Well, everyone, I’ve finally found the definitive, surreally-otherworldly evangelical narrative about evangelism. We can stop looking. I’ve found it. I’ve found the worst dialogue ever constructed by an evangelical. It’s so weird that I half-suspect that it might be some Poe’s Law invention meant to make evangelicals look insectoid space aliens who are completely out of touch with humanity.
If so, though, its creator is playing a very long game indeed.
Today, Mr. Captain (my amazing husband) will be helping me with the audiocast for today’s writeup. I hope you’ll check it out, even if you’re not a Patreon subscriber. When the Patreon posts go public, that’s also when the audiocasts go public too!
Without further ado, let’s get started!
(This post first went live on Patreon on 12/6/2024. Its audiocast lives there too and should be available by the time you see this!)
Everyone, meet Grace Evangelical Society (GES)
Founded in 1986, Grace Evangelical Society (GES) performs evangelism. For the most part, they do this through free podcasts, webpages, and e-books. Evangelical donations pay for it all. Bob Wilkin founded GES. He lives in Texas and is easily 60 or 70 years old.
As for the beliefs GES pushes, they’re boilerplate Trinitarian Creationists with the usual slate of Hell-beliefs and warnings about demonic boogeymen.
But when we dive deeper, we find some interesting quirks. For example, they get into Covenant theology, which they take to mean that Yahweh made a covenant with Jews, then decided to transfer it to Christians. Eventually, as one essay on the site suggests, Yahweh will make a new covenant with Jews after the whole Endtimes thing is finished. These Christians seem very riled up at the idea of those who think Yahweh made a brand-new covenant with Christians!
They also get into Lordship salvation, which is an interesting attempt to force evangelicals to abide by their own rules. Instead of getting into Heaven by merely accepting certain claims, these Christians think that those who are safe from Hell show signs of that safety through obedience to evangelical rules. Salvation from Hell manifests as obedience to those rules.
Confused yet? Then let me add that this concept seems to bear many similarities to Calvinism/Reformed theology, but Covenant theology people seem to reject that association. There’s no “seem to” about Calvinists, who reject that association with great force. Thus, most of the stuff you see online about GES comes from outraged Calvinists.
It’s just so fascinating to me to find a group that has been just trucking along for decades, doing its thing and pushing some weird take on the Bible that they think is the totally most accurate take of all. Jesus is so lucky to have them!

Overall, this group is simply one of many tens of thousands online that are all doing basically the same things.
Evangelism approach 1: Convincing people that they need salvation
Back to Bob Wilkin’s dialogues, he begins his bizarre post like this:
A lot of Evangelicals suggest that before we share the promise of everlasting life to the one who believes in Jesus (or, as the Lordship Salvation person would say, to the one who commits his life to Christ, obeys Christ, and perseveres in obedience), we must first convince the person we are talking with that he/she needs salvation.
Of course, this can be awkward. Imagine this conversation:
And what follows is the most unrealistic dialogue I’ve ever heard:
Dave, do you feel you need to be saved?
What do you mean, Bob? Are you saying I’m not a good person?
No, not at all. I’m asking if you sense a need to be saved from eternal condemnation in hell.
Why do you assume I’m afraid of going to hell? I’m not.
Well, Dave, do you believe in hell?
As a matter of fact, I do. However, I believe it will be unconscious torment. So, I’m fine with being unconscious for eternity. Besides, I think I have a good shot at making it to heaven.
Dave, why do you think you might make it to heaven?
Look, Bob. I know you mean well. But who appointed you my judge? This issue is between God and me.
I truly have no way even to approach the flow of that dialogue. The two people involved aren’t even having the same conversation. Obviously, “Bob” (who is clearly Bob Wilkin himself) needs “Dave” to respond in particular ways for the evangelism attempt to succeed,. That’s common for evangelism sellers. They can only make their suggestions sound workable by divorcing them from reality.
In reality, this dialogue wouldn’t even get off the ground. All someone has to say is “No, I don’t” to that first question, then “No, because Hell doesn’t exist” to the second. (It doesn’t. I’ve done the math.)
But Bob is trying to demonstrate that this conversation can’t succeed. Perhaps that’s why it’s particularly strange-sounding. Of that approach, he laments:
Fifteen minutes later, the conversation ends. Badly. I never even mentioned anything about believing in Jesus or the promise of everlasting life. We were caught up in talking about hell and eternal torment. Worse, Dave thought I was being confrontational and judgmental. I probably made it difficult to talk with him again about Christ. Maybe I should have come at this from another angle. Let’s try that again.
