors, this is funny too, pastors will say, well he used to get people saved. You know, he used to preach it right. No, he's always preached it wrong. You just weren't paying attention when he said that you have to repent of all your sins to be saved, okay? So Billy Graham have continued to make use of the altar call, but if Moody and Finney's methods were with enthusiasm, he was careful to avoid implying that a minister can cause salvation, whatever the methods used. It's not our strength we want, he told the volunteer counselors, it's not the work to make them believe, it's the work of the Spirit. Well yeah, that's true. That's the only thing they got, right? So the thing is, the modern Baptists use this altar call in every single service, you know, and preach a salvation message every 11 a.m. service, you know, and where is that in the Scriptures?