The Preacher's Message — E.A. Johnston

The Gospel Diluted for Easier Belief

I believe in many pulpits in our land. We have diluted the gospel message to make it easier for sinful man to swallow. The message of the only-believed gospel has been a damning message to millions for the last 70 years, but back yonder, when the Spirit of God was afoot in the land, and this country was in the midst of revival and great spiritual awakening, and tens of thousands were being saved, the message that was preached in that day, as compared with our day, was as different as night and day.

Ruin, Redemption, Repentance, and Regeneration

Not many are getting saved today, friends, as God is absent from among us, for He ran them off a long time ago by preaching the gospel contrary to the one found in my Bible. God used to bless the preaching of His word when old-time preachers proclaimed the great doctrines of the gospel, which are ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration, that the gospel in those days was preached in its purity and proper order, that a sinner was first shown his need of a remedy for sin before the remedy was offered, and that the first message of the gospel of the Son of God was that God was a God who must punish sin, and if you believed that, you could come along and preach the second message of the gospel about a remedy for sin in the person of the Lord Jesus.

Seminaries and the Full Counsel of God

My message this evening, friends, is entitled, The Preacher's Message, as we are in our series of preaching. I believe most seminaries today don't teach a man how to preach the full counsel of God. I believe I know what I'm talking about, for I have two earned doctorates from two different seminaries, and one is a Ph .D.

You'd be hard-pressed, friends, to graduate seminary today and emerge as a minister of the gospel who knows how to preach the gospel in its full colors of ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration.

The Law, Sin, and the Necessity of Regeneration

I doubt very seriously you will learn in seminary how to thunder the law of God about the ears of your hearers to awaken them to the terrors of their lost condition by preaching up the utter strictness and severity of the law of God, that God requires perfection to get to his heaven, and that all men, when they are held up against the strictness and severity of the law of God, will be found to be guilty lawbreakers and sinners who deserve punishment for sin, for the sentencing of the law must be carried out by a just judge who must punish sin, that man is born with a depraved and ruined nature, with a bent toward sin, and that salvation rests solely in the hands of God and not man, that unless you repent you will surely go to hell, and only those individuals who have experienced a supernatural act of regeneration upon the heart, which is a new birth, will make it into heaven, that Jesus Christ suffered and died as a substitute for sin, and he rose again and now sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross, that to be a Christian means that one must throw down the shotgun of rebellion at the feet of a sovereign and submit to the rule and reign of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and that a crucified Christ must have crucified followers who take up their cross daily in a life of self-denial and discipleship, that to be a Christian means you have been washed in the blood and born from above, now you can put that in your pipe and smoke it, friends, because until we get back to that kind of preaching, and call sin black and hell hot, and that a sinner must exercise repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we will merely continue to make false converts who are baptized and join the church, believe in church membership is salvation.

Returning to the Old Paths

In Jeremiah 6 .16 we read, Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see that I have come, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls, but they said, We will not walk therein, let us pray.