WesleyGospel Ministries

BRING IT!!
–J.B.–

I have been admitted into the presence of God
and been made a hearer of His incorruptible voice
so great is his concern for your nation, and its duration.
–Moses on Mount Sinai, Josephus, Antiquities 5.3–

Consumed with memories that preceded today
Given a chance to bereave life that’s slipping away
Suffered through tragedy of my slow decay
Deceptive tendencies dragged my soul away

All that I know, there was no God for me
Force that shatters all, absence of mortality

Revive all my fears
Revive wasted tears
Revive void within
Revive once again

Forsaken by destiny, forsaken by my own mind
I must remove my skin to see belief in your eyes
All that I know, there was no God for me
Force that shatters all, absence of humanity

Revive all my fears
Revive wasted tears
Revive void within
Revive once again

Reach for the sky
Touch the sky
Revive a hope
For mankind

–Fear Factory, “Resurrection”–

—

The Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul,
and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.
–1 Samuel 16:14 (NIV)–

She called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”
He awoke from his sleep and thought,
“I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.”
But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
–Judges 16:20 (NIV)–

You always resist the Holy Spirit!
–Acts 7:51 (NIV)–

Cast me not away from thy presence;
and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
–Psalm 51:11 (KJV)–

How shall we escape,
if we neglect so great salvation?
–Hebrews 2:3 (KJV)–

¹⁹ Holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith. ²⁰ Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan 
to be taught not to blaspheme.
–1 Timothy 1:19-20 (NIV)–

²⁰ If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. ²¹ It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. ²² Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”
–2 Peter 2:20-22 (NIV)–

⁴ It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ who have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age ⁶ and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
–Hebrews 6:4-6 (NIV)–

²⁶ If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, ²⁷ but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. ²⁸ Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ²⁹ How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
–Hebrews 10:26-29 (NIV)–

—

John Wesley, Serious Thoughts Upon the Perseverance of the Saints. Using the Bible, he maintains the view that true converts can lose the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit; and hence lose the saving, justifying, and sanctifying grace of the Spirit, by willingly consenting to temptation and consciously reversing repentance, rejecting the substitutionary atonement that they trusted in before–the most important aspect of apostasy, and by rebelling against God after previously walking with him (Hebrews 6:4-6; 10:26-29; 2 Peter 2:20-22; 1 Timothy 1:19). The true converts previously had a holy faith walk with God, a saving relationship with God, previously; but have now consciously walked away from Christianity completely, becoming apostates–these are not tempted, overcome, addicted, or backslidden but still fighting believers–but ex-evangelicals that are into complete and 100% total rejection of the born again lifestyle and faith they had before; and are now slidden so deep into atheism, agnosticism, or some false religion, that their hearts have become reprobate, hardened, blinded, past feeling, and unrepentant. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love,” as “Come Thou Fount” says. This is not the straw man argument view of being “Saved one minute, lost the next. Saved again, lost again,” as is often misunderstood by anxious people not properly taught the Wesleyan view of apostasy. It is seen as more of a total reversal of trust in God and a lifestyle that now has a permanently abiding nature of unbelief about it, often entered into by becoming close friends with non-Christians. The saving work of the Holy Spirit is not viewed as irresistible; a person can always resist the Spirit’s saving influence (Acts 7:51).

This is why the witness of the Spirit is so important in Wesleyan theology; because a genuine walk with God, will have experiences of God’s presence and voice to occasionally authenticate the reality of a true convert’s faith in the Gospel. It was in his sermon “The Witness of the Spirit, Part II,” where Wesley taught that Christians without experiences of the Holy Spirit, with no real faith confirming that they’re children of God (Rom. 8:16), are not true converts, but are simply deists who might have very well accepted a whole lot of Bible teachings in their heads. To Wesley, a true convert has a heart-faith in the Gospel strong enough to produce experiences of the Holy Spirit, which provide him with assurance of salvation. This is understood as the “strongest proof of Christianity,” a much stronger assurance than any Calvinistic arguments about a Father’s hand holding a sheep with a spiritual vice grip. Wesley: “This is farther explained by the parallel text, (Gal. 4:6,) “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.” Is not this something immediate and direct, not the result of reflection or argumentation? Does not his Spirit cry, “Abba, Father,” in our hearts the moment it is given, antecedently to any reflection upon our sincerity; yea, to any reasoning whatsoever? And is not this the plain natural sense of the words, which strikes any one as soon as he hears them? All these texts then, in their most obvious meaning, describe a direct testimony of the Spirit” (“The Witness of the Spirit, II” 3.4).

