The language of the gospel is, except you
repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
The word ye referred to in the passage
means you.
You must repent.
And if you don't repent, you shall perish.
What does perish mean?
It means to be damned to hell.
Our text says ye shall all likewise perish.
That word all is an all-inclusive all,
meaning all men shall drop into hell unless
they repent.
God requires repentance to get to his heaven.
You don't need to repent to go to
hell.
And that's the title of my message this
evening.
You don't need to repent to go to
hell.
You see, the problem is, friends, the Church
in America decided years ago to no longer
preach the doctrine of repentance.
Instead, they replaced it with an only-believed
gospel, which is a no-gospel.
Like I said, you don't need to repent
to go to hell, but you do need
to repent to go to heaven.
Now, many seminary professors will disagree with me
on that one.
I have a fight on my hands.
Many pastors will disagree with me on that
one.
And many evangelists will disagree with me on
that as well.
But I don't care if you disagree with
me, because I am not in charge of
your eternal destiny.
But if you disagree with the words of
Christ Jesus, then you have to take it
up with Him on that day.
I believe the reason why churches no longer
preach the need for repentance is that they
teach that man is not so bad after
all.
He doesn't need to repent.
He just needs to clean up a little
to become a Christian.
And on top of that, it's not politically
correct to tell a person they must repent.
If you do that, then you have to
tell them what a big sinner they are.
And if you do that, then you have
a fight on your hands with the chairman
of the deacons.
You tell him he needs to repent, and
his face will turn blood red in anger.
We don't preach repentance in America anymore because
we don't want to offend anyone.
That's why we've turned our churches into nightclubs
and entertainment halls, so we won't offend anybody.
After all, everyone loves to be entertained, right?
Like I said, you don't need to repent
to go to hell, but you do if
you want to go to heaven.
I believe the church changed its message about
40 years ago.
I've sat in churches for the last 40
years in different denominations, and I've never heard
a sermon on the doctrine of repentance.
The one time I did was when I
heard my friend Richard Owen Roberts preach it,
but he's the only one I've ever personally
heard preach on the doctrine of repentance.
I know there were some faithful pastors who
preach on repentance in America.
I'm not saying nobody does, but few do.
When was the last time you heard a
sermon on the doctrine of repentance with a
call for you to repent?
You see, if you don't believe in the
depravity of man, then there's no need to
preach up repentance because man is not that
bad after all.
He just needs to reform himself somewhat.
If you believe you become a sinner when
you sin, then you don't need to preach
repentance.
But listen, friends, I'm not a sinner because
I sin.
Rather, I sin because I'm a big sinner.
But today, we preachers don't preach what they
preached in the New Testament.
We have our modern version of the Bible
that has omitted the necessity of repentance to
be saved.
But in the Gospel of Mark, in chapter
6 and verse 12, it tells us what
the followers of Christ, His disciples, actually preached.
It reads, and they went out and preached
that men should repent.
That's it, plain and simple.
Men should repent.
But you don't have to repent if you
want to go to hell.
John the Baptist's message was repent.
In those days came John the Baptist preaching
in the wilderness of Judea and saying, Repent
ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.
He preached the baptism of repentance for the
remission of sins.
When John the Baptist came to town, he
preached repentance and it cost him his head.
We preachers today won't preach on repentance because
we're afraid we'll lose our heads or our
401k plan, which would be even worse.
When Jesus came into His public ministry, the
very first sermon He preached was on how
to become wealthy as a Christian.
Isn't that what He preached?
That's what we think He preached.
Let's read the Gospel of Matthew and see
what it really says.
From that time, Jesus began to preach and
to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.
When the Apostle Paul preached, he preached on
repentance.
When he preached his sermon in Athens on
Mars Hill, he told the Greek philosophers gathered
there.
And the times of this ignorance God winked
at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to
repent.
And when Paul was speaking to King Agrippa,
we see the following content of his sermon.
Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient
to the heavenly vision, but showed first unto
them of Damascus and at Jerusalem and throughout
all the coasts of Judea, and then to
the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn
to God, and works meet for repentance.
