The Wesleyan Way of Salvation and the Social Gospel, Subtle Works-Religion and Wicked Perfectionism
[Taken from the core belief handbook of the Global Methodist Church]
A deeper understanding of the current problem in the Church is elucidated by understanding Wesleyanism. The very influential "Wesleyan Way of Salvation", a term with great cringe effect on it's very surface, forces a pause before justification (salvation) when the Church - it implies - should behave toward non-Christians as though they will be Christians instead of the way Paul told us to behave toward the World. The Wesleyans first have "prevenient grace", which strongly correlates with Predestination - that God must protect us until we come to believe and confess in accordance with the Scriptures to be saved. But it is "Convincing Grace" that causes all this trouble. Before justification, the Wesleyans believe and push with practice that anti-Scriptural belief that a person repents from their desire to be worldly due to a desire to "flee the wrath to come" and gains from that repentance - without justification yet! - the "fear [of] God and [the desire and ability to] work righteousness". This so-called "Convincing Grace" of God takes elements from justification and sets them before it. This "Convincing Grace" makes both repentance and righteousness possible without Christ (even if for only a short time or even if only theoretically - it does so)! Similarly, glorification is seen by the Wesleyans as an ultimate outcome of sanctification in this lifetime, even though we only have a hope of glorification now, in which hope we look forward to the reception of our transformed bodies, where sin-corruption will no longer affect us. It is not the end of a process of daily foot-washing (because our bodies are already clean, but we wash each other's feet in this sanctification process). Sanctification is a tendency toward righteousness, which is due to our belief in the Resurrection of Christ (Romans 10:9b and 10:10a).
So, we see that the Wesleyan Way of Salvation accepts non-Christians as though they were Christians and also falsely believes someone can be (and by extension has been) perfected in their sin-corrupted body. This combines with and strengthens the current problems of anti-Christianity which take Jesus's death as a mere prerequisite that we need for our practical work of fearing God and working righteousness along our work-filled way through justification to glorification, even though these steps are all called graces. If a person can being to work righteousness before justification, then that concept alone unravels to wicked heresies that undermine the reality of God's involvement. Wildly bloated concepts of human free will overshadow God's free will to predestinate, call and seal us, and our efforts undermine our certainty by setting the basis of our salvation on Christ only as a theoretical prerequisite and not as the actual mover of us through all the stages.
There are two basic stages involved in salvation: desire and knowledge (and if we sincerely believe the knowledge when we get it, we naturally call on Jesus' name for salvation - especially because we are told the knowledge that we must do so - by verbally confessing Master Jesus). God calls, and God sends instruction through the preacher.
In reality, prevenient grace is predestination, and convincing grace is not yet repentance, because we need knowledge of salvation doctrine given in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, which only the preacher whom God sends can supply that seeker, but the seeker can do no righteousness just by seeking God. Justifying grace, sanctifying grace are both accomplished at the same moment - the justification completely and the sanctification beginning in that moment - and glorification or "entire sanctification" won't happen until our bodies are transformed to be like our Master Jesus Christ's glorious body. We are baptized with the Holy Spirit upon justification, when we believe those 4 tenets of salvation (even Paul didn't make this up) and confess with the mouth Master Jesus, calling on His name for salvation.
Also, according to the Scriptures and not our own additions, Jesus is confessed only as "Master" and not as God or Messiah. I say again, according to the actual text, He is not confessed as God or Messiah for justification, even though the Wesleyans include those attributes in their own Way of Salvation. These small points lead to gargantuan problems, including not only the Social Gospel, which is another gospel, but the leaving out of salvation Jehovah's Witnesses, even though they are very poor (in the wrong way) and do not regard Hebrews 1:8 rightly. We must conform to the actual text of the Scriptures - and not the text promoted by Spiritists or translations promoted by greed - which Scriptures do say explicit things about salvation - both belief and action.
Perfectionism is a direction, not a goal, and if we think that literal perfectionism has been achieved, then those are no longer looking forward to the transformation of their bodies or looking with concern on their present condition of faithful reliance on God, which reliance we carry out of necessity and not only out of duty.
Overall, great care must be taken to conform our beliefs and actions of salvation to the Scriptures and to make sure we who preach it preach it rightly. Terrible traps are all around us near-sighted weaklings, and our desperate reliance on God's Word - like a tiny baby clinging to his mother - is necessary for our growth in truth.