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Posted on 11/06/2011 4:03:37 PM PST by pastorbillrandles
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:(Matthew 25:41)
We have been discussing the widespread abandonment by evangelicals, of major aspects of the gospel, such as the warning of the fate of the unrepentant wicked . The perdition that Jesus warned about is being downplayed and even denied because it is offensive to modern sensibilities. It is almost as if once again the Serpent is suggesting that “You shall not surely die…”.
The previous article addressed the first of two reasons for this defection from fidelity by evangelicals to God’s revelation of this awful truth, which is the fact that the glory of God is no longer adequately being presented to congregations, through teaching and preaching.
The premise of perdition is that we worship a God who is so high, so Holy, so exalted, and so incomparably “glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders… “, that to sin against him with impunity is to sin against goodness itself. The world doesn’t believe in such a God, nor does the backslidden evangelical church! They have lost the (true) vision of God.
Those who have seen God have no problem believing in Hell. Isaiah called Woe (damnation) upon himself when He saw God, Peter told Jesus to “depart from me for I am a sinful man…”when it was revealed to him who Jesus was. I am told that during the Welsh revival, teenagers fell to their knees at the presence of God, crying out in agony that “Hell would be to good for me!”.
Our modern problem is that that vision of God is rarely if ever being presented in the churches, therefore it is almost impossible to conceive of a perdition such as Jesus and the apostles warned. Therefore a book like Love Wins is inevitable.
This generation of neo-evangelicals, steeped in humanism, and relativism, seems to be saying, ‘Fire and Brimstone? The smoke of their torment arising forever? Weeping and gnashing of teeth? What offense could possibly warrant that kind of suffering forever? Who could be that important and August, that to transgress his rules would warrant that extreme punishment?’
But the Christian gospel is a revelation from heaven, an assertion that there is such an infinitely Holy, and good, and righteous God.
The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’s throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. 5The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. 6Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. 7For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.(Psalm 11:4-7)
Note that the reason for “snares,fire and brimstone and the horrible tempest” which will break out upon the wicked, is that the Righteous LORD loves Righteousness! God loves people, but not to the exclusion of His holy love of Righteousness! That is why He had to make a Righteous way to forgive sinners.
The second reason why they don’t “get” perdition is related to the first. Along side of the defective vision of God which blinds many, there is an almost total incomprehension of the nature of sin, even among evangelicals.
What is sin? It depends on who you ask. If you should ask the man on the street, you would get something like “Sin is that which hurts someone else”. Almost universally this is the answer you would recieve.
Should you stand up before a congregation of evangelicals, and perhaps word it a little differently, perhaps saying something like, “Which of the ten commandments is the worst to break?”, you would get some variety, one would no doubt say, “Thou shalt not murder”, another might say “Thou shalt not committ adultery”, perhaps another would say, ”Thou shalt not bear false witness”, or you would get varieties of the commandments, such as “Rape” or “Genocide”as being the worst possible sins.
But you would almost never get the suggestion that the worst commandment would be the breaking of the first four commandments! These are the ones that deal with man’s duty to God himself. Chances are no one is going to raise their hand and say “Thou Shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain!”, as being more serious then rape and genocide.
The reason for this is because people are almost entirely insensitive to the fact that all sin is really and truly against God himself. We have had a man centered and not a God centered view of sin presented to us in too many sermons, therefore we , like the world around us can only conceive of sin as “hurting other people”, and not what it really is, rebellion against God.
Sin is a rejection of God’s authority, it is treason, an assault on the very throne of God. Sin is actually worse then Hell because it necessitated Hell. Charles Spurgeon said, “Sin is an awful and undying evil”, and the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs had a series of sermons on sin called “the Evil of Evils”. It would always be better to suffer than to sin.
This is why they “don’t get perdition” and why the accommodation is already being made to the Spirit of the Age, to deny the witness of eternity that Jesus himself committed to the church, that there really is a heaven to gain and a Hell to shun, and that the ony possible escape is to flee to the God appointed Saviour, Jesus Christ.
more to come on this subject…
“by evangelicals, of major aspects of the gospel, such as the warning of the fate of the unrepentant wicked”
Absolute nonsense. You’ve clearly never been to an evangelical church in your life if you think that. Where did you gain this unfounded predudice?
Evangelical Christians evangelize for the exact reason that they want to save the flow of souls to hell.
Why do you avoid the word hell in your title?
The use of “They” in your title reminds me of the MSM, who create a faceless amorphous entity to attack in that way.
Hey CMA
“Evangelicals” have a huge adultery problem. And if you have ever read that garbage by Rick Warren you know they are humanistic too.
The Catholics are about the closest and even there is a huge problem.. Nothing is evil anymore.
Sorry, I meant CEM
I looked and looked for a perfect church. One day I found one. I immediately joined it...unfortunately, it was no longer perfect.
I am not castigating all evangelicals, I am one! Evangelicalism is orthodox,biblical christianity, but it is being tempted. I write as a friend.I am only stating the truth that the desease which has ruined the mainstream church has now entered into the world of evangelicalism. BTW I write much on Hell, but Perdition is a perfectly biblical term also.
Is it wrong to use perdition instead of Hell? I am not avoiding anything.I am commenting on a very real phenomenom.
“I am not castigating all evangelicals, I am one! Evangelicalism is orthodox,biblical christianity, but it is being tempted.”
I see. Please excuse my not seeing that. I have seen enough attack threads in my time here that I possibly overreacted to certain cues in your text (”They” etc.).
There’s no question that there are deceivers in the church. Joel Osteen for example had no interest in the church, then when his father died suddenly he wanted to be the pastor. That is a big clue right there. Rick Warren also has problems.
I would tend to characterize the problem as one of certain deceivers who have infiltrated the Church, just as Paul said they would, rather than a problem with “evangelical Christianity”. I would love if we would focus on these deceivers and point out their deceptions. They are often very careful that you can’t pick out their problems from the Bible easily. But you can point out how they focus on certain areas to the detriment of others.
You have outright heresy, like idol-worship or praying to ‘saints’ etc. and then you have problems closer to “the biblical church”, where often the only way to point out their errors is to show their focus on certain areas to the detriment of others.
Like some focus on money too much. Now surely God wants us to prosper even as our sould prospers. Monasticism is itself surely a heresy from Satan who does not want the Church to be a strong influence in this world. But that monastic spirit is still very string in the Church. But then if someone thinks Christianity is nothing but a success formula, they are terribly off the good narrow line also. These things are complicated and unfortunately they don’t translate well to a soundbite-driven age.
I would advise that to reach people with your message (you must teach the hard things not just the easy things - this is a good valid message) - try to include the same content, but avoid directly attacking a certain group, or an implied group like “They”. Ray Comfort teaches a similar message (search ‘hell’s best kept secret’), which pushes a hard message, but at the same time people are not turned away by a (right or wrong) assumption that he is intrinsically biased against some group.
Thanks CEM- I have written three books which address the deceivers by name, but have found that Jeremiah 5:31 is all too true, “My people love to have it so...”, But your caution is god advice, Again, thank you my friend-Pas Bill
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