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19. Many Christian pastors, "soul winners" and evangelists are accursed by God because they proclaim a perverted Gospel. "Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we [Paul and all the brethren with him] have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!" (Gal. 1:8-9). Many true Christian pastors, evangelists, and "soul winners" proclaim only part of the true Gospel message, which is a different gospel. They have left out of their gospel message the need to repent to be saved. The true Gospel message can be found in Luke 24:47 when Jesus commissioned the apostles to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. "Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Notice that not only forgiveness of sins, but ALSO repentance would be preached, as the Gospel. The word "repent" or "repentance" in some form is used more than 100 times in the Bible. Telling people that they are sinners and that they can have their sins forgiven is only part of the scriptural evangelistic message. There is no salvation in an unsaved person admitting that he is a sinner. Telling a sinner that he can have his sins forgiven by trusting Christ without telling him of the need for true repentance is not the true Gospel message. Many sinners who are the victims of the easy-believism half-truth message today are made twofold more a child of hell by this lie. Telling a sinner that he is saved by praying that he wants his sins forgiven and will trust Jesus to get him to heaven (the Roman Catholics do that) without telling him of the absolute necessity of repenting of his sins, lets him think he has been saved when there has been no true conversion. Therefore, later, he thinks he doesn't need to be saved. The first message that Jesus preached after He was baptized and spent forty days in the wilderness was "repent and believe the gospel" (Mk. 1:15). When Jesus first sent out the Twelve, "they went out, and preached that men should repent" (Mk. 6:12). Jesus said, "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas" (Mt. 12:41). Jesus told the crowd in Luke 13:3-5, "Unless you repent, you will...perish...unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." In Peter's sermon recorded in Acts 3:19 he said, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." Paul said in Athens, "Having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent" (Acts 17:30). Paul told the Ephesian elders that he "kept back nothing that was profitable" to them, "testifying both to the Jew, and also to the Greeks repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:20-21). When Paul spoke before Agrippa he said, "Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance" (Acts 26:19-20). Paul told the Corinthians, "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death" (2 Cor. 7:10). And Peter wrote that the Lord does not want "anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). True repentance involves turning from everything that you know is sinful. Jesus does not save anyone who refuses to turn away from any known sin in his or her life. The vast majority of so-called Gospel tracts in so-called Christian bookstores and in church buildings contain the easy-believism half-truth being spread today by pastors and other Christians. In most of these tracts there is not one mention of the need for repentance. There is not a single mention of the word "repent" or "repentance" in spite of the fact that the New Testament is replete with the message of the necessity of repentance for salvation. According to God, all those are accursed who are writing and distributing these tracts that leave out the need for repentance for salvation. Jesus said, "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Mt. 7:22-23). |