The Lord does truly love His most prized creation–man–whom He created in His physical image and in His (potential) spiritual likeness.  When created, Adam was as perfect as a created can be  that does not know God.  Adam had to learn the ways of God and, after being tempted by Satan, had to be given the choice as to which god he would believe and which god he would trust to award him eternal life in paradise.  Adam chose the wrong god.

The angels God created had been given the same opportunity.  One third of them chose Lucifer (Satan the devil) as their god.  Upon their creation, did God love Lucifer and the angels He assigned to assist him?  Indeed He did.  However, this will not prevent Him from exacting the ultimate payment for their error.  They will burn forever in the Lake of Fire created specifically for them (Rev. 20:10).  Being spirits and incapable of dying, they will burn “for ever and ever.”

Not so for sinning man whom, we are told in Revelation 21:8, will be cast into the Lake of Fire that will burn forever (Rev. 20:10-15).  But man will not burn forever.  Nowhere in Scripture are we told that man will burn forever.  For sinning man, including “Sinners Saved By Grace,” death in the Lake of Fire will result in sinning man’s “second death.”  All sinners, including the Beast and the False Prophet, will die in the fire (Rev. 20:10).  All will burn to ash which God will scatter over the earth where it will be tread upon by God’s saints (Eze. 28:18/ Mal. 4:3).  In summary: The “Lake that burns with fire” will burn forever in order to torment Satan and his angels who, being spirits, will live forever knowing what they could have had–eternal life with God, Christ, Their Very Elect and the holy angels, all of whom will live forever in paradise.  Read The Kingdom of God and God’s Very Elect: Future Caretakers of the Universe.  Key words–Kingdom and Caretakers respectively.  We will now allow the Almighty to share with us His view of the popular “Come as you are, stay as you are–just love Jesus because He loves you just the way you are” theme.  If this popular church “truth” is indeed true, why did He have the following passages recorded and preserved for thousands of years?

Did Jesus love the apostles?  Of course.  He loved them so much that He used them to offer salvation to all of mankind.  He loved them so much that He sent them out to preach His Father’s gospel, cleanse the lepers, heal the sick. cast out demons, raise the dead, etc. (Mat. 10:8).  His use of them revealed His great love for them.  However, this did not guarantee them eternal life, as He made clear to us in John 15:13,14.  Here He tells them that no man had greater love for mankind than His love, that He loved mankind so much that HE WOULD DIE FOR THOSE WHO WOULD BECOME AND REMAIN HIS FRIENDS.  Note it: He would die ONLY for His FRIENDS.  He then identified His friends, saying to the disciples: “You are My friends IF YOU DO WHATSOEVER I COMMAND YOU.”  One of the 12 did not.  Today, of those who claim to be His friends, few “do whatsoever” He tells them to do–obey His Law, just as He told the rich man (Lk. 18:20) and the lawyer (Lk. 10:25-28) that they must do in order to inherit eternal life.

If God loves man so much in his sinful condition that He will allow him to become a son of God while remaining “just as he is,” why then did Jesus  appoint apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers in the church?  He did so “for the PERFECTING OF THE SAINTS … UNTIL ALL COME TO  THE UNITY OF THE FAITH AND OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD, TO A PERFECT MAN, TO THE MEASURE OF THE STATURE OF THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST” (Eph. 4:13).  Does this describe how man comes to the Lord?  Has he already reached “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ?” No.  It describes how we must BECOME in order to receive eternal life at His return.  Then we must maintain that spiritual condition (holiness) “unto the end” at which time we “shall be saved” (Mat. 10:22/ Rom. 5:21; 6:22–please read all).  Read Hope and Salvation (key word–Hope).

While on earth Jesus called Himself the “Son of God.”  He was the “firstborn among many (sons of God)”–Rom. 8:29.  He was also the first among men to be born again (change from physical to spiritual bodily composition) so that He, a man, could enter the presence of God.  His Very Elect must also be born again so that they can enter the presence of God.  Jesus was born again because He obeyed God.  He had to “learn obedience (to His Father) by the things that He suffered” (Heb. 5:8).  His prayers were heard by God “because He feared” Him (Heb. 5:7), not because He had been born (begotten–conceived) by God through the Holy Spirit.  Those who would spend eternity with Him must follow in His spiritual footsteps.

Christ’s true, obedient saints are His spiritual “brethren.”  This status is not awarded to those who claim it.  Billions have done and do that.  Making such a claim has nothing to do with Scriptural reality.  In Matthew 12:46-50 He tells His disciples that they are His spiritual brethren ONLY if they “… DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN ….”  At that point in time, that category did not include His mother and half-siblings.  How does the “Come as you are, stay as you are.  Just love Jesus and stay the course” belief fit into the above-stated passages of Scripture?  It doesn’t.

In John 8:31 we find Jesus telling the Jews who “believed in Him” and wanted to be His disciples that they would be His disciples ONLY “IF YOU CONTINUE IN (BELIEVE AND OBEY) MY COMMANDMENTS.”  ONLY THEN, He said, they would be His disciples INDEED and not in name only.  What they must “continue in” would be His Truth, which is what He called God’s Word in John 17:17.  Sinners do not come into the church believing and obeying His commandments.  In fact, they are guilty of doing the exact opposite, which is why they are called sinners, for “To transgress the Law (commandments) is sin, for sin is the transgression of the Law (1 Jn. 3:4).  They must change from being Law-breakers to Law-keepers.  So much for “Come as you are, stay as you are because Jesus will continue to love you just as you are.”

In John 8:31 Jesus tells His disciples, “You are My disciples INDEED, IF YOU OBEY MY COMMANDMENTS.”  The word “indeed” has eternal significance.  If they did not obey His Law they would be Disciples In Name Only–DINOs.  There will be no DINOs in the Kingdom of God.

In Matthew 4:4 Jesus proclaimed that in order to receive eternal life, one must “… LIVE BY EVERY WORD THAT PROCEDES FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD.”  Sinners do not come to the Lord having lived by His Word.  Therefore they cannot remain “just as you are.”

James (1:22) warns that those who hear the Law but do not DO (OBEY) THE LAW, DECEIVE THEMSELVES.  These are those who come as they are, hear the Law, refuse to obey it and see no reason to change, all the while calling themselves God’s people.  THIS IS THE DIRECTION THE CHURCH IS RAPIDLY MOVING.  Religious correctness is rotting the already apostic church from within.

Religious correctness is a sin pandemic that has slowly spread throughout the Institutional Church over the past 1900 years.  By gradually altering God’s Word in the minds of his converts Satan has gained power over them.  He now exercises total control over their spiritual and social lives to the point that they differ very little from the world God tells them to reject.  Of late, Satan’s deception and the forms his deceptions are taking (Rev. 12:9) have been growing exponentially.  I am one of a minutely few voices “crying out in the spiritual wilderness” of today’s so-called “church,” warning those within the “belly of the beast,” telling them to “Come out of her and be ye separate, touch not that unclean thing.”  Then, and only then, will God be their God and they will be His people (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1–please read carefully).  The Biblical God has nothing to do with self-professed Christianity.  In order to be His people one must totally and permanently segregate himself from that Satanic, two-headed religious beast.  Read God is a Segregationist.  Key word–Segregationist.  Only those willing to change from what they are to what God commands them to be (born of God–converted) will become His people.  L.J.