“Danger ahead” signs on the highways … “Danger” on bottles that contain poison … “Beware of the Propellers” at some airfields … “Thin Ice” on ponds and rivers in the winter … “Cross at Intersections” … “Beware of the Dog” … “Speed Limit …”—all of us live with warnings on every hand. We take them as a matter of course, and if we stop to think we are thankful for them. We know they are meant for our good.
Strange to say, however, many of us resent any word of warning about our spiritual welfare. The possibility of danger in regard to our eternal destiny is only too often hidden by a conspiracy of silence. Now that the reality of the devil and of hell are ridiculed, even by many who teach and preach, it has become passé to speak of sin and judgment and the world to come.
Men in many secular fields recognize their responsibility to warn of particular dangers. State and federal laws require that there be clear and adequate warnings against certain hazards. But many ministers of the Gospel are silent about the Bible’s warning of “the wrath to come”—a subject about which Jesus, John the Baptist, Matthew, Luke, and John speak clearly.
John, in the Revelation, describes a day when the wrath of the spurned Christ will be poured out: “Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong, and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?’ ” (6:15–17, RSV).
Why is there silence on this subject about which God so clearly warns us in the Bible?
Why do men ignore the whole matter of a coming judgment, mentioned more than 1,000 times in Scripture?
Why do many of those who should proclaim the truth of wrath, judgment, and future punishment remain mute, or soothe with platitudes that please even as they damn?
The reason is not hard to find. They preach a deformed doctrine of God, a doctrine in which his love and mercy are stressed while his holiness, justice, and judgment are slighted.
Certainly the Bible comforts us with the truth that “God is love”; yet it also warns us that “our God is a consuming fire.” The Bible that tells us that Christ is a foundation stone, a sure footing, the only foundation, also warns that “every one who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but when it falls on any one it will crush him” (Luke 20:18).
By and large churchgoers hear messages of comfort and hope based on wishful thinking. The nature of sin, an offense against a holy God, is denied or disregarded. The Cross is spoken of solely in terms of love without the element of propitiation. Only the physical agony of Christ on the cross is stressed; his role as sin-bearer and his vicarious death are overlooked.
I do not see how God can fail to judge those who preach or teach a gospel that is not the Gospel. The love, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ must be preached against the backdrop of the holiness and judgment of God, who offered his Son as a substitute and as the One to whom we may turn for salvation.
No nation has ever existed under more favorable circumstances than America. None has had greater privileges and opportunities. Yet like Israel of old, we have turned every man to his own way. And where there is no repentance, God’s judgment is there.
Where are those who should stand in the highways and byways to warn this sinning nation? We are being warned about man’s offenses against man, his inhumanity to his fellows—and we need this warning. But how few speak also of our offenses against a holy God! How few preach of things beyond the grave. How many stand up to preach about “justice” but fail to mention “self-control and future judgment” (Acts 24:25). How appallingly evident it is that the Church today is more concerned with man’s temporary material welfare than with the welfare of his eternal soul.
The Apostle Paul, preaching to the intellectuals in Athens, told them of God as Creator and Sustainer of life and of man’s vain attempts to worship him by man-made contrivances. Then he said, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31).
Why so few sermons on “repentance”? Or on that coming “day”? Or on the certainty of coming judgment?
The only explanation is that many no longer admit or believe in the true nature of sin, so deadly in its effect that only the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God can save its victims. And because the biblical teaching about sin is rejected, the biblical teaching about judgment and redemption is rejected also.
The good news is what God has done at Calvary and continues to do for man. But salvation is not offered on man’s terms. It is offered on God’s terms, and it involves sin and judgment, love and redemption. No part is complete without the others. Too often a truncated gospel is preached that either denies or ignores the “day” about which our Lord warned, a day of finality and judgment toward which all are headed but from which all may escape by way of the Cross of Christ.
God’s infinite patience is seen by many today as indifference rather than forbearance, blindness rather than loving hope. The Apostle Peter tells us that God does not wish that “any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:9, 10).
Figurative language? Don’t rest on a false hope! And why rest at all on anything less than Jesus and his atoning, forgiving, cleansing work?
But, you say, this introduces the element of fear, and fear is incompatible with our thoughts of a God of love. For the unrepentant sinner there is danger, and he should fear. The future is incredibly dark for the unbeliever. It is the part of honesty and love to warn where danger exists.
Paul says, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11a). And to Timothy he said, “Never lose your sense of urgency, in season or out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2a, Phillips).
There is danger ahead for the unbeliever. And there is perfect safety for all who believe.
