How else do the biblical principles considered in the first part of this chapter help us understand our role in evangelization and building God’s kingdom?
If God has so designed that creation, conscience and calamity are all calling humanity to repentance, then those who preach the gospel need to be certain they aren’t proclaiming a contradictory message. Yet so many are! Their preaching directly contradicts everything that God is already trying to say to sinners! Their message of unbiblical grace promotes the idea that holiness and obedience are unimportant for ultimately obtaining eternal life. By not mentioning the necessity of repentance for salvation, by emphasizing that salvation is not of works (in a way that Paul never meant it to be understood), they actually work against God, leading people into a deeper deception that often seals their eternal doom, because they are now certain they are saved when they in fact are not. What a tragedy, when God’s messengers actually work against the God they claim to represent!
Jesus commanded us to preach “repentance for forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). That message reaffirms what God has been saying to the sinner all of his life. The preaching of the gospel cuts people to their hearts and offends those whose hearts are hard. Yet the soft modern gospel that informs people how much God loves them (something no apostle ever mentioned when preaching the gospel in the book of Acts), misleads them to think that God is not angry or offended at them. They are often told that they simply need to “accept Jesus.” But the King of kings and Lord of lords does not need our acceptance. The question is not, “Do you accept Jesus?” The question is, “Does Jesus accept you?” The answer is, unless you repent and begin to follow Him, you are abhorrent to Him, and only His mercy forestalls your destiny in hell.
In light of the modern gospel that so cheapens God’s grace, I cannot help but wonder why so many nations, ruled by leaders who have been given their authority to rule by God (and this is not debatable; see Dan. 4:17, 25, 32, 5:21; John 19:11; Acts 12:23; Rom. 13:1), have closed their nations completely to Western missionaries. Could it be because God is trying to keep the false gospel out of those countries?
