Hell and damnation!

The other day while I was standing in the High Street selling ‘The War Cry’ the penny dropped (and I don’t mean into my tin).

I was watching people walk by, praying for them and trying hard to catch their eye and at the same time was wondering about their eternal destiny. The early Salvationists had no doubt whatsoever that the world was lost; such a sentiment is reflected in our doctrines ‘we believe that all men… are justly exposed to the wrath of God”. Yet in today’s world of tolerance where political correctness encourages me to ‘live and let live’ the thought that the people walking passed me “are hell-deserving sinners” is a difficult concept to get my head around, or at least it was until the penny dropped.

It is Satan that takes people to hell not God. Indeed the bible clearly shows that God has done everything he could possibly do (short of revoking free will) to prevent people from damnation and he is as committed today to saving them as he ever was. Every man and woman has free will and a life to spend in anyway they want. The Devil, wanting them to suffer as much as possible, will use any and every means at his disposal to take them to hell. There is an escape route for all who want it.

My job as a Salvation Army Corps Officers is to warn people that without Christ there is no guarantee of an eternity outside hell and offer them (in a way they can understand) the good news that Jesus wants to save them.

Of course it remains true that both we and the devil will be surprised on judgement day just who does (and who doesn’t) make the grade – scripture makes it quite clear that there are some surprises in store. However, God’s right to determine who is righteous and unrighteous doesn’t excuse us from our mission to save as many as we can.

Maybe we need to resurrect the biblical concept of a real devil and a real hell into our preaching and witness in order to rediscover that urgency that was once the compassionate engine of The Salvation Army.

Love and prayers

A

The myth of cultural relevance…

The myth of cultural relevance…

Picking up on the debate below by Teakles, Olivia, ‘No 3’ et al.

The following quote is taken from an article I wrote called ‘The past is good’, the whole article is available here. (JAC Issue 45) - It lays to rest the distracting myth of culteral releavance -

“Some argue that our earliest converts were familiar with the teachings of the bible and that society generally accepted the bible as true. Proponents of this theory would argue that if a Salvationist in 1880 confronted a sinner for long enough with the gospel the inevitable result would be repentance. This theory is well passed its sell by date and in desperate need of dismissal. Many of the Army’s earliest converts had experienced no contact with any kind of religious education whatsoever, many of them were unable to read or write and were accurately identified by the Army as belonging to an un-churched underclass. The gospel preached and the methods used in reality were no more culturally relevant to the un-churched masses then as might be the case today. The truth is that the gospel has never been culturally relevant – this was true when Judaic monotheistic Christians tried to convert polytheistic Greeks and Romans in the first century and it remains so today.

Our need is not to make the gospel (nor the Army) culturally relevant but to simply recognise the relevance of the gospel full stop.

The world needs Jesus, sinners need Jesus and it is the responsibility (and ought to be the natural desire) of the Salvationist to go after them. Without judgement, without hell, without heaven the Salvation Army is indeed redundant. We were raised up to be a mission engaged in the active redemption of the lost – quite literally plucking souls from the fires of hell. Take away man’s universal need for salvation, take away the urgency of our evangelism and we become like a hospital without patients or worse - Doctors without a cure.

In order to rediscover this essential our soldiers once again need to become ‘saved to save’. Collectively The Salvation Army needs to become a living corporate testimony to both the need for and the efficacy of Salvation. The truth is that not ‘one’ but millions of souls ‘remain without the light of God’ and God still requires an Army to go and fight for them.

O is not the Christ 'midst the crowd of today
Whose questioning cries do not cease?
And will he not show to the hearts that would know
The things that belong to their peace?
But how shall they hear if the preacher forbear
Or lack in compassionate zeal?
Or how shall hearts move with the Master's own love,
Without his anointing and seal?

In George Scott Railton’s book “Heathen England” printed in 1877, the old warrior expounding the value of open-air evangelism is asked “How many are considered necessary to undertake a procession?” – Railton’s response – ‘One!’"

Yours set apart by Christ, for the lost, in the Army.

PS - Olivia thanks for the prayer cover it is needed and appreciated :-)