With that, we launch into the second attempt.
Evangelism approach 2: Convincing people that they’re sinners (so they need salvation)
This time around, Wilkin pulls back one step. Instead of starting with threats of Hell, now his “Bob” seeks to convince “Dave” that he’s a sinner. Dave must accept his status before Bob can effectively deploy such threats. Unfortunately, Bob uses the “are you a good person” cattle chute Ray Comfort popularized.
Evangelicals use leading questions a lot in their culture, so they think it’s a great way to evangelize. With this technique, they can avoid invoking tough questions from their targets about ponying up the evidence supporting their claims. It was extremely popular back in the 2010s at the height of the Great Evangelical-Atheist Keyboard War. Evangelicals eventually learned it was a failing strategy, so they dropped it. Good thing, too. Back then, watching an evangelical in Cattle Chute mode was like watching an automatic floor cleaner crashing into the same wall a dozen times.
(See also: Socratic theatrics.)
Here, though, Dave strangely plays along:
Dave, do you know that you are sinner?
What do you mean, Bob?
Well, do you know that you violate God’s laws every day?
Really? What laws are you talking about? I know I’m not perfect, if that is what you mean. But I’m not rebelling against God.
No, Dave. I don’t mean that you are intentionally rebelling. I mean that you break God’s commands all the time. I’m talking about God’s commands against lying, stealing, cheating, immorality, drunkenness, and so forth.
So, you think I’m a liar, thief, cheat, immoral person, and alcoholic? Thanks a lot, Bob. I thought we were friends.
No. I’m not saying that you are a bad person. We are all sinners.
So, Bob, are you a liar, thief, cheat, immoral person, and alcoholic?
Well, Dave, that’s not what I mean.
Okay. Good. So, what do you mean?
In truth, one can only be a “sinner” if they accept the paradigm of “sin” that evangelicals believe. I am no more a Christian sinner than I am a Hindu sinner because I eat beef, or a Muslim sinner because I refuse to cover my hair or stop eating bacon. By the same token, evangelicals won’t think they’re Baháʼí sinners because they call Democrats “woke libtards” and drink alcohol.
Anyone aware of this cattle-chute line of questioning will simply stop it at the first question. Anyone wishing to do more can dismantle the entire concept of “sin” as it applies to non-Christians. If the evangelist won’t cooperate, then the conversation can be brought to a merciful end without anything of value having been lost.
Indeed, Bob knows this approach won’t work either. He laments:
Fifteen minutes later, I wish I’d not tried this approach either. Again, I never mentioned that the one who believes in Jesus has everlasting life that can never be lost.
Bold of him to imagine that either dialogue would last 15 minutes.
Evangelism approach 3: Convincing people that Jesus offers everlasting life (so therefore they need to accept it or they’ll be sinners in need of salvation)
What’s funny is that Bob Wilkin doesn’t even try to offer a bad dialogue for this last approach. It’s his favorite, but we don’t ever find out how he thinks it’d work in reality. Of it, he writes:
Well, maybe I should turn to Scripture to see how the Lord and His Apostles convinced people that they needed salvation.
But wait! The Lord and His Apostles did not do that. At least not all the time. Often, they just presented the promise of eternal life to the one who believes in Jesus.
He supports this claim with a Bible story he calls “Nic at Nite.” It’s in John 3 and concerns Nicodemus, a high-ranking Pharisee who visited Jesus at night. (I do like that nickname!) Jesus didn’t tell Nicodemus he was a sinner, or threaten him with Hell—or so Wilkin thinks. Here’s how Nicodemus’ conversation begins, and what Jesus tells him immediately:
Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
The rest of that encounter involves Jesus explaining a bit more about what “born again” means, but it does indeed end with threats of Hell—or at least, what passed for Hell at the time of John 3’s writing:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Perish of what, pray tell? Eternal life as opposed to what, I ask? Save us from what, exactly? Condemn us to what, precisely?
Hell, of course. Convert or face Hell.
And here’s the amazing part:
Like most evangelism-minded evangelicals, Wilkin probably doesn’t even notice these threats. He thinks he’s escaped the entire Problem of Hell by stressing “eternal life,” but the entire point of Hell is its nature of eternal death, the terrifying opposite of Heaven.
