10 000 Ways to Hell — E.A. Johnston

A Prayer for Conviction and Repentance

Great God, I come unto you by the blood of your dear son, Jesus. I beseech you, O Lord, to hear my prayer and come and move in the heart of some poor lost sinner here. I can't get men lost. Only you can do that.

Only you can attend the preaching of your word by your spirit and come and disturb folks. Disturb some secure sinner here who is resting upon a false foundation of an empty religious profession. Awaken and alarm them to the great danger of dying in their sins outside the blood of Christ Jesus.

Take some sinner here by the hand and lead them to the very brink of eternity and show them that dark void of that bottomless pit before they topple over into it. Open their ears to hear your voice as it comes to them in majesty and authority.

Come, Lord Jesus, in your pungent presence. Hear and disturb the lost church member who never made you Lord of their life. Let them see Calvary and behold the bloodstained Savior from sin. I ask you to extend your grace to some sinner here tonight and let them see hell and let them see hellfire flash upon their soul and see the demons reaching up to grab them and pull them down to devil's hell.

You came to seek and to save that which was lost. Get a secure sinner here lost tonight so they can feel their need of you and believe on you by saving faith. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen. Well, we live in a time, friends, in America, where we don't have any big evangelists. Gone are the days of a Finney. Gone are the days of a Moody or a Sam Jones. Sam Jones, the evangelist, did more good in his generation than all of us put together.

The Evangelistic Legacy of Sam Jones

When Sam Jones died, it shook the entire nation as he had shook it when he was alive. Memorial services were held all over the country and in Atlanta. They laid his body in the rotunda of the Capitol, where 30 ,000 people streamed by his casket to look on him and pay their final respects.

Wilbur Chapman said of Sam Jones, I first heard him almost 20 years ago, and I can still repeat the outline, and I can still remember the sermon and what he said as if it were preached yesterday. Sam Jones faced fierce persecution for preaching hard against sin.

When I went to his home in Cortisville, Georgia, I found an old poster of him hanging on the wall in the main room there, advertising one of his meetings, and someone had scrawled on it in capital letters, Hang Him.

Sam Jones was at a railroad depot when a man approached him and asked if he was Sam Jones. When Jones replied that, that's my given name, the man took his cane and began beating him about the face. Sam Jones preached hard against liquor and liquor laws.

He paved the way for prohibition in this country more than any other man other than Billy Sunday. Sam Jones preached repentance and the lordship of Jesus Christ. Sam Jones would say that being a Christian meant quitting your maneness.

Well, if that's true, friend, why do we have so many mean people in the church? Sam Jones would comment in a sermon and say there are 10 ,000 ways to hell and only one to heaven. And that's our subject tonight, friends.

The Many Distractions That Lead Away from Christ

My message is entitled 10 ,000 Ways to Hell. Well, you don't have to frequent dens of vice to go to hell. You don't have to be the biggest sinner in town or be hell on wheels to go to hell. You just have to be distracted by something, something that keeps your eyes off of eternity.

It doesn't have to be a bad thing like drunkenness or adultery or licentiousness or fornication. It can be a good thing that can send you to hell. A thing that grabs you and keeps you occupied until you die apart from Jesus.

The subterfuge of the devil is to keep us from thinking about life after death. Keep our attention away from our soul and where we will spend eternity. He may get you, friend, hooked on the game of golf so that every spare dime you have and every spare hour you have supports that addiction.

I used to be addicted to the game of golf until God showed me what golf stood for in my life. G-O-L-F, golden opportunities lost forever. Something to this world that keeps you from Jesus can be a pretty bad thing, friend.

A minister told me about a man at his church who always liked to talk about Jesus, that every time he saw this man all he wanted to talk about was Jesus. Until one day he began to collect stamps and he became so fascinated by stamp collecting it took up all his free time and it took up all his extra money.

Finally he no longer wanted to talk about Jesus. He just wanted to talk about stamps. One day he called my pastor friend and said, I want you to come over and see my new stamp collection of British Colonials.

I paid $50 ,000 for them. Well, a little thing like a stamp got between that man and eternity. Yes, sir, there are 10 ,000 ways to hell and only one way to heaven. It's a narrow way with a straight gate and few there be that find it.

Religious Profession Without the Lordship of Christ

But one of the 10 ,000 ways to hell is paved by more religious church people than any other way. And that way to hell is what I'm going to preach on tonight, friends, because I believe the widest road to hell and the most crowded road on the way to hell is elbow to elbow with good church members who deny the lordship of Jesus Christ in their daily living.

They think they can get somehow to heaven without Christ being their lord. But their hope of heaven is only a hole in the wall by which they will one day by death fall through that paper hole of outer darkness and wind up in the very bowels of the furnace of hell.

Did you know that there are 10 ,000 ways to hell, but all you need is to find one of them and get on it and stay on it until you die? That's how you go to hell, friend. Did you know that most folks will worship a God that will let them live like the devil and not bother them?

Did you know that most folks want a Jesus who won't interfere with their daily living? That's why they don't like to hear searching sermons that probe the darkness and the badness of their heart. They just want a free ticket to heaven, and they just want to be left alone.

And you better not pester their little gods or monkey with their little pig pens. That's why they hate two things. They hate the doctrine of repentance, and they hate the doctrine of the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ.

