Bob Wilkin Disproves Zane Hodges' "Deserted Island Scenario"

I just read a very revealing statement by Bob Wilkin that really surprised me. In a blog post last year, Wilkin said: “I talked with Mike Lii [another promoter of the GES gospel] during a ten-mile walk on Saturday, and he made an interesting point. He said that most hypothetical questions are not based on the questioner’s actual experience. For example, ‘If someone believes in a frog named Jesus for everlasting life, is he born again?’ Well, there is no actual example like that. ‘If someone believes that Jesús, his gardener, guarantees his eternal destiny, is he saved?’ Again, there is no such person.”[1]

Wilkin is dismissing the logical conclusions of his false teaching by saying, in effect, “Well, there are no such examples of anyone believing in the wrong Jesus (e.g. Jesus the frog, or Jesús the gardener) for everlasting life, so my promise-only gospel is okay. People are believing in the right Jesus.” Really? Besides being an argument from silence, that’s like me saying that there are no actual examples of someone who “has never heard about Christianity in his life”[2] being shipwrecked on a deserted island and believing in the promise of John 6:47 without any other information about who that person is or what he did to provide it. Yet according to Zane Hodges and Bob Wilkin, such a person is nonetheless saved! Wilkin doesn’t have a problem with that hypothetical scenario! In fact, he promotes it![3]

 

In other words, using Wilkin’s logic of dismissing any hypothetical scenarios for which there are no actual examples of it happening in real life, he would have to admit that the “strange scenario”[4] presented by Zane Hodges is similarly unpersuasive and wrong! But of course Wilkin would never do this because his entire ministry is built on exactly this premise: that someone “who has never heard about Christianity in his life” (so says Zane Hodges) could in fact find a scrap of paper containing parts of John 6:43 and 6:47, and with no other knowledge about who Jesus actuality is, as long as the person believes the promise of John 6:47, they are therefore saved according to Wilkin. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. And the logical conclusions of Wilkin’s false teaching prove it: because using Wilkin’s logic, if he were consistent, he would have to admit that someone could in fact think that “Jesus” is a frog, or Jesús the Mexican gardener, or even “Jesus who is called Justus” (Col. 4:11), and thus believe in the wrong “Jesus” for eternal life![5] And yet still be saved because they “believed the promise”! This is the tragedy of the promise-only gospel.

 

 

References:

 

[1] Bob Wilkin, “Must Assurance of Salvation Be Based on Jesus’ Promise?” (GES blog, June 8, 2023). Note: Although Wilkin is quoting Mike Lii, it's obvious that Wilkin agrees with both the premise of the statement and the statement itself.

 

[2] Zane Hodges, “How to Lead People to Christ, Part 1: The Content of Our Message,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society (Autumn 2000): 4.

 

[3] Besides the obvious fact that Wilkin promotes virtually everything Hodges taught, see particularly Wilkin’s article titled: “Another Look at the Deserted Island Illustration,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society (Spring 2013): 3-20. In discussing the “STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE ILLUSTRATION” (p. 6ff), Wilkin says: “While I appreciate the concerns of those who disagree, I do not believe these weaknesses are fatal to Hodges’ point, especially when read in the context of the entirety of the two articles. The four strengths of the illustration are much more significant.” (Ibid., p. 7, emphasis added.) Also note that although Wilkin says: “Hodges...explicitly goes on to deny that there is enough information there for a person to believe in Jesus for everlasting life” (p. 6), this is inaccurate. Wilkin here is either being intellectually dishonest or intentionally misleading (or maybe he’s just confused): because Zane Hodges made it clear that in his view, there was enough information there for a person to get saved! In a follow-up article titled “The Spirit of Antichrist: Decoupling Jesus from the Christ,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society (Autumn 2007), Hodges wrote the following under the heading “BACK TO THE DESERTED ISLAND” (p. 41): “Several years ago I created a deserted island scenario that some of you may remember. The man who is marooned on that island gets a fragment of the Gospel of John that has washed up on the beach. That fragment contains the opening words of John 6:43, ‘Jesus therefore answered and said to them’ and everything is unreadable until we reach the words of John 6:47, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.’ My question was, ‘Is that enough information for the man to get saved?’ My answer, of course, was ‘yes.’” (Ibid., p. 41.)

[4] Zane Hodges, “How to Lead People to Christ, Part 1: The Content of Our Message,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society (Autumn 2000): 4.

 

[5] Zane Hodges goes so far as to say: “Everyone who believes in that name [i.e. “Jesus”] for eternal salvation is saved, regardless of the blank spots or the flaws in their theology in other respects. Another way of saying the same thing is this: No one has ever trusted that name and been disappointed.” (Hodges, “How To Lead People to Christ, Part 1” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society [Autumn 2000]: 9, brackets added.) Interestingly, the following testimony was given by a man who attended a GES conference back in the early 2000s. This is what the man said: “A few years ago, I attended a confernce [sic] where Bob Wilkin brought Mr. Hodges marooned man [i.e. deserted island] scenario. I asked him, what if this man thinks Jesus is a frog? Is he saved? The answer was ‘yes’. I guess Kermit Saves. Croak!” (See the comment by pykesplace1 from April 30, 2006, under the blog post by John Malone titled "Zane Hodges goes too far.") For the record, Bob Wilkin denies ever having said this. Yet such a statement is consistent with the GES "gospel".