It's Hard to Stay Out of Hell — E.A. Johnston

The Narrow Gate and the Difficulty of Salvation

Jesus says strive to enter in at the straight gate for many I say unto you will seek to enter in and shall not be able. Oh friends how I wish those words of Christ would sink in your heart and awaken your conscience.

That means it is difficult to get into heaven and it's hard to stay out of hell. By the time I finish this message this evening several hundred souls will drop into the regions of hell never to get out again.

They will be shut up in there screaming and hollering and weeping and gnashing their teeth that they don't belong there because many of them were members of a church. Listen friends we are in the dying stages of Christianity in this nation.

There is a generation that does not know God and most of our young people today don't believe in God much less know him through the new birth. We have brought in the way to salvation in such sad degrees that vital New Testament Christianity is so scarce today you'd have a better chance at finding Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster as you would find in a real born-again believe in church.

Listen friends it's a difficult thing to get to heaven and it's hard to stay out of hell and that's the title of my message tonight friends. It's hard to stay out of hell because we are for the most part a deceived generation of unconverted church members who don't have a clue what saving faith is much less possess it.

The Watered-Down Gospel and Deceived Church Members

I don't get many invitations to preach at big churches anymore at big conferences because they don't like my message. First of all I'm not entertaining enough for them. Secondly I upset too many people with my message and they wouldn't want that.

Thirdly I am an evangelist called of God to preach salvation from sin through Jesus Christ freely given to all who come to Christ and believe on him by repentance and faith and I don't preach an easy believism so most churches wouldn't want me to come in and rock their boat even though it's a sinking ship full of deceived and perishing church members who swallowed a watered-down gospel and made a decision not knowing what the true gospel was or knowing all its rights and claims that it has on a person's life and I preach too much against sin and speak too much about hell for most deacons to stomach me more than about ten minutes before they want to rise up and wring my neck.

Most church members today want as much of the world as they can grab and hold on to and most of the money they can hoard up and spend on their own carnal desires while people perish minute by minute into a place of misery called hell but there comes a time of separating a time of separation for every man as the things that this world fade away when you suddenly leave it and are taken from your friends and family and pushed and thrust out into an eternity you are quite unprepared for and cannot escape from nor alter the destiny of it once you enter into it.

Listen to me friends men count themselves as Christians and pin their hopes heaven on many things which are no more but wood hay and straw for their entire life will be burned up in hell and their Christian testimony was nothing more than a straw man ready for the flames to be reduced to ashes of a deceived life.

Like I said it's a difficult thing to gain entrance into heaven and it's hard to escape the regions of hell. Jesus said strive to enter in at the straight gate. For many I say unto you that's many friends will seek to enter in and will not be able there are untold millions pounding on the doors of hell tonight wanting to escape and they'll never get out of that chamber of horrors filled with smoke and flames and darkness and agony.

The False Gospel and Spiritual Declension

Listen friends the main reason hell fills with a million souls a week is the sad fact that the modern gospel of our day is a false gospel that is promoted at every level in every denomination as the genuine thing but very few men preach the real gospel of the Son of God today and very few are truly converted in this day of a massive spiritual declension in our churches and we live under judgment today friends judgment in the land for a multiplied sins against a holy God.

The sad fact is God has removed himself from among us and few were truly under the sound of the real gospel and consequently few are converted. If we are converted then Christ must have first place in our lives for anything less is not Christianity.

Christ must have priority over our selfish fleshly gratifications. Christ must be preeminent in all we do, all we say, and all we think, and all we are. Christ must figure predominantly in all our waking hours.

Is this not biblical Christianity? Did the early church put themselves first and Christ last? No, they refused to say Caesar is Lord and became human torches that lit up the night for Nero's circus as they laid down their lives for Christ and the sake of the gospel.

Listen friends, salvation is being joined to a living Lord and you cannot walk with a living Lord without living for him. I believe if you are a member of an apostate denomination it can hinder your getting to Christ because of the false gospel they propagate.

False Conversions Through Religious Rituals

We've got to be careful where we go to church. Southern Baptist churches are the worst defenders at making false converts these days. They'll tell you it's easy to be saved. All you got to do is believe on Jesus and accept him as your Savior and walk this aisle and make it public.