This isn’t the only Bible story he describes, either. He also misses the threats implicit in John 4. And in Paul’s exhortations in Acts 13, and in Paul’s words to his jailer in Acts 16. But that’s not unusual for Hell-believers. They’re so immersed in a world full of grotesque, over-the-top, disproportionate threats that one has to be really out of scope or occur in an unexpected context for them to notice it at all.
Yes, these are all identical evangelism approaches
But all three of these approaches are the same. Bob Wilkin uses threats to recruit others. No matter how far back he tries to go, his evangelism endpoint is still going to be threats.
Wilkin is simply starting from one step further back in each approach. They all still center on somehow getting evangelism targets to feel a need for a product they’ve never needed before for a problem that in theory they never even knew existed until then.
In the Gospels, Nicodemus learned he must be “born again” —or he’ll face condemnation, death, and perishing. Likewise, the woman at the well in John 4 learned that if she rejected Jesus’ “living water,” she would miss out on “eternal life.” And if she made that grievous mistake, she faced eternal death.
I don’t think Bob Wilkin can even conceive of an evangelism approach that doesn’t ultimately hinge on threats of Hell. And he probably can’t because of how his religion got started.
Enter a world full of mystic threats and esoteric secrets
The first-century Ancient Near East wasn’t like modern-day America. Nearly everyone in that environment believed in the supernatural already. People in that culture had an existing framework for gods, sin, worship, and various afterlives to reward or punish one’s behavior in life.
Their philosophers were even starting to formulate notions of mind-body dualism: The idea that the human mind/consciousness/sapience is somehow separate from our bodies and might even survive in a meaningful sense after those bodies die. This notion had even begun making headway in Judaism – right there in its beating heart, Jerusalem!
Mind-body dualism turned out to be a real game-changer. Ancient Egyptians mummified stuff and buried people with as many riches as they could afford because they didn’t have that idea. They thought a person’s body was the home of their spirit. If that “home” got corrupted or destroyed, their spirit might suffer or be lost forever. Other religions, including Judaism, treated the mind and body in similar ways.
The idea of dying and becoming a ghost or a Hellbound soul is a very new idea, archaeologically speaking. As a baby religion forming in the earlier years of this new idea, Christianity could build it into their starting framework – along with another new idea: an omnimax single god of infinite power, knowledge, and compassion.
But not much else about Christianity was new.
Well before the creation of Christianity, mystery cults had sprung up around faiths like Mithraism. They promised eternal life to those who embraced, understood, and devoted themselves to their cult’s esoteric secrets. As part of his seminary education, Martin Luther King, Jr. even wrote about mystery cults—and noted their similarity to Christianity:
It is well-nigh impossible to grasp Christianity through and through without knowledge of these cults. It must be remembered, as implied above, that Christianity was not a sudden and miraculous transformation, springing, forth full grown as Athene sprang from the head of Zeus, but it is a composite of slow and laborious growth. [. . .]
There can hardly be any gainsaying of the fact that Christianity was greatly influenced by the Mystery religions, both from a ritual and a doctrinal angle. [. . .] Christianity was subject to the same influences from the environment as were the other cults, and it sometimes produced the same reaction. The people were conditioned by the contact with the older religions and the background and general trend of the time.
So an afterlife set aside for devoted, obedient disciples wasn’t in the least unusual or striking by the first century. Nor were the implicit threats that naturally flowed from that belief:
Join us and do what we say, or else you will die.
No wonder Christianity became what it did. I’m not sure it could ever have become anything else.
I wanted to tell you all this so we could then explore what a third dialogue—one based on unsubstantiated promises of “eternal life” —might look like. We’ll have to explore on our own, though, because Wilkin hasn’t bothered to give us a sample dialogue for his stunning, groundbreaking, earth-shattering new evangelism method.
How this third evangelism dialogue might look
Since Bob Wilkin has declined to give us an example, I’ve chosen to use his, Jesus’, and Paul’s exhortations. I’m not being sarcastic in doing this. I don’t feel sarcastic. Rather, I want to steelman the suggestion. My approach is also what Wilkin himself suggested:
Let’s tell people the truth: the Lord Jesus Christ freely gives everlasting life to all who believe in Him for it. That is the promise of life. It is a simple and powerful message. It is the message which the Lord and His apostles proclaimed. We should too.
And so that is what we did, Mr. Captain and I. Here’s part of the results:
Me: Honey—er, Dave, the Lord Jesus Christ freely gives everlasting life to all who believe in him for it!
