Mark of the Unconverted — E.A. Johnston

Be strong, is always the same, be strong. I want to thank you brother for that encouraging word and song to the converted here today.

The Need for Genuine Conversion

As it precedes my disturbing message to the unconverted. I believe we will live in a day friends where very few are being saved because of a watered down, diluted gospel and the withdrawn presence of God in the churches of the land.

How can one be saved if they aren't exposed to the real gospel of the cross of the son of God? How can they be saved if they become Christians through a decision or a mere physical response to an emotional appeal?

How can they be saved if they claim to be a Christian yet still live like the devil? How can they be saved if they've never had a work of grace upon the heart? How can they be saved if they've never experienced God?

How can they be saved if they've never exercised repentance toward God or experienced regeneration from God? How can they be saved if they don't have the life of God in the soul of man? But there is hope.

Salvation as a Supernatural Work of God

Jesus came down here so we can go up there. Jesus is your only hope friend. When Jesus was here in his earthly ministry, as he passed through towns and villages, those who encountered him experienced change.

Let me ask you friend, have you experienced change? Have you just made a decision or have you been changed by the spirit of God through the supernatural act of regeneration? You may read the gospels or hear a sermon about Jesus, but still have no saving knowledge of Christ.

If you are saved, it's because God gave you saving faith. You get saved by receiving a revealed Christ when you have an experience of him. You can watch a golf match of Pebble Beach on TV, but you won't know the exhilaration of standing on the tee box of the iconic Par 3 7th hole staring down at that tiny green until the wind from the Pacific Ocean is hitting your face.

Listen friend, knowing about God and knowing God are as different as night and day. When I was on the operating table having open heart surgery, my surgeon had to use a bone cutter called a sternal saw so he could split my breast bone, open my rib cage and pull out my heart.

Having heart surgery is a learned procedure by a highly trained specialist. Unfortunately today, modern evangelism has taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of man. We tell men to open their heart to accept Jesus, which is as impossible as me trying to conduct my own open heart surgery.

I physically can't do it and live. I can't open your heart friend. I can't open your heart with a crowbar or a bone cutter. Nobody can. You cannot open your heart to God because God is the only one who has the supernatural power to open a sinner's heart and change it.

The Danger of False Conversions

That's why modern evangelism and an only believed gospel is damning millions of people by telling them they are saved when they are still as lost as a goose in a snow storm. I have preached the full counsel of God with fervency and passion and I stir folks, but only God can disturb folks and awaken them to their lost condition by his spirit.

We live in a day of such spiritual declension in the church that we tell folks, God has done his part, now it's up to you to do your part and believe, and that's a lie from the pit of a smoking hell. All we do is make false converts and deceive folks, get them to join our church so they can start giving.

It's no better than a pyramid scheme, but a religious one. Listen friends, I'm going to be honest with your soul today because I don't want you to go to hell. Hell is a terrible crowded place of darkness, noise, and unending torment like we see in the south.

I'm going to give you the oil straight from the can because I preach an unvarnished, undiluted gospel and today it's time to shell the corn down and talk about why many of you within the sound of my voice are probably going to hell even if you are the chairman of the deacons.

Excuse me for a few moments friends, I'm getting a little out of position here, I need to pray to my master because I need help from above or I'm just wasting your time here today. Give me a couple moments please.

Oh, Lord God of heaven, heaven and earth, the great and terrible God, you are a big God who does big things. Your arm is not too short to save. You can save the biggest sinner in this crowd today, but only you can open hearts and minds for salvation is of the Lord.

Oh great King, anoint me now I pray, Lord, with that spirit and attend the reading of your holy word and come by your spirit and disturb folks, disturb the self-satisfied, disturb the self-reliant, the self-righteous, those relying on their good works and a good opinion of themselves to try and sneak past you to get into your heaven.

In this entire congregation today, Lord, there may be only a handful who are truly born for above and washed in the blood. Most everybody else may just be baptized, deceived and sitting on a rotten foundation of a false profession.

