A Real Hell Fire Sermon — E.A. Johnston

A Plea for Conviction and Salvation

Heavenly Father, I come before you by the blood of your son Jesus, Jesus, my advocate who sits at your right hand, Jesus, my savior, who loved me and gave himself for me. I ask you, great God, to invade the earth and come down here with your manifest presence and by your spirit disturb folks.

False Assurance Among Churchgoers

There are a lot of secure people in your church and you know them to be but tares because they've never been born again. Oh, they can point to a time in their life where they walked an owl for you but they don't know you and more importantly, you don't know them.

I need you to come and work in hearts tonight. I need you to come and take your word and use it as a scalpel to wound and cut deep, make your word a sharp sword that will stab and thrust into a poor sinner's heart and conscience.

Show them the false foundation they're resting upon. Awaken them to their lost condition and strip them of all their self-righteousness. Make your word a hammer and pound out all the pride out of someone here tonight.

Show them in your mercy where they are going, that they are going smack dab into devil's hell. Awake them out of their woeful estate and get them to crying for mercy, mercy, mercy. Only you, Lord, can save a soul.

All I can do as your preacher is to point sinners to your dear son Jesus. You have to do the real work of grace on the heart and bring them to repentance. There may be a pastor here or a deacon here or an elder here or a long-time church member here that is confident that they are saved, but in reality their hope of heaven is nothing more than a hole in the wall.

All they did was drink a little Kool-Aid of the only-believed gospel and they have a paper profession that will only burn up in hell's fire. There's people screaming hell right now who were fooled by the modern gospel of Satan and his false evangelists.

Somebody sitting here is thinking they are secure when they are not. They think they're bound for heaven, but they are really to hell bound. Come through and break through their deception and delusion and deliver them out of the claws of the devil and bring them from darkness to light.

Let them get a good look at your son Jesus. Let them see Calvary and the sacrifice on that bloody cross. Show them a bleeding and dying Christ who has power to save the worst sinner in this town tonight.

I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus, Jesus, who is king of kings and lord of lords. Amen. Well, I don't know friend if you've ever heard a real hellfire sermon before, but if you stick around you're gonna hear one tonight.

The Church's Failure to Warn About Hell

One of the worst crimes done to folks today isn't committed by felons or murderers or thieves, but the biggest crime being carried out today is by the church who went out and hired them a professional pastor to tickle their ears and scratch their bellies and make them laugh.

When men are failed to be warned of hell by a faithful minister, then they are burnt up. The main reason your pastor hasn't preached to you on hell is because he is afraid of you. He's afraid to offend you.

He's afraid to preach a real hellfire sermon to you because he doesn't want to disturb folks. So he just gives you a bottle of your favorite formula that you can swallow and tolerate without any hollering or complaining.

But I didn't come here to soothe your nerves or feed your baby pablum or to put your mind at ease with lies and nonsense. I'm not gonna tell you stale jokes or tell you funny stories to make you laugh and make you like me.

I don't give a hill of beans if you like me or not. The only person I have to please tonight is a risen Christ who sits on a throne at the right hand of the Father and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross.

Regeneration Rather Than Religious Profession

I don't care how long you've been a member of a church or how long it's been since you were baptized, because if you are not the recipient of a work of grace in you by the Holy Spirit who works regeneration on the heart, then you are as lost as a drunkard in a gutter, as lost as a murderer on death row, as lost as a prostitute in a brothel, because all you have to get you into heaven is an empty religious profession and a scrap of paper proving your church membership that'll only burn up in hell with you.

I didn't come here to entertain you, but to warn you. This sermon is a solemn warning to you. It's a warning call about a future judgment and a holy God. It's about a deceptive devil and a burning hell.

It's about man's duty of repentance and his utter necessity of regeneration. I know you look like nice people, but there are really no nice people, because you were born with a ruined nature and a bent toward sin.

Your natural condition is as rotten as a maggot on an old piece of beef. Job says of you, how much more abominable and filthy is man, which drank the iniquity like water? That means you can't get enough of sin, friend.

Even if you are the chairman of the deacons, you aren't satisfied looking at one picture of a naked woman on the internet. You have to drool over a thousand. And the only way a sinner like you is going to get into God's holy heaven is for you to be born from above and washed in the blood.

And the only way for that to occur is for you to get to Christ Jesus for pardon of sin. He is the only remedy and refuge for sin. The good news of the gospel is like Romans declares. But God commended this love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

That means the only way this poor preacher will ever get saved is when Christ's life is laid down and applied to me. I must get under the blood and you, friend, you must get under the blood as well. Much more than being now justified by his blood, we should be saved from wrath through him.

The Deception of Modern Evangelism

I know what it's like to make a public profession of faith and live inside a church membership and serve and give and testify and still be a lost religious person. We live in a day of a demonic gospel that was hatched out of hell by the devil himself.

The devil doesn't mind being religious so long as he can keep his goods in peace. He can give you a false peace and a fuzzy feeling and make you think that's salvation. But this mess we made in the church called modern evangelism that has grown our membership and expanded our campus is only added to the devil's gang of religious rebels who run our denominations and control our seminaries and turn out professionals who Christ never laid eyes on because they are strangers to him.

Because if you're a stranger to him, you will not obey him. And he's coming back soon to clean up the mess we made and I can almost hear his chariot wheels rumbling through the skies for it won't be long until the Lord Jesus should be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flame and fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power.

The Torments of Hell

There was a man in hell and he was suffering something awful. Luke 16 23 talks about him and in hell he lift up his eyes being in torments. This man though he was dead and gone from this earth he still existed in a place called hell.

He still had all his senses. He could smell, he could talk, he could thirst for the next first states and he cried and said, Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I'm tormented in this flame.

This man's tongue was so dry it was about to snap right off. While he was on earth this rich man never was in one or nothing but now he's shut up in hell and all he wants is one drop of water. Hell is a region of misery and burnings.

Those hypocrites who close their eyes in death and this world open them to another world of hellfire and brimstone we get a sense of their shock and dismay from the prophet Isaiah. The sinners in Zion are afraid of fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings.

Hell is not only full of fire it's full of demons Jesus declared in Matthew. 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.

Hell is a region full of darkness. Hell is that dark place Jesus said but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness. There should be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hell is not only full of demons and full of darkness it's a pit full of noise.

It's a bottomless pit where hundreds of millions of the damned cry day and night. Weeping speaks great loss and grief gnashing of teeth signifies great anger and regret. If you were to go to every hospital in your town tonight and take all the patients off their pain medication and you opened up the windows of that hospital there'd be enough hollering and wailing that would keep up your town tonight.

In hell the noise is so loud it's unbearable just to listen to all that non-stop screaming. If you remain in your unconverted condition friend you will surely die in your sins and bust hell wide open as you wake up in those flashing flames of the fierceness of God's wrath on sin.

The Certainty of Coming Judgment

Malachi declares for behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven and all the proud yea and all that do wickedly shall be stubble and the day that cometh shall burn them up saith the Lord of hosts that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

I've been faithful to your soul tonight friend because I have warned you I'm free from your blood on my hands. I'm going to leave you in God's hand and with the pleas of the gospel ringing in your ears I pray God's mercy upon your soul.

The Gospel Call to Repentance and Faith

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found call ye upon him while he is near let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man is thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

Listen friend to the words of the Savior. If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink he that believeth on me as the scripture hath said out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Look that man on the cross friend look that bloodstained Savior from sin hanging there with his arms outstretched beckoning you to come to him and believe on him.

And the spirit and the bride say come and let him that heareth say come and let him that is a thirst come and whosoever will let him take the water of life freely.