Dolly Parton Had an Experience. She never had a Conversion.

The world has spent this week deciding what to do with Dolly Parton's soul. Half of them have preached her straight into glory because she was kind, generous, and never said a cross word about anybody. The other half have already signed her death certificate for hell because of Playboy covers and a movie about a whorehouse. Both crowds are doing something the Bible never gives us the authority to do.

But listen to her own words about the day she says she found God. An old abandoned church. Broken windows. Filthy pictures on the wall. A busted piano. And in the middle of all that, she says peace fell over her, and she felt like she'd found God.

Here's what troubles me. She never once said she saw herself as a sinner standing before a holy God. Christ crucified never came up. Repentance never came up. She felt a presence, and she called it salvation. That's not conversion. That's an experience she never tested against Scripture.

And before we shake our heads at Dolly, we better look in the mirror. How many church members today build their whole assurance on a feeling they had one time at an altar, and never once let the Word examine whether that feeling was ever repentance at all? A feeling is not faith. Faith rests on the finished work of Christ, not on a memory of peace in a broken-down building.

Test yourself. Not her. You.

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." — 2 Corinthians 13:5

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/