WHICH GOSPEL?
There are two ‘gospels’ according to the church today. One is found in the life instruction manual that God gave us, and the other is found in the ‘statements of faith’ on church web sites, and the sermons and altar-calls from pulpits. The same preachers who preach this so-called gospel will assure you that the bible is the inerrant, Holy Spirit-inspired word of God. So, they admit that God has given us the truth, but refuse to accept it. Incredible!! In these statements of faith, we usually find such stuff as this: 1] We believe in the one God, and Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit, the comforter, who is given to all believers. 2 ] We believe that Jesus was crucified on Calvary’s Mountain, was buried, and three days later, rose again. 3 ] We believe Jesus shed His blood for the remission of all sin. 4 ] We believe that all who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are born again believers, and will spend eternity in heaven.
Of course, there will always be different statements of faith depending on which denomination you care to look at. The above are what is found in most Protestant, evangelical churches. Let’s take a look at each of those beliefs.
1. Demons believe this as well.
2. Demons believe this as well.
3. Demons also believe this.
4. Demons actually believe that a human being believing that Jesus is his/her Lord, and not ‘doing what is right’ throughout their life, will spend eternity with them. [And they are correct]
If you care to look at this logically, with an open mind and heart, you will agree that all the believing in the world that Jesus is your Lord will NEVER make Him so. For Him to be Lord of your life, you would need to obey everything He ever commanded, instructed, or told you, while He lived as a man on this planet, 2000 years ago. He would control your every thought, word, action, attitude, and emotion. That would mean that your whole life would be just like His was in each of those categories. God’s life instruction manual actually tells us clearly that whoever lives in Christ, as Jesus commanded each of us to do in John fifteen, MUST live the life that He lived.
We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.
Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.
But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus lived. 1 Jn. 2:3-6
There is a verse that evangelicals love to quote as God’s gospel, assuring them that they are definitely on the straight and narrow.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Rom. 10:9
Take a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then count to ten, and look at these words logically, and reasonably. I will assume that you sin, because every pew-warmer and preacher I have spoken to regarding this matter all unashamedly confess to sin, and believe that no human being can live free from sin. Now explain to me how Jesus can be Lord of your life all the while you sin. As you know, that is impossible. So, if you state that He is Lord of your life, you are a liar, and that gets you ‘saved?’ Somehow, I beg to differ.
The most common verse evangelicals quote as God’s gospel is John 3:16. Once, again, if you take those words literally, in English, anyone can be redeemed by simply making some mental assent that Jesus exists. Like numbers one through three above, demons all believe this, and tremble, according to James. So, we must find out what this verse is saying that makes it possible to accept it as logic and truth. So we go to a good concordance, and look up the original Greek word that ‘believe’ has been translated from. It is ‘pisteou’, meaning: have faith, trust, with the implication that actions based on that faith and trust will follow. Hard core evangelicals and Calvinists hate that, because they all believe that salvation is free, and we cannot do anything to deserve it. God simply gives it to us because He is gracious!
Now, I want to be absolutely logical and reasonable here, because it is obvious that millions of folks have been deceived by Satan into believing a lie when it comes to the gospel. The preachers’ gospel has been all about Jesus for 150 years, and pew-warmers have all learned the spiritual jargon about Jesus. Their gospel has really ignored God’s word, and focused on a small number of verses or passages that seem to say something they are not actually saying. To accept God’s word as true, we must study it with all our hearts, questioning everything that looks like it may be a contradiction. Doing so, we will find there are zero contradictions in His word.
To take Jn. 3:16 literally, one must believe that salvation is a free gift to all who make some mental assent to a fact. But once one finds that ‘believe’ is not referring to a mental assent about something but rather an action/conduct/behavior/work etc. one understands that there is more to this verse. James teaches us what that means in the second chapter of his letter, from verse 14 through 26. When we read Romans chapters three through five, we find Paul’s use of ‘pisteou’ being translated to ‘believe’ again. I truly believe that was the reason James wrote what he did in his letter. Peter saw the possibility of misunderstanding with Paul’s teachings as well, and he warned us sincerely about that in 2 Pet. 3:16. If we allow Satan to deceive us with Paul’s words, we do it to our own destruction according to Peter. This is VERY important truth, friends. And if you are not aware of which of Paul’s teaching Peter was referring to, then you are really in danger of executing your own destruction. Serious stuff indeed.
It always grieves me to hear so many pew-warmers spout off all their spiritual jargon about Jesus Christ, and what He did on the cross and when He rose again. They never mention that Jesus commanded us to be perfect just as His father is perfect. Mat. 5:48 They never mention that Jesus assured us that if we sin, we go to hell. Mk. 9:42-47, Jn 8:34-36 They never mention that Jesus told us clearly that it is NOT those who call Him Lord who go to heaven, but only those who ‘do the will of God.’ Mat. 7:21 Those three things are all pretty much the same message. To be perfect, one must be doing God’s will, obviously, and to call Jesus Lord truthfully, means the same thing. So, it’s all about doing something! That sends the old message that one cannot ‘work his way into heaven’ right out the window, huh?
Once one studies God’s life manual from cover to cover, one finds that the common theme all through is: obey God and live, or don’t and don’t. That started in the Garden of Eden, as we all know. And Jesus taught the same truth/gospel when He was here. So, God’s gospel has not changed from creation to now. And just because Jesus died for our sins makes zero difference to that gospel. Jesus simply did away, permanently, with our need to sacrifice some animal at a temple somewhere. Now, when we repent, our sins are all forgiven. Repentance is a one-time event, and can only be possible when one is full of deep and painful remorse, godly sorrow, and personal grief, mourning, and tears because we truly understand that we have caused God grief. Js. 4:8-9 The OT men of God understood this when they sat on dung heaps, dressed in sack-cloth, and threw ashes over their bodies, refusing to eat for days on end. Today, pew-warmers and preachers have zero shame for sin. The opposite to how those men lived back then.
God’s gospel, as I stated above, is to obey Him. A typical example of how this works is when He gave His chosen people the ten commandments. He told them very clearly that if they obeyed, they would live and if they disobeyed, they would suffer horrendous consequences, even to death. Studying the history of the Jews through the Old Testament shows one clearly that death was the result of disobedience. It is beyond dispute that it is the righteous who go to heaven. This is another serious fault with modern evangelical teaching. Most of them truly believe that all who ‘believe’ in Jesus are automatically made righteous. There’s that misunderstanding about the meaning of that pesky word ‘believe’ again. But, as we saw, the word is actually telling us that we must do something. And as we read through scripture, we find that truth over and over again. God assures us that He declares those who ‘do what is right,’ righteous.
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? Rom. 6:16
"I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right." Acts. 10:34-35
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Gen. 4:7
For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. Rom. 2:13
Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. Rom. 10:4 [remember what ‘believe’ means]
If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. 1 Jn. 2:29
Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous 1 Jn 3:7
God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”
To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life. Rom. 2:6-7
I know that it is a big ask to expect you to reject what you have been taught for years, and believe something totally opposite, but unless you do, you will spend eternity in close proximity to Satan and his hordes of demons. God’s life instruction manual clearly teaches us that we have to do something to inherit eternal life. When an expert in the law asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asked, ‘what does the law say?’ The lawyer quoted the first commandment, and Jesus told him that he had answered correctly, and added, ‘go and do likewise, and you will live.’ God’s word is not hard to understand. The only thing that confuses folks is the false gospel that has been taught for over a century, firmly establishing a common belief in hearts that it’s just a ‘mind game.’ Just believe in, or have faith in, or accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. That is nothing but semantics, and a very close cousin to voodooism or hypnosis.