Take your word, I pray, like a sledgehammer and bust up and smash all false foundations here and run men and women and boys and girls out from every false refuge of a bogus faith. I pray these dear people here today see Jesus, oh great God, reveal your son, oh great God, reveal a crucified Christ to them I pray in the strong name of Jesus, amen.

Judgment, Baptism, and the Two Destinies

Well thank you friends, I want to get back to my message now. All I can do as a preacher is to warn you of your great danger of dying in your sins. Regardless if you're baptized or not, baptism doesn't save you.

There's nothing in the water but H20. Only the redeeming blood of Christ can cover transgressions, cover forgiveness of sin. It's my responsibility as a God-called preacher to preach what others will not, to preach to you the full counsel of God which comprises room, redemption, repentance and regeneration and to faithfully warn you of a future judgment that awaits all mankind and if your name is not found written in the book of life you surely will be bound hand and foot and strong angels will carry you and cast you kicking and screaming into the very lake of fire for my Bible says but the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest whose waters cast up mire and dirt there is no peace saith my God to the wicked.

Listen friends, all I can do is warn you and then point you to a blood-stained Savior who can wash your crimson sins as white as snow. Do you believe that? With that in mind, there are only two types of people in the world.

I'm not talking about rich and poor or even religious or non-religious. I'm talking about those who are either saved or lost. If you're lost, wouldn't you want to know about it? Wouldn't you want to know now instead of it being too late as in Isaiah about the terrible self-discovery of the hypocrite in hell?

The Mark of the Unconverted

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 the everlasting burnings. Oh, that would be terrible friend to be on your deathbed with the false assurance that you're saved and going to heaven when the stark bare bones reality is you've never been saved at all and you already have one leg in hell.

You're either saved or lost at this very moment. I'm talking about God's perspective, not yours because the heart is very deceitful and there are many ways where you can be self-deceived and go down wrong paths.

Many are self-deluded religious but lost individuals. Listen, you're either a godly person or an ungodly person. With God's help, I'm going to describe a mark of the unconverted today. When Antichrist comes, and listen to me, the spirit of Antichrist is already in the land.

The days are getting pretty dark, friends, but when Antichrist comes, he will offer you his mark so you can buy and sell and if you take the mark of the beast, it's a mark of damnation for sure, but before he rears his ugly head, there's a mark of the unconverted that's hard to miss if you're honest with yourself.

If you're willing to be honest with your soul, I want you to pay attention to me today, friends. I didn't come here to entertain you. I didn't come here to tell you funny stories and to ingratiate myself to you.

I don't care what you think about me personally. I do care what Jesus thinks about me. I didn't come here to comb your hair and still let you go to hell. I came here to warn you of your duty of repentance.

You got to have your duty of repentance, friends. You must be born again, friends. I pray that God opens your heart and mind to see these truths, but you have to get serious with him, so get the wax out of your ears.

A Course of Sin Reveals an Unconverted Life

A mark of the unconverted, hear me now, a mark of the unconverted is the course of their life. Listen, some men fall into sin and are afterwards sorry for it, like King Saul. Who saw he acted foolishly, incontinently trying to kill David?

He would be sorry, shed some tears, but when the temptation came, he was just as bad as before. Like a dead fish carried down a stream, he was sorry again and kept on sinning again and kept repeating, but never forsaken that sin.

Jonathan talked to Saul and he listened. Saul hearkened to Jonathan and Saul swore, as the Lord liveth, he shall not be slain. And soon after, he was chasing and persecuting David again. A javelin would fly by David's ear and stick to the wall, but when David saved his life, he wept and made confession.

Saul lifted up his voice and wept, but getting an invitation from the Zip Bites, he went to pursuing David, hot and heavy again, and David spares Saul's life a second time, and we hear Saul's confession and promise.

Then said Saul, I have sinned, return my son David, for I will no more do the harm. I have played the fool and erred exceedingly. Finally, Saul ended up going to the devil with the witch at Endor. Listen, you can't trust people like that, who keep breaking their promises over and over again.

