True to Your Soul

I look around at the condition of the church in these final days before the Lord's return. And I've got a tremendous burden on my heart tonight, friends, over all the souls on this earth tonight who are perishing into hell. The church is fast asleep on pillows of conformity and compromise.

Old time preachers used to preach that sin is black and hell is hot, and you must repent or be sent to a devil's hell. And they preached Christ and him crucified, and a bloody cross on which he died, and that you must get under the blood, friend, if you want any hope of heaven. But it's hard to hear the real gospel today, and the sad fact is, in this day of spiritual declension and apostasy, there is no fear of God anymore in the land, nor in the church.

The great God of the Bible, Almighty God, has been shrunken down to man's level, and salvation has been taken out of the hands of God and placed in the hands of man. The gospel is a no-gospel with no saving power, for we have diluted it of all its teeth by removing the necessity of repentance and the need for regeneration, that a sinner cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he's been washed in the blood and born from above, and takes up his cross as he follows a crucified Savior in a life of discipleship. I believe most church members could not explain the gospel to a soul.

They don't know what salvation is, but very few have experienced the inward change through the new birth. Very few are savingly united to a living Lord. Somebody back yonder told them they were saved.

Somebody patted them on the back and took their hand and told them they were now a Christian. But I fear, friends, and I really believe, that 98% of all baptized church folk are lost and dead in their sins, and that includes Baptists. I believe many evangelists today are as lost as the hearers.

I believe our denominational seminaries are full of the unconverted, both sitting in the classroom and in the professor's chair. I believe the majority of pastors today fall into the category of the blind leading the blind. That's how bad things are today, friends.

You go look around yourself. Go try and find a Bible-believing church where the truth is really taught with the anointing of the Spirit of God. I believe the gospel is mainly taught.

I say taught because there's mostly teachers standing behind pulpits today and not preachers, and the gospel they teach will surely hold you fast in your sins. Give you a false assurance and send you straight to hell. Most of the church folk I have known over the last 50 years are either in hell or on their way there.

Now, this is a serious issue, and many of you listening to me now, smiling, think this message is for somebody else, but this message may be for you, friend. Perhaps you are sitting upon a rotten plankboard of an anti-religious profession, and you hide beneath the cloak of a false profession, believing yourself to be a genuine Christian, but you've never been able to live like one. You are full of the world and enslaved to your lusts, and when you are alone, you enjoy your sins.

The Lordship of Jesus Christ is a yoke you do not want. You want your freedom to sin when you want to, and sin all you want to. Deep down, you hate all authority, and you hate the holiness of God.

You have no assurance because you've never been saved, because a person who is truly saved knows when they were saved and what they were saved from. Sometime back yonder, you did what the minister asked you to do, and you responded to an invitation, and you walked an aisle and said a prayer, and you joined the church, and you were baptized, believing that church membership was salvation. You were always learning and never attaining.

You are the same person in your skin now as you were before you took the name Christian. You say with your lips how much you love Jesus. You pray to Jesus.

You sing to Jesus. You give to Jesus. You even hand out tracts and tell folks about Jesus.

But if you died right now and were allowed inside the gates of heaven, it breaks me up to say this. You wouldn't be able to pick Jesus out in the crowd because you do not know him. You wouldn't recognize him, and he surely does not know you.

You have never been awakened to your lost condition and convicted of your sins. Only God can open your eyes and reveal your true condition and awaken you to your great danger and alarm you to your perilous position outside of Christ, and he does this when you come under Holy Spirit conviction, without which no one can be saved. If you miss Holy Spirit conviction, you miss repentance.

If you miss repentance, you miss faith. If you miss faith, you miss the new birth. And if you miss the new birth, you miss Christ.

And if you miss Christ, friend, you miss heaven and its rewards, and you were doomed and damned to devil's hell. Now that's the truth, friend. Jesus Christ hung on a bloody cross to save lost sinners from their sins.

You have never seen yourself as a lost sinner, but Jesus only saves lost sinners, those that are conscious of their lost condition. A man in the woods who was lost won't admit it until he can't find his way out and it's getting late, and he finally admits he's lost, and if he gets out of those woods, it's because someone comes along and helps him get out. You must feel your need of a remedy for sin before the remedy can be applied.

You must take your place at the feet of a sovereign as a lost sinner and come to God as a lost empty-handed beggar seeking bread, that you're not only on your way to hell, but that you deserve to go there, and that a holy God would be just to send you to that place of torment which you deserve, that you are nothing more than a rebel who has committed treason against the crown, and you deserve death, why, you must throw down your shotgun of rebellion at the foot of a sovereign, the only one that can help you, the only one that can save you is the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save that which was lost. I believe the devil has given many in our churches today a vision, a feeling, a voice, a light, as he poses as an angel of light and speaks a false peace to them, which holds them in his grip and hordens them in their sins. He keeps his house and his goods in a false peace of an empty religious profession.

Jesus Christ said, unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish, and that means you, friend, even if you are the chairman of the deacons. Jesus Christ declared, marvel not that I say unto you, ye must be born again. If you've never experienced a new birth, friend, then you are still dead in your sins and living in the kingdom of darkness, even though you sit in your favorite pew at church each Sunday.

This message I'm bringing to you is an unpopular message, and it's an uncomfortable one to deliver, friends, because many of you don't want to hear it, because you've gotten out your pocket knives and have whittled out for yourself a God you can live with, and one who will not get in the way of your daily living. Why, you don't believe God will send anyone to hell, because you believe they send themselves to hell, but the God of the Bible must punish sin. Every stroke of the hammer that nailed the hands and feet of the blessed Savior to that bloody cross were explanation points from the heart of God declaring, God must punish sin.

God must punish sin. God must punish sin. And if the Holy Spirit is brought you under conviction during this message, then you are an awakened sinner, and you have a need for a Savior from sin in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Sell all you have, friend, to seek the pearl of great price. Become a seeker of mercy. If God saves you, friend, it's because he gave you saving faith.

Look to Jesus, the only one who can save you, Christ is salvation. In John 14, 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

And in John 6, 35, Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Listen, friend, the gospel is for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty.

Let me ask you, friend, are you hungry for God? Are you weary of your sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? Then come to Christ, and believe on him, and own him as your Lord. Jesus has a pure gospel promise to all who come, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Listen to me, dear friend, if you miss Christ, you will die in your sins, and suffer the torments of the damned in hell, while they're screaming right now.

I didn't preach this message for your approval. It makes no difference to me what you think of the preacher, but I've preached my heart out to you this evening in concern over your lost condition, and I have been true to your soul, and my hands are free of your blood at the judgment. It's Christ, or hell, friend.

Turn from your sins, and exercise repentance toward God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ before it's too late. Let us pray.