"You do give altar calls, don't you?"

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.
Acts 10:44

How could these people be saved? Peter didn’t even give an altar call!

Precisely. Altar calls are a somewhat modern invention on the timeline of Church history. They were unknown until the 1800s, when a man named Charles Finney introduced the concept. In His day, Finney’s innovations were called “new measures.” The altar call was only one of Finney’s new measures; there were others. Finney’s thinking was that we can make conversions and revivals happen if we use the right methods. That is a nice way of saying, “we can manipulate people to cause salvations.”

For a more thorough understanding of Finney’s disastrous influence on the Church Click Here.

For now, let us be instructed and encouraged that “the gospel is the power of God to salvation” (Romans 1:16), not our methods (or manipulations). Just as it was when Peter proclaimed the gospel to Cornelius’s household, God saves His people as the gospel is faithfully proclaimed—even without an altar call!

Two follow-up thoughts: (1) God may save people when altar calls are given, but not because of the altar call. It may even be in spite of an altar call. Salvation is a work of the Holy Spirit as the gospel is proclaimed. (2) One of the biggest problems with altar calls is that so many who have not been saved think they are saved because they responded to an altar call. The resulting false assurance of salvation often inoculates them from paying attention to future gospel presentations because they think they are saved, when in fact they are not!