There is a massive growing "spiritual sink hole" devouring many of our churches today due to numerous pulpits presenting a severely "stripped down, perverted, mangled" version of God’s Holy Word in order to avoid (at the cost of souls) the possibility of "offending" anyone. Would offering a teaspoon to each of the passengers on the Titanic have emptied the ship of its deadly invading flood waters and saved them? No! Neither will an "edited for content" gospel convict a person of their need for repentance nor will it draw a person to the saving power of the atoning blood-stained Cross of Jesus Christ.
Even the word "sinner" itself has become taboo behind many pulpits. Today we are simply "good people with morally challenged indiscretions." To make the gospel more "palatable" to the delicate sensibilities of a world hurtling
head-long into spiritual suicide, a world racing to judgment, we have taken the Bible and given it a thick candy coating. The result of which is a world filled with "spiritual diabetics." These are people with the inability to process God’s Word as a spiritual fuel due to the fact that Its sustaining, life-giving , life-changing, soul-saving, holy, pure and righteous ingredients have each been removed. Removed by pathetically weak men behind pulpits who have the audacity to call themselves preachers of the gospel while hiding behind a curtain of spiritual timidity and cowardice. What remains after their dismembering and butchering of God’s Word therefore is nothing more than bread dough without the yeast. Absolutely nothing remains to give rise to the Word of God within the hearts of a spiritually starving world.
By going all the way back to the earliest recorded census of the earths population, then adding to that the generations from the time of Adam and multiplying those by the subsequent average percentage of increase from one generation to the next experts have determined that there have been an estimated 85 billion people who have lived on the earth since the creation of man. How many do you suppose will go to hell because of weak, pathetic, cowardly, watered-down, empty, ineffective "preaching?" 85 billion is a lot of souls. We can put that incredible number into better perspective with the following:
If I gave you $1,000 every day, seven days a week non-stop, for me to pay you 85 billion dollars in thousand dollar bills would take 232, 717.25 years! To travel 85 billion miles you would have to go to the moon AND BACK 177,930 times. You would have to go around the circumference of the entire world 3 million four hundred thousand times. You would have to drive from New York to Los Angeles AND BACK seventeen million times. Just how many souls today (which are a part of those 85 billion) are we allowing to slip into eternity without Christ all because of, and due to, ineffective, lethargic, diluted, lazy, insincere, apathetic preaching?
Many preachers today (and even more psychiatrists and psychologists) say that sin is simply a normal part of daily life and therefore we really should not concern ourselves too much about it. This viperous line of reasoning designed by that old serpent himself, the devil, satan, has left millions of people empty inside and wandering aimlessly through life. Yes, we can indulge in all the pleasures that the world has to offer, all the sin, all the lusts, all the sex, all the drugs, but in the stillness of the night when we sit all alone the human heart still cries out for peace, and hope - and only God can satisfy the desires of the human heart.
The Bible declares that Peter and John spoke with BOLDNESS! The Apostle Paul exclaimed "in nothing of the Gospel of Christ will I be ashamed, with all BOLDNESS I will proclaim Him so that He shall be magnified." We are to preach the "Truth" with boldness. Jesus said "I AM Truth." Scripture further teaches that only when we know that truth in its FULLNESS are we then truly made free. Paul and the other Apostles preached the FULLNESS of Christ. They did not flow with the tide of public opinion and restructure the gospel to comply with the world’s standards so that they could avoid hurting peoples feelings. The Bible is resolute in its admonition that we ourselves must not conform to the world nor must we allow His Word to be conformed to the world for then it becomes of none effect. I have heard many preachers state that we must preach the gospel in such a way as to adapt it to today’s world. These men are not preachers of the gospel, they are men who have raped the gospel and forsaken its truth. These are the pulpits which deny their congregations the fullness of God’s Word, they withhold the fullness of its glory and "power to save to the uttermost" thusly depriving the people full understanding of His truth. What they leave in their wake is a spiritually dead congregation.
What the Bible does say is that you are a sinner and I am a SINNER and that we deserve hell. Choosing to ignore this truth in no way lessens its validity. Side-stepping it In no way changes or alters it as being a statement of fact. Add to that fact another which is this - there is absolutely nothing that you or I can do on our own to erase the penalty we must pay for that sin. But God also said this - "I am not willing that ANY should perish but that all should come to repentance." So what did God do? He took His heavenly pen - dipped it in the precious atoning blood of His one and only Son Jesus Christ, and with that blood He wrote one huge word across an old gnarled, splintery Cross and that word is - "Forgiven." First John 1:7 says "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." However, it is up to you to consciously make the choice to have your sins covered by His blood. There is no value whatsoever for you in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ unless, and until you receive Him as your personal Lord and Saviour, when you acknowledge the fact that you are a sinner and by faith, and with a repenting heart accept what Christ Jesus did for you on the Cross where He took your place and gave His own life as payment in full for the penalty of your sins.
So - are we basically "good people" as many modern-day pulpits would have you believe? No! Will the fact that we had "good intentions" swing open wide the gates of Heaven for us? No! Scripture states very clearly that there is none who is good. But if we are willing to take up our cross daily to follow Him, if we invite Him into our heart as our personal Lord and Saviour the Bible says He will then blot out all of our sins like a dark cloud, He will cast them into the deepest sea, He will put your sins as far away as the East is from the West. God does not look for perfect men because none exist. What He does look for are genuine, repenting hearts.
Not a single letter of God’s Word is insignificant. We can not "pick and choose" to preach only those parts that are less likely to stir anger or resentment. In fact, those are the very parts to which we must give precedence if we are to be effective in delivering the fullness and richness of a gospel that truly saves. And what is the price to be paid for pulpits peddling scriptural deprivation? We see around us every day the answer to that question which is ironically given to us in the very Bible that these pulpits have so foolishly "thinned out;" "Where there is ignorance of God, the people run wild!"
God bless you,
Mark Shutts
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