What does it really mean to believe in the gospel?
Believing the gospel means totally entrusting your eternal destiny to the Word of God and to the power of the gospel, not merely saying you believe Christ died for you. It is not joining a church, being baptized, taking communion, tithing, or doing good works; those have their rightful place but have nothing to do with salvation.
Les teaches from Romans 1:16 that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. He illustrates this with a dead car battery: when jump cables from a charged battery or a generator connect, outside power flows in and the dead battery has life. The gospel is that generating power. Les emphasizes that salvation is not joining the Church, getting baptized, taking communion, tithing, or doing good works; those things have their place but have nothing to do with salvation. He rejects merely saying, 'Yeah, I believe that Christ died for me.' For him, believing means totally entrusting our eternal destiny to the Word of God, to the power of the gospel.