Lordship Or Hell — E.A. Johnston

Spiritual Apostasy and the Dilution of the Gospel

We live in a day of moral chaos in society, and spiritual apostasy within the church. As a nation, we have legislated God out of our country by legalizing sin. As a church, we have lived in spiritual declension for so long that we cannot discern good from evil.

The Man-Centered Gospel and Spurious Conversions

But when the churches in America replaced the God-centered gospel of the Bible with another gospel that is man-centered, we created a breeding ground for spurious conversions. The churches gradually watered down the gospel to make it more palatable to sinful man.

Christ's Authority and the Church's Pursuit of Growth

All the rights and claims of the Lord Jesus Christ of the gospel were removed and replaced with an anemic Jesus who had no rights or claims on anyone. In a bad dash to grow our churches, we handed out an impotent Jesus who stands helplessly at the door of the sinner's heart, hoping you will let him in.

But that's not the Jesus found in the Bible, who sits in authority at the right hand of God and has all power in his hands. As denominations made a grab for power, they sold out the God of the Bible and began to traffic in the souls of men in an attempt to grow their church campuses through brick and mortar, but with the blood of souls on their hands.

Repentance, Regeneration, and the Cost of Discipleship

We stopped preaching against sin and stopped preaching on hell and stopped preaching man's duty of repentance and his utter necessity of regeneration. And subsequently, we mirrored the methodology of a famous evangelist who brought in the way of salvation in ways Jesus never did.

Jesus said it was a narrow way and a straight gate and one had to strive to enter in. Jesus said there was a cross in the daily life of all followers of his. Jesus said if one did not forsake mother, father, children, or even one's own life, he could not be a follower of his.

The cost of discipleship involves a life of self-denial as one follows the Lord Jesus along a narrow way. As a church, we have lied to people by telling them all they had to do to go to heaven was to accept Jesus as their personal savior, even if that's not even found in our Bibles.

Easy-Believe Religion and False Assurance

We handed folks an easy-to-believe gospel and herded them like cattle into our churches to financially support our denominational programs and pay the bills on our lavish church campuses. We have baptized pagans and told them they were now Christians.

Through all of this, the church lost her voice of authority in the land and her witness to the world. We have ordained men to ministry whom Jesus does not know. We have hired pastors who are either entertainers or babysitters for the grown babies in our congregations.

The sad consequence of all of this is that very few are saved today, or young people leave the churches in droves as soon as they become adults because they themselves are sick of the hypocrisy and the missing reality of God in the so-called people of God.

False Conversion and the Reign of Self

When you feed a man a false gospel, then baptize that man and make him a member of the church, you have simply made an unconverted man, an unconverted church member, who will never know the reality of God in his life and will never have power over the sin in his life because he is yet dead in his sins.

A self still sits on the throne of the heart and rules there, even if he is the chairman of the deacons. When a sinner is saved, self is dethroned and another enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has all rights and claims on all followers of his.

The Lordship of Christ as the Test of Salvation

Either Jesus Christ is Lord of your daily living, or he is a stranger to you and you are a stranger to him. The Lordship of Christ is the missing doctrine in our preaching today, and by its omission we have damned the souls of men.

Jesus is either your Lord in every aspect of your life, or he is merely your servant. And if he's not your Lord friend, then you are none of his. Where the rubber meets the road, it's either Lordship or hell.

Warning the Church to Return to Biblical Salvation

He is either your glad sovereign, or he was never your savior. We need to quit lying to folks and stop feeding them a false gospel just so we can have a big church and a six-figure income. We need to be honest with folks and be true to the souls of men by warning them of their danger of dying in their sins, and informing them of their duty of repentance, their utter necessity of regeneration, as they surrender all they are to all Christ is.

He is Lord. He is a living Lord. He must be your complete master if you want to be saved from the fires of a burning hell. It's either his Lordship or hell.