That's why some of you here can sit here tonight and enjoy your porno and drink your booze and reject Jesus as Lord and still call yourself a Christian. Why doesn't God just cut you off and send you right now to a burning hell?

Because your cup of iniquity is not full yet, and today is still a day of grace. God is long-suffering and merciful, and he will woo you by his spirit to bring you to Christ Jesus. But if you keep resisting him, and if you keep refusing to surrender to Jesus as Lord, then that day of grace will one day close, and you will live under a shut heaven.

And you will be like the man of Sodom, just going about their sins and waiting their day of destruction when God rained down fire and hell upon them and burnt them up for their wicked ways. You see, most preachers today are just professionals.

You don't know God, and they don't know what salvation is. They will present you with a Jesus different from the one found in my Bible. But the Jesus of the Bible is a risen Lord who sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross, and he is Lord.

And if you want him, friend, you must bow to him as Lord and surrender all you are to all he is, and he is Lord. The Lordship of Jesus Christ cannot be ignored by men and women and still get to heaven when they die.

Repentance and Saving Faith as Conditions of Salvation

You better sit up and listen to me, friend, and you better pay attention to what I have to say to you. This sermon is a solemn warning to you about what true salvation is, because in this day of modern evangelism, we don't know what salvation is.

God Almighty demands, as a condition of salvation, on the part of the sinner, repentance toward God. And repentance toward God means that the love of sin must die. That if you want Christ, then you must turn from your sin and renounce it and repudiate it and forsake it and turn from it, all of it, and cry to God for deliverance from its power.

The other condition of salvation is that God Almighty requires of sinful men absolute saving faith, and that saving faith means utter surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and trust in his atoning work as Savior.

You better get the wax out of your ears, friend, and you better get the cobwebs out of your eyes and put it down big, plain, and straight that Jesus, he is a living Lord. He is Lord! He is Lord! I'm telling you, friend, that the Lordship of Jesus Christ is the doorway to the kingdom of God.

There is no other way in that God requires total submission to Jesus as Lord, and he will take nobody, nobody who tries to get into the kingdom and denies the Lordship of Christ and his life or her life.

I don't care, friend, if you're the chairman of the deacons, if you can't have my Jesus as Savior, if you deny him the place of absolute king and Lord and master and ruler of your life, he cannot be yours.

Without that, you're just a baptized rat living in sin, scrambling your way to hell. Jesus must reign. Salvation comes when self is dethroned and another isn't thrown there. The Lord Jesus Christ, salvation, means that God Almighty conquers your rebellion and establishes a new disposition in your soul for holiness.

False Assurance and the Final Judgment

But you can sit there and listen to me with a smug look on your face because I can't save you. Only God can come and disturb you out of your false peace. Maybe some of you are so hardened in your sins that your day is past and God's Spirit will no longer strive with you.

There is no hope for the Christ rejecter. And if you want Christ, you better take him as Lord or you will be none of his. He will say to you on that day, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

You just keep on going friend and you just keep on working your iniquity friend by hugging your most beloved sin and you just go tell God and me to go on to hell. But I'm clear your blood from my hands tonight because I preach the gospel to you tonight.

The problem is you've never heard it before. You thought you had salvation by a physical response. You made some time way back yonder and you've been pointing to that thing as the proof of your salvation.

When deep down, if you were really honest with yourself, you know that all is not right with your soul. This foolish generation of biblically ignorant church folk denies my Jesus the rightful place he demands.

And he demands absolute Lordship in your life. My heart breaks over you friend. George Whitfield used to tell his hearers, if you are too hard hearted to weep over your souls, George Whitfield will weep for you and that dear man would hang his head and weep like a baby until he was too overcome to continue his sermon without stopping to regather himself.

The Call to Repentance and Faith in Christ

Don't go to hell friend. You've been warned. I've been true to your soul. It is my prayer that God will reveal to you a bleeding and dying Christ so you can cast yourself upon him and come to him in repentance, confessing you are a sinner and own him as your Savior and Lord.

He is Lord. And I pray that you will know him and that you will know that if Jesus ever becomes the absolute Lord of your life, he will demand perfect obedience and holiness and hard obedience to him.

He is not a cruel taskmaster, but a loving sovereign who must rule and reign. He will have no rebels in his holy heaven. You better get real and come to that place friend where you admit that Christ has rights and claims on your life.

For if you are his, you were bought with a price and that price was his blood. And you must come to him in submission to him as a total master and say, I can resist him no longer. God has plenty of mercy for the vilest sinner here.

That in Thurstead, Jesus Christ, God Almighty's son, died on Calvary's cross for sinners. And there is wonder work and power in the shed blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse a man's heart, to get his sins under the blood and get entrance into the kingdom of God.

You get saved when Christ's life is laid down and applied to you. But you must get to Christ friend. And there is mercy for guilty sinners and Christ's reception of sinners is a real deal, Jesus said.

All, and that means you friend, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Yes, there are ten thousand ways to hell friend, but only one way to heaven.

Jesus Christ as the Only Way to Heaven

His name is Jesus Christ. He is the only remedy and refuge for sin. He is the pearl of great price. Worth selling all for and losing all for so he may be gained. He is the bright and morning star. He is chief among ten thousand.

He is Lord. He is Lord.