The Lord says about those who call themselves by His name but refuse to obey Him that they are “ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the Truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). Bearing in mind that the apostles wrote TO the church ABOUT the church, Truth-seekers need to examine the 6 versus leading up to this statement. This was the Apostle Paul describing the church of that day to Timothy. He was preparing the young evangelist for the task ahead of him. In Galatians 1:6-9 Paul explained to the Galatian church why the once-holy institution created by Jesus Christ had fallen away from Him–the people had embraced a perverted gospel, which was in reality the true gospel that had been altered to please religious men. One of Satan’s methods of altering the Scriptures is to convince people to read until they find what makes them feel good, then stop reading. The Truth is often in the details found at the end of a verse, Romans 6:23 being a prime example. This series concerns one of God’s statements often used by the church to “prove” that sin is not only acceptable, it is inevitable.

One of the Lord’s statements used by sin-excusers is Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That verse has been quoted billions of times by billions of church people. With the possible exception of a few thousand true saints historically, the final two Words have been ignored by the bulk of professing Christendom. The spiritual formula for attaining eternal life is simple enough for a child to understand. Yet all of us, myself included until God opened my eyes, have not paid attention to the caveat He placed at the end–“our Lord.” Without those 2 Words, the previous 18 are meaningless. Therein lies professing Christendom’s problem relative to God’s life instructions found in His Holy Bible. Professing Christians accept Jesus as their Savior but reject Him as their Lord. His formula works if, that is, we can take Him at His Word, which the church refuses to do. This website and my YouTube site are dedicated to proving this truth to the victims of Catholicism/Protestantism.

The church’s version of Romans 6:23 goes something like this: “Before I was saved and born again the wages of my sin was death. But now that the fix is in, the wages of my sin is eternal life.” From whence came this version of Romans 6:23? To find its origin one must return to the Garden of Eden where the Serpent (Satan) taught the deadly “truth” to Eve. He had asked her if she and Adam could “… eat of every tree of the garden?” Eve replied that there was one tree whose fruit they were forbidden by God to eat, lest they die. Satan was quick to correct that fallacy. He told her that God had lied to her, that she and Adam could partake of the forbidden fruit and “You shall not surely die.” In other words, because of their close, face-to-face, Creator-to-created relationship with their God, Adam and Eve could defy God by doing what He had specifically commanded them not to do and still live forever with Him in paradise.

This was spiritual music to their ears. Instantly, God’s voice began to fade away. The symphony coming out of the Serpent’s mouth gently scratched their itching ears, effectively drowning out their Creator’s harsh, dictatorial voice which had negatively affected their self-image. After hearing such boss-like Words from Him they needed counseling. And a counselor was standing by with enough feel-good to make all the bad go away. God had hurt their feelings; the Serpent was there to sooth them. Today his surrogates fill the airwaves with his soothing “Jesus loves you, so it’s all good” message. Am I the only one whose skin is crawling?  L.J.