The Alternative
One of the great falsehoods that the judeochristian clergy teach is in direct opposition to what Christ taught. They say grace is everything when it is definitely not.
�Except ye repent, ye shall all...perish.� (Luke 13:3, 5)
From the preaching of John the Baptist; �repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand� (Matthew 3:2; 4:17; 10:7) to the final warnings in the Book of Revelation these two alternatives are offered: repentance or destruction.
In commissioning the disciples to their ministry Christ said, �that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name.� (Luke 24:47) On the day of Pentecost the initial gospel message of Peter the key that opened the gates of the Kingdom, was climaxed by the command. �Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins.� (Acts 2:38)
Years later Peter wrote that judgment is delayed because God is �longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.� (2 Peter 3:9) This was to Israelites only and not to the world.
The judeochristian church has failed miserably in declaring to the world these two alternatives in spite of the feverish activity called evangelism, in which people are begged, tricked, pressured, and manipulated into church membership by every kind of technique modern psychology can invent in the laboratories of religious clinics, run by jews, and conventions.
Such evangelism runs from bowing one�s head in prayer on a busy street or sighing a decision card, to going down the church aisle, shaking the preacher�s hand and being baptized. Very often the baptism is made optional, thus making the process more convenient. This is the �evangelism� that results in church houses being full of the people empty.
������������������������������ Missing the Alternatives
Missing are the clear alternatives offered by the Almighty: repent or perish. Instead one hears a lot about love, with the word glibly tossed about as if it were some kind of potion that God gushed forth over the globe to tranquilize and equalize all creation.
"...know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." (James 4:4)
It is significant that Christ never commanded men to preach love. But rather to preach the gospel of repentance and remission of sins.
"...take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man." (Luke 21:34‑36)
������������������������������������������ Divine Love
Divine love is nothing at all like the blind sentimentality that often passes for love. God�s love is founded upon the reality of what God knows is true. Hence the message, �Repent or Perish,� contrary to the common idea that it is void of love, is in reality the true message of love.
In the eternal plan of God only one reason is revealed for man�s existence, and that is he should be in God�s image. Thus scripture speaks of our being �holy and without blemish before Him in love� (Ephesians 1:4), and that �we shall be like Him:� (1 John 3:2), that we are to be �found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ� (1 Peter 1:7) when He shall �fashion anew the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of His glory.� (Philippians 3:21) The saints of God (and ONLY saints have any promise of immortality) are those who have turned from the natural world to God, who desire the way of God over against the ways of man, who trust God with their lives and thus seek to do His will. In other words they have REPENTED.
������������������������������������� Substitute Plans
It is useless for men to conceive substitute plans and to �imagine vain things� as possibly satisfying to the Creator.
�And turn ye not aside: for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain. For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name's sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people.� (1 Samuel 12:21-22)
�Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?� (Acts 4:25)
Yahweh�s nature is unchanging and His purposes are perfect. Therefore, in the final consummation of the age He will have man (Israelites) in His image, AND NOTHING LESS. He will not endure sin forever, which is the same as saying that He will not endure sinful man forever. Yahweh�s love is such that he will not let man go on in the state of sin, never fulfilling the purpose for which he was created. The sinner will perish.
�������������������������������������������� Final End
When Christ used the term �perish� he used one of the strongest in the language to convey the thought of death. There are 14 different Greek words used in the New Testament to express the doctrine of the final destruction of the sinner. These 14 words, some of them used over and over, are (expressed in the English alphabet): Analisko, Apoleia, Apollumi, Apothnesko, Diaphtherio, Exolothreauo, Katakaio, Katanalisko, Katargeo, Kolasis, Olethros, Phtheiro, Phthora and Thannatos.
Translated into English these words mean: to consume, death, ruin, destroy utterly, expire, corrupt utterly, cut off, burn up, consume thoroughly, abolish, etc The word apollumi used 23 times in the New Testament, is the strongest word in the Greek language to denote a final and complete end, to bring to naught, to utterly destroy. It is this word that Jesus used to solemnly declare that God can �destroy both soul and body in hell.� (Matthew 10:28)
Another verb and noun for �destroy� and �destruction� is exolothreuo and olehtros, signifying utter destruction by death. Thus �ever soul which will not hear that prophet (Christ) shall be destroyed (exolothreuo) from among the people,� (Acts 3:23), and the wicked �shall be punished with everlasting destruction (olethros) from the presence of the Lord.� (2 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Timothy 6:9)
��������������������������������������� No Alternative
So God offers no alternative to repentance but destruction. He offers no purgatory (Psalm 49:7), no state of eternal life short of His glorious image. It is repent or perish, and that says it all.