I wonder how God feels when a person who claims to be a Christian lives in a way of sin. I want you to read with me, friends, a paragraph from a sermon by Jonathan Edwards' grandfather, Solomon Stoddard.

He was the pastor of the church at Northampton, Massachusetts for 60 years, and he was known as the St. Peter of Massachusetts. I can't describe this glaring mark of the unconverted any better than he can, so I'm going to use his language.

Solomon Stoddard on Persistent Sin and Hypocrisy

Please listen to him for a little while. It may change your eternal destiny forever. Listen. Awakening to those who live in a course of sin, some make pretenses to godliness, whereby they not only deceive others, but which is a great deal worse, they deceive themselves also.

But this will condemn them, that they live in a course of sin, and such must go with ungodly men. Psalm 125 .5 states,. As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord will lead them forth with the workers of iniquity.

If there is a great change in a man's carriage, and he is reformed in several particulars, yet if there is one evil way, the man is an ungodly man. If he does choice service in the church of God, yet he is an ungodly man.

When there is piety, there is universal obedience. A man may have great infirmities, yet be a godly man. So it was with Lot and David and Peter. But if he lives in a way of sin, he does not render his godliness only suspicious, but it is full evidence against him.

Men who are godly have respect to all God's commandments. If a man lives in one evil way, he is not subject to God's authority. But he then lives in rebellion, and that will take off all his pleas, and at once cut off all his pretenses, and he will be condemned in the day of judgment.

Depart from me, all ye that work iniquity. One way of sin is exception enough against a man's salvation. Even if a man lives in small sins, that shows he has no love to God, no sincere care to please and honor God.

A small bullet may kill a man, as well as a cannonball. Little sins are of a damning nature, as well as great. If they do not deserve as much punishment as greater, yet they do deserve damnation. There is contempt of God in small sins.

There is much rebellion in little sins. For Proverbs 19 .16 declares, He that keepeth a commandment keepeth his own soul, but he that despises his ways shall die. I will stop there, friends. Well, I hope those words may have awakened some of you, awakened you by that great divine and sunk into your thick skulls.

Christ's Faithfulness and the Call to Surrender

One of the clearest ways to distinguish sincerity and hypocrisy is by those who live in a course of sin. Look, friend, I can't save you. Only Jesus can. But I can point you to Him, and that's what I'm going to do now.

Jesus is the pearl of great price. He is of inestimable value. He's worth selling off for and losing off for so He may be gained. I came to Christ in a revival meeting in Chicago in 1967, and I've seen a lot of changes in society and in the church since then.

But I can say this one thing, friend, one thing. hasn't changed. Jesus has never let me down or never let me go, and He will be with me to the end because Jesus is a faithful friend. I don't know if God has moved on your heart through this message or not.

Only you know that for sure. But I do know that if you get serious with God, He will get serious with you. If you seek Him with all your heart, God wants all of you, friend, not just a part. He wants a full surrender.

I think the worst insult to a holy Christ is to say with your lips, you're a follower of His, and then have your daily living deny Him. Jesus isn't waiting for you to get better, to come to Him. He's waiting for you to come, to come as you are so He can make you better.

Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Come to Jesus, friend, just as you are, just as you is. In John 14, 6, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Here, Jesus answers the three greatest questions of the human heart.

How can I be saved? Jesus said, I am the way. How can I be sure? Jesus said, I am the truth. How can I be satisfied? Jesus said, I am the life. And in John 6, 35, Jesus declared, I am the bread of life.

He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Listen, friend, the gospel is for the hungry, the weary, and the thirsty. Let me ask you, friend, are you hungry for God?

Are you sick and tired of your filthy sins? Are you thirsty for Christ? Christ is the bread of life. He invites poor sinners to come to Him and believe on Him. The duty required is to come, and He's got a pure gospel promise to all who come.

And Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Oh, friend, settle it today while He is near. Oh, let us pray.