Don Wildmon
AFA/AFR founder
February 2007 – The following excerpts are from the book Horns and Halos by Dr. J. Wallace Hamilton published in 1954.
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There is a very old story about a church that needed new hymnbooks. A patent medicine company very generously offered to print the new hymnbooks in return for the privilege of putting their advertising in them. But instead of placing the advertisements in the back page or even on the front page, they mixed it up through the hymns. So that on Christmas morning when the books were presented, the pastor stood up and read the first verse of the first hymn:
Hark! The herald angels sing,
Beecham’s pills are just the thing;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
Two for man and one for child.
That is a pretty silly story, but something like that has really happened to the good news of God as it has come down through the years. The clear truth of it has become badly mixed up with the thing it started out to conquer. When you look at the historical expression of Christianity across the years and across the lands, salvation for multitudes of people called Christian has come to be little more than a craving for protection, a device to insure safety from hell and the punishment of sin without saving them from sin.
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We have inherited, and still hold in our minds, certain mechanical theories of the atoning work of Christ that give altogether too much encouragement to those who want the benefits of the Cross without the battle, who want safety without spirituality, who look to God to change their legal relationship without changing them.
We all have listened to some evangelist speaking on the text, “What Must I Do To Be Saved?” And before he got far, we knew that what he really was asking was, “What Must I Do To Be Safe?” There is a difference there.
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What did Christ come to do?
Certainly, He did not come to bring safety. Nowhere do you hear Him say, “Follow me and you will be safe.” He said, “Follow me and you will get a cross.” He did not come primarily to save us from the consequence of sin. He came to save His people from their sins – that is, to cure the evil in our hearts, to make us different. He didn’t come to get us into heaven. He came to get heaven into us. 
