The Daily Word of Righteousness

A Destructive Concept of Divine Grace, continued

Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. (Revelation 22:12—NIV)

The believer will be repaid by Jesus according to how he or she has lived. The original lie, the greatest lie ever told, is that we will not receive back what we have practiced in our body.

The secular realm fights against creationism, preferring evolution, because creationism suggests there is a God who will call people to account for their behavior.

The Christian realm fights with the same desperation against the truth of the Scriptures that believers certainly will receive back what they have done.

The satanic lie that "you shall not surely die" pervades Evangelical theology.

God has put the promise of staggering rewards of glory, and also of punishment so dreadful as to be beyond the mind of man to comprehend, in His unchanging Word. Consider sometime the curses pronounced from Mount Ebal, curses directed toward God's chosen people, not toward the Canaanites. Yet the threat of the Lake of Fire passes far, far beyond Mount Ebal.

These promises of glory and dreadful punishment are in the written Word for a purpose. The purpose is to remind Satan and his followers, and also human beings, of the consequences of obedience to God and disobedience to God.

Satan and his angels, who never can be redeemed, are terrified of what they are facing. Like wicked people often do, they put the fear out of their mind and go on their way, bound hideously with their own lusts and self -will.

Satan and his angels will be judged by the saints. Therefore Satan is using every device possible to persuade the believers, God's future judges, that they need have no fear of the Judgment Seat of Christ. Satan is hoping by some means he will be able to persuade the judges to live in sin so when the time of judgment comes they will be unable to judge him. God will have to free Satan and his followers because God's own people are so similar in character and behavior to Satan.

The error in Evangelical thinking that once we have believed in Jesus Christ we can never be lost, can have unacceptable consequences.

I know of the great importance attached to this false security because Christians who will go along with me that God desires righteous, holy, obedient behavior will object strenuously when I insist that if such behavior does not follow, the Christian may be subjected to dreadful punishment or even the maximum penalty.

The believers simply won't hear of this even though the Scripture clearly and in many places, as I have pointed out above, shows that every person on earth, believer in Christ or not, will be judged and rewarded according to his or her behavior.

"You shall not surely die" was the beginning of the insane howling debauchery known as world history. "You shall not surely die" is being preached today in the great majority of Evangelical churches. It is Satan who is speaking behind the pulpit, though the preacher may be a fine man. Peter was a fine man but Satan through him tried to keep the Lord from going to Jerusalem and making the atonement for our sins.

To be continued.