In order to maintain their 'universal offer of salvation' doctrine, popular religionists have no choice but to deny the doctrine of Total Depravity and to argue that unregenerate sinners are not actually dead in sins. In fact they make little or no distinction between dead sinners and living sinners, for their doctrine implies that a dead sinner can function in the spiritual realm just as efficiently and effectively as a living sinner can. They maintain that a person dead in sins can love Christ enough to "accept Him as their Saviour," feel their need of Him, pray to Him, repent of their sins, or anything else the living sinner can do. But if that be true, what point is there in the new birth? If sinners can do everything before the new birth that they can do after the new birth, what is the difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate? 

    The advocates of popular religion argue that dead sinners can accept Christ as their Saviour before He is their Saviour. In other words, they can accept Christ as their Saviour in order to get Him to become their Saviour. So, in effect they are advocating that sinners can accept a falsehood in order to make it a reality. This is an unworkable theology, because it makes no sense. If a person is not saved until he accepts Christ, then Christ has not saved anyone who has not accepted Him. Therefore He is not the Saviour of those He has not saved. Consequently, if they must accept Him in order for Him to save them, then they must accept Him as their Saviour before He is their Saviour in order that He may become their Saviour. This is a tangled up doctrine that simply cannot be true. 

    According to the Scriptures those who are dead in sins cannot even know or understand the things of the Spirit of God (I Cor. 2:14). They are enmity against God; they are not subject to the law of God, and neither indeed can be. "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (See Rom. 8:7-8). 

    If God did not irresistibly quicken, or give spiritual life to His people "even when" they were dead in sins, then none of them would ever be born again, for in that state of death they would not and could not come to Christ (See John 6:44 & 65). This is both scriptural and reasonable.