Then they'll get you to repeat a prayer and then they'll quiz you on two questions from evangelism explosion and if you answer the questions correctly they'll pat you on the back and tell you that you're now a Christian and there are tens of thousands of individuals within that denomination and within other denominations who have gone through these motions and they just have a profession and their hope of heaven is nothing more than a hole in the wall because they've never been awakened to their lost conviction, never been convicted of their sins and never exercised repentance toward God and parted with their sins.

They are best described by the following verse from Proverbs. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. They are on the broadway of destruction living as unsaved religionists who will fight you if you tell them what the Bible says that it says without holiness no one will see the Lord.

I've had some Baptist deacons get in my face and threaten me with their eyes red hot with anger because I told them except you repent you shall all likewise perish but the reason friends it's so hard to stay out of hell is the glaring fact that we don't know what the gospel is today because we haven't heard it.

Spiritual Famine and Johnston's Awakening

There's a famine in the land and that is of hearing the Word of God and that in itself friends is a great judgment from God upon us. I myself had been in church most of my life and had heard thousands of sermons and remained an unconverted church member.

I was a Sunday school teacher for 15 years and was as lost as everyone else in my class who became a Christian by walking an aisle and repeating a prayer. Nowhere in my Bible does it say that's how you are saved but one day I was wrought upon by the Spirit of God and awakened to my lost condition while reading a sermon from the 18th century preached by Solomon Stoddard.

That sermon was full of the real gospel and God used that to convict me my sins and revealed to me that I not only was not a true Christian but I was deceived and I was resting my hope of heaven on a good opinion of myself and a long track record of service.

The Spirit of God brought such alarm and terror to me that day. Through that sermon I saw myself not only lost and on my way to hell but that I deserved to go there because I was yet dead in trespasses and sins.

God by His grace saved me that day but it came after a full afternoon of hours upon my knees crying out to God in agony and begging Him for mercy to have to have mercy on me. My prayers of anguish reached up to heaven on that hell-deserving sinner which I certainly am and was.

The Inadequacy of Religious Performance

You may be deceived as well friend. Convince yourself that you're a Christian when you're not because the longevity of your profession. It's been going on for many years under the name of Christian and you've been faithful in your church attendance and use that as proof of your salvation and you rest firmly upon your long track record of service as proof of your sincerity and you count the number of times that you've gone on foreign mission trips as a great proof of your salvation and you add all the hours I've spent serving on a deacon committee as proof of your religion.

Perhaps a unconverted pastor will point to his stack of sermons and use that as proof of his salvation or present the growing church role and adding members to the church as proof of his conversion. I preached a bunch of sermons before I was saved friends.

That's no proof of salvation. Some may point to all their evangelistic zeal and all the times they've witnessed for Christ or presented the gospel as proof of their salvation. I handed out tracts and knocked on doors as a lost man for years.

Some may go through the accounting books and add up all the money given to the advancement of the kingdom of God as proof of their genuine conversion but none of these are marks of a genuine believer for the unconverted can go and do likewise and outperform on many accounts through ability and determination but the key to staying out of hell is not in religious duties performed but Jesus said he that doeth the will of my father.

If we are living in opposition to him how can we say we know him? Listen friends there's enough booze being drunk in this town tonight to drown everybody in it. There's enough fornication taking place tonight in this town to bring God's judgment down on the entire nation.

There's enough lying among church members and swearing and covetousness and greed and fulfilling a lust and unforgiveness to rain hell out of heaven on most churches tonight. Listen friends performing some physical motions in response to a pastor's easy-believe invitation does not save you.

Repentance, Faith, and the Necessity of Divine Grace

The only way you can get saved is to get to Christ and you get there by exercising repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. You must be washed in the blood and born from above. Don't be deceived friend by somebody taking you and telling you that you are a Christian.

You don't make yourself a Christian. You can't be talked into being one. Our trouble today is we've taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of man. Only God can give saving faith.

Jesus said no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him and I will raise him up at the last day. Listen to me friends. It's difficult to get into heaven because you must strive to get in there and take it by violence.

Many shall seek to enter in and will not be able and it's even harder to stay out of hell. It is my prayer that Almighty God will send a spiritual awakening to this land and revival to the churches for that is the only hope this sin-loving nation has.

Let us pray.