Dr. R.F. Weymouth, a noted Greek authority and translator of The New Testament in Modern Speech, strikingly declared in an authorized published statement:
�My mind fails to conceive a grosser misinterpretation of language than when the five or six strongest words which the Greek tongue possesses, signifying �destroy,� or �destruction,� are explained to mean maintaining an everlasting but wretched existence. To translate black as white is nothing to this.�
John the Baptist, whose mission was to prepare the way for the Messiah, in his first recorded sermon, said,
�Repent ye: for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand...I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance, but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire; whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor: and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.� (Matthew 3:11-12)
John�s plea for repentance was predicated upon the fact that a housecleaning is coming and all who fail to qualify as �wheat� and are unfit for the presence of God are to be destroyed. Sin cannot exist in the presence of God and therefore will be destroyed in the destruction of the sinner.
Evangelists tell people that they will spend eternity either in heaven or in hell. They are wrong. Hell is not a place where people live: it is a place of complete and utter destruction.
Thus the message, �repent or perish,� is the anguished cry of the loving Creator to His sinful people. It is the true appeal of love. The modern preachment of �love� which minimizes sin and studiously avoids any hint of impending destruction is as far removed from a true concern for the lost as death is from life. It is sin that requires from God a judgment, and it is only repentance, a complete turning from sin to total faith in God and the gospel that wills ave man from judgment. God is not capricious, nor cruel nor in need of feeding His ego. It is not as some imagine, that His is saying, �If you don�t grovel in the dust before me, I�ll smash you.� Instead it is the most tender of all messages, that there is an alternative to the course of death.
The lying, deceiving, false teachers of judeochristianity say �Love the Sinner, hate the sin.� That is such a stupid slogan that it is amazing that so many have bought into it. For God does not destroy the sin and let the man live; no He destroys both the sin and the sinner if the man does not repent.
Furthermore, He gives to all the capacity to heed it. The insolent criminal, who whines that he couldn�t help it, that he was the victim of society or of mean parents, will not be excused in the judgment. It will do no good to shut one�s eyes, to plead ignorance, or blame somebody else.
Also, just as the punishment is final and total, so must the repentance be final and total. Many may think to squeeze by with a simulated repentance; that is, by giving up the obvious sins and going through the motions of obedience, such as a confession and baptism. One woman said that if it were not for the fear of unending punishing (as if God were going to roast one alive for ever) she would not have given up the pleasures of the world.
Alas. Anyone with such a confession admits that she has not truly repented. The desire is for fire insurance, not the life that is in the image of God. The sinful nature has not changed, yet she hopes to escape the penalty for sin. What God seeks is NOT to scare people into submission. He desires people who are sanctified, cleansed; people who are �transformed into the same image from glory to glory� (2 Corinthians 3:18); in brief, people who have REPENTED.
On the 700 club, the TBN and other television shows one can see the parade one burned out whore after another. They whored around sleeping with as many men as they wished; lived carnally for as long as their body and looks held out, then they played at getting saved to be paraded in front of the television audience as some great person. It is sickening what these money hucksters will do to part you from your hard earned money.
The work of God in providing a rescue from destruction was in making Christ an offering for sin. He bore the complete death sentence, so that �whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.� This, of course, applies ONLY the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel, for Christ did not come for all the world only for His Israel people. This was the essential mission of Christ, to pay the penalty for sin by His own death that some might be saved from destruction.
Repentance is not merely sorrow for sin. �Godly sorrow worth repentance.� (2 Corinthians 7:10) Sorrow should lead to repentance, but one may be sorry and yet not repent. Repentance is a complete change of the purpose of life, from seeking the natural desires to seeking the purpose of God, and therefore it includes obedience to God, an earnest effort to know the mind of Christ and to live in harmony with His will.
The issue with Christ settles reaches to the very heart and core of a person�s life, and settles not only the actions of life but the motives as well, and finally, its very existence. Do you think that a man/woman who is an alcoholic and claims to be saved, yet gets drunk whenever they wish has repented? Do you think that a woman who has given herself to many strange men, who claims to get salved the then still goes to bed with anyone she wishes has repented? Do you think that a Queer who has been with so many men or woman as the case may be, that they cannot count them for number, then claims to get saved but continues to live the life of a Queer has repented?
The modern judeochristian church does not settle the issue because its leaders will hardly discuss it, much less teach it. In the promotion of all kinds of activities, the image of God is forgotten and the impending destruction is pushed out of the mind. We sing, �Do Lord, O do Lord, O do remember me...� and forget that He said, �repent or you shall perish.� But He does remember, He, the Ancient of Days, whose mind is not dulled by mortal decay, remembers His eternal purpose and the warning He has given.
�EXCEPT YE REPENT, YE SHALL ALL PERISH.� (Taken, in part from The Witness, Curtis Dickinson, Editor, P.O. Box 292663, Lewisville, Texas 75029, (972) 219-2277)