To have God be one's God, and to be God's Son (Revelation 21:7)

God is the God of the conqueror. He is delighted to be the God of the conqueror.

God is not the God of the covetous Christian. His money is his god.

God is not the God of the lusting Christian. His flesh is his god.

God is not the God of the lying Christian. Satan is his god.

God is not the God of the self-seeking Christian. He himself is his own god.

God is the God of the overcomer.

A number of years ago, during World War II, a young man serving in the armed forces of his country was seeking the meaning of life. He had been raised in a home in which the parents did not know the Lord, although they were good to him and did what they could for him.

While in the military service he met some men who had been taught the way of salvation. They explained the Gospel of Christ to him. The Holy Spirit was working, and the seeker found himself one night in a church service being held on the base.

The chaplain was teaching: "And ye will dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye will be my people, and I will be your God" (Ezekiel 36:28).

At this point the Holy Spirit came on the young man. The love of God filled him. It sounded to him as though God were saying, "I greatly desire to be your God, if you are willing to be My people."

He exclaimed half aloud, "Did God say that?"

It seemed to him this was the reverse of what it should be. We humans should be the ones asking God if He would consent to be our God, not God asking us if we would be His people. The love being expressed by His Creator touched him deeply.

After the service he walked from the Quonset hut. The stars shone more brightly than ever before. The night air was alive with a new Spirit. He had been born again by the Word of God.

Two or three weeks later, feeling a need to hear directly from this God who expressed such love, he tried something that he does not advocate today because it could lead to a superstitious approach to the study of the Scriptures.

He asked, "O God, speak to me."

Then he flipped open the Bible at random and put his finger down blindly.

Under his finger were the words:

My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: for length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them on the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man. (Proverbs 3:1-4)

The truth burned into him as though God were talking directly to him: "My son, forget not My law; but let thine heart keep my commandments."

Obedience to His Word is all that God requires of any of us. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us His Kingdom. If we will obey Him He will be our God.

How wonderful that God should be our God! How wonderful that we should become a son of God, that God should become our Father!

How could a person, in the face of such love and glory, accept the grand Divine pardon and then live unto himself, trusting that God in His mercy will overlook his continued insincerity and disobedience?

Should we not lay aside all else and press forward in Christ so we might grasp that for that Christ has grasped us?

Many times people ask us, "Will I be saved anyway even though I fail God?"

We can understand an individual would seek the assurance that even though he is weak, God will deal with his shortcomings and save him from his sin and rebellion. The Scripture teaches us that God will work tirelessly to strengthen the bruised reed and renew the smoking flax. The Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in His wings.

God will deliver those who seek Him diligently.

But another type of individual is asking if we will be saved whether or not he chooses to serve God in the world, or if it is possible for a person having once been a Christian to end up being lost to the Kingdom of God.

This inquirer is seeking to make a deal with God. He is attempting to determine if he can love the world and still not be cast into Hell. He wants to live like the world but not suffer the fate of the world. He wants to have fellowship with Satan, to worship Satan, to do the works of Satan, but not suffer Satan’s punishment.

He does not love God. There is little of the love of God in him. He loves the world and the things of the world. He is an enemy of God.

He has been taught that if he will acknowledge (as the demons acknowledge) that Christ has been raised from the dead, he will be saved and cannot be lost in the Day of the Lord. He makes the Word of God of none effect by his traditions.

Neither he nor the demons will be saved in the Day of Christ.

He does not love God, Heaven, or the saints. He loves and practices sin. He loves the ways of Satan. He is a child of Hell, not a child of Heaven.

He desires to know if he will go to Heaven when he dies, even though he lives his life on earth according to the ways of Hell.

If the truth be known, he does not really care what God’s attitude is toward him, if he is pleasing God or is not pleasing God. His only concern is that he will not be punished.

There are many preachers and teachers who will assure him he is saved by his "faith" in Christ and can never be lost.

We are lifting up our voice in warning: This individual and the multitude of professing Christians whom he represents are lost. They are not saved. They love the things of Hell and are filled with the spirit of Hell. Will their profession of "faith" save them?

The preaching of today is that the Lord Jesus came to deliver us from Hell. There is not one passage of Scripture to support this preaching.