Mr. Captain: Pics or it didn’t happen.
Me: No, the Bible says so!
Mr. Captain: No, it says everyone gets eternal life, and it says so without evidence. You can’t believe this without also believing a flurry of other claims, none of which have evidence. It’s just absurd. It begins, Given that I’m completely correct, here are my suggestions for how you should live your life. Christians make all these claims, and I’m just supposed to accept them and change my life accordingly? But if I even start to ask questions about these claims, they fall apart.
Me: But in John 4, Jesus told the woman at the well this: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” So if you become a Christian, you’ll never be thirsty again. Metaphorically speaking.
Mr. Captain: Metaphorically, I’m not thirsty. And con men talk just like that. Is there evidence? A couple of immortal people, maybe. That’d be perfect.
Me: No. No immortal people, no Wandering Jews. I think it means living forever after you die.
Mr. Captain: Any reliable witnesses to that?
Me: No. None. Sorry.
Mr. Captain: There’s a lot of wild promises made about bottled waters on the market. If you’re saying Jesus’ magical bottled water will quench my thirst and give me immortality, then get me a bottle that passes the FDA’s rules about proof of advertising claims. My concern is that this bottled water’s promises don’t follow FDA laws.
Me: I’m not sure those existed in the first century.
Mr. Captain: Yes, and people made all kinds of claims back then, too! I feel like there’s a lot of promises in Christianity that never get kept. In the Old Testament, that meant the people making them had to be executed.
Me: Jews don’t do that anymore. I don’t think Christians ever did. They’re just supposed to ignore false prophets now.
Mr. Captain: Huh, so the immutable word of the lord has been changed with the times? Again and again, to remain a viable, sellable product?
Me: We’re getting off-topic. Eternal life. You only get it if you buy into Christianity.
Mr. Captain: Isn’t being tortured forever in hell a form of eternal life too? And since modern society has worked out a work-release program and parole and rehabilitation, are you telling me Jesus just isn’t as open-minded and fair as people are? The rest of Christianity has adjusted with the times, so why can’t it do the same here? We’ve learned not to torture prisoners. We try to rehabilitate them. So how do you know Jesus can’t do that with Hell? Why can he change those bits, but not these bits?
Evangelism’s endgame, thwarted
And that led us into the real dealbreaker for evangelical claims:
The power of love itself.
Me: You know what really gets me? Hell can’t survive human love. Good people fight against monstrous evil. They don’t just accept the torture of their loved ones. No matter the odds, human love and compassion win in the end. So if I went to Hell and you went to Heaven, I know you’d come get me.
Mr. Captain: Full stop. Whatever had to happen. I would find you, I would come get you, and I would bring you home.
Me: I know. You’d never stop trying to get me free. You’d never hear I was in Hell and go “Huh, oh well, guess that’s the way it goes, that was her or Yahweh’s choice.” No, you’d be outraged. You’d tear Hell apart.
Mr. Captain: Of course. Or would this loving god rob me of my memory? What’s to say anything about Heaven is like Christians say it is? What if humans are just brainwashed to enjoy it? What if Heaven and Hell are the same place, just some people are brainwashed to believe it’s the land of milk and honey?
Me: And at that point, who cares either way where anyone goes? If our memories are wiped, then nothing we did in life matters at all. We won’t be “us” for it in any meaningful sense. A Yahweh who wipes our memories to allow us to exist happily in Heaven is a Yahweh who could just as easily wipe out the memory of our rejection of him.
Mr. Captain: It’s just such a vile belief system.
Me: Agreed. But he’d have to do more than just wipe our memories. Even if I had no idea who you were, I’d have to join the fight to destroy Hell just because it’s so evil. It’s almost like Yahweh would need to go to a lot of trouble just to protect Hell from all the truly good, loving people in Heaven. What blows my mind is anyone thinking Yahweh is the end-all be-all. If he created people, he did a shit-tastic job of it. If he created divine justice, it’s terrible. Complementarianism, marriage, sex, church discipline, you name it—none of it works the way Christians imagine. They can only think their god’s omnimax because, um, their religion says he is.
Mr. Captain: Oh, I think I could take him.
Me: I know who I’d put my money on.
Many thanks to Mr. Captain on his triumphant first audiocast ever! We both thank you for listening and hope it was as fun to listen to as it was to make it.
NEXT UP: All the reasons I didn’t deconvert. See you soon!
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