Listen, friends, the Bible declares that to be
saved, one must exercise repentance toward God in
faith in Jesus Christ.
But you don't have to repent to go
to hell, but you do if you want
to go to heaven.
You will have to repent or perish into
everlasting burnings.
We don't preach on repentance because we don't
want to preach on sin.
And we don't preach on sin because we
don't want to run anyone off from our
church campus.
So we don't mention sin and we don't
mention repentance.
We will say God loves you and all
you have to do to go to heaven
is accept Jesus as your personal Savior.
And to do that, all you have to
do is walk this aisle and make it
public.
Welcome, friend.
You are now a Christian.
And we put their name on our membership
roll and we tell them that they're Christians.
And they think that way and they live
the same way and they stay in their
sins.
And when they die, they drop into hell
because they never repented of their sins.
And we fill our churches with individuals who
walked that aisle and repeated a prayer and
they've never been awakened to their lost condition.
They've never been convicted of sin by the
Holy Spirit and never have been objects of
grace through the supernatural act of regeneration.
And we make sure that we preach nice
little messages that won't upset anybody because you
don't need to repent to go to hell.
And the smoldering issue beneath all this is
the fact that if you preach on repentance,
the crowd will scream and holler, we will
not have this man rule over us.
Your average church member wants to rule his
own life.
So we divide Jesus up into two people,
a Savior and Lord.
And most take the Savior half and leave
the Lord part alone.
The Lordship of Christ is not a message
preached in this nation anymore.
So there is no need for repentance.
At least that is what the pulpit of
our day states.
But we live in a day of great
spiritual declension and many are unsound in their
theology.
But listen, friends, let us return to a
more wiser time and listen to the words
of a Puritan pastor by the name of
Joseph Alene.
Let us hear what he has to say
to us today about the unsound convert.
Here now are his words.
The unsound convert takes Christ by half.
He is all for the salvation of Christ,
but he is not for sanctification.
He is for the privileges, but does not
appropriate the person of Christ.
He divides the offices and benefits of Christ.
This is an error in the foundation.
Whoever loves life, let him beware here.
It is an undoing mistake of which you
have been often warned.
Jesus is a sweet name, but men do
not love the Lord Jesus in sincerity.
They will not have him as God offers
to be a prince and a savior.
They divide what God has joined, the king
and the priest.
They will not accept the salvation of Christ
as he intends it.
They divide it here.
Every man's vote is for salvation from suffering,
but they do not desire to be saved
from sinning.
They would have their lives saved, but still
would have their lusts.
The sound convert is willing to have Christ
upon any terms.
He is willing to have the dominion of
Christ as well as deliverance by Christ.
I highly recommend Joseph Alleyne's book, A Sure
Guide to Heaven.
It will surely help you get there.
I can guarantee it won't resemble anything you
hear in our pulpits today.
The theme of the Great Awakening in 1740
was, you must be born again.
That's what the great British evangelist George Whitefield
preached.
And the theme of the Second Great Awakening
in America was, man's duty of repentance.
That is what Asahel Nettleton preached.
God honored the preaching of those doctrines by
attending them with great power and spiritual awakening
that shook this nation.
But in our churches today, we have deadness
everywhere because our preaching is lifeless.
It has no power because we fail to
preach up the doctrines of the duty of
repentance and the necessity of regeneration with unction
from on high.
There's not been a spiritual awakening in America
since 1858 to 1859.
I wonder what would happen if the majority
of the pulpits in our land began to
preach on repentance and regeneration.
Would it not set our nation ablaze with
power from on high?
But you cannot preach on man's duty of
repentance without mentioning how big a sinner man
really is.
And you can't preach on the necessity of
regeneration because then you take salvation out of
the hands of man and put it in
the hands of God.
So instead, we tell jokes and funny stories
on Sunday mornings and we do our best
to entertain you for an hour and a
half before it's time for lunch.
Like I said, you don't need to repent
if you want to go to hell.