The Lord Jesus did not come to deliver us from Hell. He came to deliver us from sin. If we will seek victory over sin through the Lord Jesus we do not have to worry about Hell. But if we persist in our sinning we will inherit Hell, whether or not we are a Christian, because Hell is God’s prison where He incarcerates the wicked. We have not borne the fruit of righteousness and so we shall be cut out of the Vine, out of Christ.

In many instances people of today are not seeking to be delivered from sin but from the consequences of sin.

The demons cried out that Jesus is the Holy One of God. Does their "faith" save them?

The "damsel possessed with a spirit of divination" proclaimed, "These men are the servants of the most high God, that shew unto us the way of salvation" (Acts 16:17). Did her "faith" save her?

If we are a child of Hell it is manifest, whether or not we profess to be saved by Christ.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day lived by the Law of Moses, the man of God. But it was Satan, not Moses, who was their father. It is our actions, not our beliefs, that reveal truly the kingdom to which we belong.

"But," some will question, "Isn’t it a fact that when we receive Christ we pass from death to life? Isn’t it scriptural that there is no condemnation on those who are in Christ?"

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24)

Let us consider once again what Jesus means by this statement, for it is used as a cornerstone of Christian theology.

Christ Himself Is the Resurrection and the eternal Life.

When any human being "hears" in his spirit the Word of Christ, he comes to life, just as happened to the young man in the Quonset hut. Christ forgives all of his sins. He has passed from spiritual death to spiritual life. There is no condemnation resting on him.

At this point he makes a choice.

Either he begins to walk in this new resurrection life that has been given to him, or else he continues to live as he always has, trusting that when he dies he will go to a place of joy rather than to a place of grief.

If he keeps on walking "in the Lord," being taught each day by the Holy Spirit, feeding on Christ, obeying the elders, reading the Scriptures, obeying the Father, he will pass from death to life; death to life; death to life; until finally there is nothing left in his personality that is not of God. He has become a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new and all things are of God.

He has attained the first resurrection from the dead. When Jesus comes, there is no need for him to be reviewed and evaluated. He has been continuously reviewed and evaluated throughout his lifetime on the earth. He is ready now to be invested with Divine authority and power. The crown of life is his.

But if the individual makes a profession of Christ and is baptised in water, and then turns again to the world, he will be worse off than if he had never started in the way of righteousness. He is as a dog returning to its vomit (II Peter 2:22). He is not abiding in Christ, in eternal life. He is walking in eternal death. The Divine condemnation rests on him as well as on all who are practising sin, whether or not they make a profession of faith in Christ (Romans 2:6-11).

What would have happened to the young man of the Quonset hut and the flipped-open Bible if he had promptly proceeded to forget God’s law; to despise God’s commandments; to allow mercy and truth to forsake him? Would the Lord have continued to bless him and then have received him into glory? Not if the Apostle Paul has written the truth of God!

God will chasten the sinning Christian and work with him. Trouble will come on him. If he repents, Christ will lead him toward growth in the Spirit. But if he rebels against the Spirit of God, choosing instead to pursue the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life, he will be cut out of the vine (John 15:2).

Most Christian people appear to be somewhere in between the two extremes. They are not living as hundredfold overcomer's; neither are they walking totally in the flesh and disobeying God in every area of their lives. They are lukewarm and will receive the reward of lukewarmness.

What the majority of believers must understand is that we will be judged according to our conduct in the world. The reality of judgement and rewards should cause us to think seriously of the quality of our Christian walk.

The wrath of God hovers over the nations of the earth in the present hour. The righteous scarcely will be saved in the days to come. All of us need to repent, confess our sins, and turn again to the Lord. God’s grace in Christ is not primarily a ticket to Heaven, although it may function that way in the case of a last-minute, deathbed repentance and confession of faith.

Rather, God’s grace in Christ is our opportunity to escape the authority and power of sin and to choose to serve righteousness; to press vigorously into the Kingdom of God, into the doing of God’s will in the earth as it is in Heaven. Being a saint requires all of our strength and attention, not just a token service while the main interests and efforts of our life are elsewhere.

