Regeneration Or Damnation

Did you know, friend, that you can be religious and lost? You can be a church member and still be in an unconverted state. If you're not converted, you are not pardoned, Jesus said, except you be converted and become as little children you should not enter into the kingdom of heaven. If you are not converted, you are an unregenerate person and still in your natural condition.

If you are not converted, you will perish forever and will be damned, Jesus said, except a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. An unregenerate person in his natural condition is born a child of wrath, and if you continue in your natural state, you will remain under the wrath of God.

An unconverted man stands on slippery ground because a natural condition is a very sinful condition. The prophet Jeremiah warns, wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness. They shall be driven on and fall therein, for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

An unconverted man is an ungodly man whose nature is quite corrupted. God's word in Job declares, how much more abominable and filthy is man which drinketh iniquity like water. That means man in his unregenerate condition can't get enough of sin.

He drinks it like water and his lust is never satisfied. An unconverted man is an unregenerate man who is a stranger to a work of grace upon the heart through the supernatural act of regeneration. And because your nature is corrupted, you are a servant of Satan and live in a way of rebellion against a holy God.

You are ignorant of your great danger of dying in your lost state, for you stand under the condemnation of a thrice holy God. All unregenerate men are vile in the eyes of God. God looks on them as filthy and abominable.

Psalm 711 says, God is angry with the wicked every day. Every day you breathe God's air. You go about not realizing your great danger because of your opposition to God.

Romans declares the natural mind is enmity against God. If you are a religious person who attends church regularly, it matters little if you are yet an unregenerate person. If you are not truly born again, then you are yet in your sins and among the millions of the hell bound.

If you are the chairman of the deacons and yet are a stranger to a work of grace on the heart, you will bust hell wide open when you die. An unregenerate man is a man who has never been born again by God's spirit. He's made a decision for Jesus, but Jesus is a stranger to him.

And worse, he is a stranger to Jesus. He lumps himself in that huge, awful crowd who on that day, Jesus will declare, I never knew you away from me. You work iniquity.

A man may be very religious in his duties and be zealous against the sins of others like drunkenness and adultery, but his being religious doesn't give him saving knowledge of Christ. Without regeneration, there is no turning to God for Jesus declares, no man can come to me except the father which has sent me draw him. Without regeneration, there is no work of grace upon the heart and it remains a heart of stone.

Without regeneration, there is no hope of heaven. You must be born again. Without regeneration, there's no pardon for sin because there's no repentance or faith.

Without regeneration, your hope of heaven is nothing more than a hole in the wall. Regeneration is indispensable because damnation is intolerable. Who can bear it? Isaiah speaks of the unbearable torments in hell.

The sinners in Zion are afraid. Fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings. A dying time will come to you, friend, that you cannot escape.

Death may suddenly snatch you out of this world into another world you were quite unprepared for. In Ecclesiastes, we read about the brevity and uncertainty of life. For man also knoweth not his time as the fishes are taken in an evil net and as the birds that are caught in the snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them.

Damnation in hell is heeded by the fires of God's wrath on sin. Can you really think of your friends and family enduring the fires of hell and you somehow escape those same torments of that damnation? One hour in hell will feel like a lifetime, yet its sufferings are endless. Whatever you fear the most will be your constant companion in hell.

Whatever comfort you cherish most will be taken from you forever. The damned in hell cry night and day, and there is no rest from their torments. Hell is a place of unrest.

Isaiah speaks the unrest in hell. But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

The damned in hell rise and fall on the crest of those burning and churning waves of the lake of fire. Hell is in continual motion, constantly crackling with fire and the brimstone from the wrath of a thrice holy God who hates all sin and who will and must punish sin. Listen to me, friends.

Hell is a place of horror. Hell is filled with demons who will tear at you unmercifully in hell. Hell is your worst nightmare come true, and you are trapped there in that worst nightmare.

Whatever you are afraid of most in life will consume you in eternity in hell. Hell is a bottomless pit crowded with hordes and hordes of millions and millions of tortured souls from every generation that ever lived. The refuse of every generation is there.

The serial killers, the sociopaths, the child molesters, they are there. They will torture you in hell. The antediluvians who drowned in the flood scream relentlessly in hell and have been doing so for eons.

The filthy sodomites who were burned to a crisp when God rained hell out of Sodom will be your next closest neighbor. The noise in hell is unbearable. The cries of the damned non-stop and deafening.

Hell is also a place of darkness so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face. There's no light in hell. Jesus describes it as outer darkness.

If you're afraid of the dark, friend, you will suffer horribly in hell. Hell is a place of intolerable heat. It's so hot there, so intensely hot and insufferable you can't breathe.

You can't catch your breath. Every breath you take in hell is a gasp. Your trouble is no preacher has ever faithfully warned you about the dangers of hell and the dangers of damnation.

Rather, they soothe your conscience with heresy and a diluted gospel full of half-truths. But when you die in an unconverted state, you will tumble end upon end down into that bottomless pit of a smoking pit of hell full of misery and woe. Now perhaps you can see the necessity of regeneration that it is indispensable that a man must be converted or end up in hell.

Listen to the scriptures that speak of the necessity of conversion. In the gospels, Jesus preached much on the necessity of being converted. He warned in Matthew 18.3, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

James warns in his epistle, he that converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death. Acts 3.19 declares repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out. And again in Acts 26.18, we see the urgent call to conversion to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them that are converted.

But though we see the other necessity of conversion, we also see the difficulty of conversion. The pastor who told you just to accept Jesus for a free ticket to heaven sold you a bill of goods friend that won't cut the mustard on judgment day, let alone keep you out of hell. There is much difficulty in the way of conversion.

Jesus himself spoke of this difficulty. Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life and few there be that find it. Jesus says that men should labor after it, strive to enter in at the straight gate.

And there are abundant difficulties in the way so that unless a person labors to get there, you'll never get in. Many take the wrong paths. They take the path of religion.

They mistake church membership for conversion. They take the wrong path of good works and a wrong view of God that God will never send anyone to hell because he's too nice to do that. But he will send you to hell.

If you die outside of Christ's cleansing blood and dine your sins, men's pride gets in the way of their conversion. Their own self-righteousness fools them and sends them to hell. There's great difficulty in the way of regeneration and conversion.

Man cannot change the hard heart. Only God can save sinners. Salvation is not in the hands of men but only in the hands of God.

We must ask ourselves, friends, an honest question. Are men saved as a result of a decision they make or as the result of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit? Modern evangelism has sent multitudes to hell where they suffer intolerable damnation. It's either regeneration or damnation.

How is it with you, friend? Jesus declared, fairly, fairly, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Listen to me, friend. No matter what you've been told, no matter what you've been led to believe, good people don't go to heaven, only forgiven people get to go there.

You are either a lost, unregenerate, unconverted individual who is hell-bound or you are converted and regenerate and born again because you've been born from above and washed in the blood. Get to Christ, friend, for forgiveness of sin before it's too late. If you were outside of Christ, when you die, you're going to go to hell.

If you're outside of Christ now, you are in a perilous position. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.