Receiving the Gospel of Christ does not diminish God’s demands on us, it increases God’s demands on us. The new covenant does not make fewer demands on us than was true of the old, the new covenant makes far, far greater demands on the worshipper than has been true of any other covenant or relationship of God with people. Never before has it been true that God has required that we set aside our life and follow Him with a perfect heart. Yet this always has been true of those rare individuals, such as Abraham, who somehow gained a true perspective of man’s relationship to God.

To whom much is given, of him shall much be required.

The heathen sinner will be beaten with few lashes.

The born-again, Spirit-filled believer who does not take up his or her cross and follow Christ with a pure heart will be beaten with many lashes.

Beaten when, where, with what kind of lashes?

We cannot say at this time. But we know the whipping will take place sometime, somewhere, and it will be painful!

We cannot state for certain the sun will rise in the morning, or if it does, that we will be alive to witness its rising.

But there is one thing we do know.

There is a time coming in the life of every individual when he or she will hear the voice of the Son of God. He will awaken from the dead, and then he will stand before Christ (for the Father has committed all judgement to the Son).

What will it be like when we stand before Christ?

Can you imagine the joy that will flood the face of Christ when He awakens Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Peter, John, Paul, John Wesley?

"Well done!" The bells of Heaven will echo the triumphant cry of praise and congratulations. But other "believers" will face a wrathful Christ.

"You disobeyed me constantly. Many, many times I urged you to go into the harvest and labour for me. But you found one excuse after another.

"Do you see that multitude of souls waiting over there? They were to be your inheritance. Now I must deal with them in terms of their ignorance. Were it not for your disobedience, there would have come forth fine fruit for my table from among those people —precious souls who would have grown in faith and in the knowledge and love of God.

"You wicked servant! You are not worthy of the Kingdom of God. You took care of yourself on the earth, holding back the wages due to those who laboured in your employ. You lived in luxury while others about you perished in spiritual and material poverty. But now many of them are rejoicing in the Kingdom of their Father while your inheritance will be misery and darkness.

"Take him away! Cast him into outer darkness. He will not be allowed to share in My glory." If you do not tremble at the thought you probably are walking in deception. Your teachers may comfort you with the idea that you are in a dispensation of grace and no harm can come to you. They are deceived — blind leading the blind.

Dear reader, when you are awakened from your sleep in the dust of the earth, what will be your recompense when you are judged?

Not once in the Gospel accounts, that we are aware, does the Lord Jesus permit or deny entrance into the Kingdom of God to any person on the basis of a theological statement of faith in Christ. The issue always is our conduct in the world.

When Christ exhorts the churches, as described in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation, He states repeatedly: "I know thy works."

According to the Gospel accounts and the Book of Revelation, Christ will not refer to anyone’s position concerning the virgin birth, anyone’s stance regarding a pre millennial or post-millennial coming, or anyone’s view of the holy Trinity. The great issue of the Kingdom of God is not theological understanding, nor will our understanding or lack of it carry much weight in the Kingdom.

The concern of the Day of the Lord is our behaviour. Were we a good, kind, generous person, serving the Lord Jesus faithfully; or were we an evil, treacherous, grasping, selfish individual, walking in self-will and pride? God’s requirements for His fellowship with people remain unchanged from the time of Adam and Eve.

The greatest single error in Christian understanding is the belief that the people of today have been exempted from God’s standard of behaviour because they have professed faith in Christ; that God will accept an assent to the facts of Christ’s death and resurrection in place of righteous, holy, and obedient behaviour (Ezekiel 18:1-32).

This may prove to be the greatest heresy of all. Is it possible that the churches can understand, before the Day of the Lord, that they are teaching and living that which God never will accept?

To what type of destiny is your behaviour leading you? What are you sowing in this life?

If you have never come to Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you must do so at once. The individual who rejects the salvation of the cross of Calvary will certainly come face to face with an angry Creator.

If you have been a Christian for a while, ask God today to give you a "report card." Ask Him to let you know in some manner how well you are pleasing Him. Ask the Father to enable you to prepare yourself to enter His royal Presence. Ask Christ to show you what to expect at His judgement seat. He will enable you to make corrections in your behaviour now.

It will be too late to make corrections when you are standing before Him in the Day of the Lord. Let us pray with David:

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalms 139:23,24)

God desires to be your God. Would you like to become His son?

You can. You can become a true son of God, an heir of all of the works of God’s hands.

You can, if that is what you desire above all else.