Adam Clarke, Christian Theology, ch. 30: “Apostacy.” Wesley’s theological successor. Clarke: “You have many enemies; be continually on your guard; be always circumspect: 1. Be watchful against evil. 2. Watch for opportunities to do good. 3. Watch over each other in love. 4. Watch that none may draw you aside from the belief and unity of the Gospel. He that is self-confident is already half fallen. He who professes to believe that God will absolutely keep him from falling finally, and neglects watching unto prayer, is not in a safer state. He who lives by the moment, walks in the light, and maintains his communion with God, is in no danger of apostacy…The apostle shows here five degrees of apostacy: 1. Consenting to sin; being deceived by its solicitations. 2. Hardness of heart through giving way to sin. 3. Unbelief in consequence of this hardness, which leads them to call even the truth of the Gospel in question. 4. This unbelief causing them to speak evil of the Gospel, and the provision God has made for the salvation of their souls. 5. Apostacy itself, or falling off from the living God, and thus extinguishing all the light that was in them, and finally grieving the Spirit of God, so that he takes his flight, and leaves them to a seared conscience and reprobate mind. He who begins to give the least way to sin is in danger of final apostacy: the best remedy against this is, to get the evil heart removed; as one murderer in the house is more to be dreaded than ten without…How strange is it that there should be found any backslider! that one who once felt the power of Christ should ever turn aside! But it is still stranger that any one who has felt it, and given, in his life and conversation, full proof that he has felt it, should not only let it slip, but at last deny that he ever had it, and even ridicule a work of grace in the heart! 

Such instances have appeared among men…“But he that lacketh these things:” he, whether Jew or Gentile, who professes to have faith in God, and has not added to that faith, fortitude, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and universal love, “is blind,” his understanding is darkened, and cannot see afar off, shutting his eyes against the light, winking, not able to look truth in the face, nor to behold that God whom he once knew was reconciled to him; and thus it appears he is wilfully blind, “and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins”—has at last, through the non-improvement of the grace which he received from God, his faith ceasing to work by love, lost the evidence of things not seen: for, having grieved the Holy Spirit by not showing forth the virtues of Him who called him into his marvellous light, he has lost the testimony of his sonship; and then darkness and hardness having taken the place of light and filial confidence, he first calls all his former experience into doubt;—questions whether he has not put enthusiasm in the place of religion. By these means his darkness and hardness increase, his memory becomes indistinct and confused, till at length he forgets the work of God on his soul, next denies it, and at last asserts that the knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins is impossible, and that no man can be saved from sin (addiction) in this life. Indeed, some go so far as to deny the Lord that bought them; to renounce Jesus Christ as having made atonement for them; and finish their career of apostacy by utterly denying his godhead. Many cases of this kind have I known; and they are all the consequence of believers not continuing to be workers together with God, after they had experienced his pardoning love…Here (2 Peter 2:22) is a sad proof of the possibility of falling from grace, and from very high degrees of it too. These had escaped from the contagion that was in the world; they had had true repentance, and cast up “their sour-sweet morsel of sin;” they had been washed from all their filthiness, and this must have been through the blood of the Lamb; yet, after all, they went back, got entangled with their old sins, swallowed down their formerly rejected lusts, and rewallowed in the mire of corruption. It is no wonder that God should say, “The latter end is worse with them than the beginning:” reason and nature say, “It must be so;” and divine justice says, “It ought to be so;” and the person himself must confess that it is right that it should be so. But how dreadful is this state! How dangerous, when the person has abandoned himself to his old sins!

Yet it is not said that it is impossible for him to return to his Maker; though his case be deplorable, it is not utterly hopeless; the leper may yet be made clean, and the dead may be raised. Reader, is thy backsliding a grief and burden to thee? Then thou art not far from the kingdom of God; believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved…The backslider’s soul, before influenced by the Spirit of God, dilated and expanded under its heavenly influences, becomes more capable of refinement in iniquity, as its powers are more capacious than formerly. Evil habits are formed and strengthened by relapses; and relapses are multiplied, and become more incurable, through new habits…A soul cut off from the flock of God is in an awful state! His outward defence is departed from him; and being no longer accountable to any for his conduct, he generally plunges into unprecedented depths of iniquity, and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first…In a state of probation every thing may change. While we are in life we may stand or fall. Our standing in the faith depends on our union with God; and that depends on our watching unto prayer, and continuing to possess that faith that worketh by love. The highest saint under heaven can stand no longer than he depends upon God, and continues in the obedience of faith. He that ceases to do so will fall into sin, and get a darkened understanding and a hardened heart; and he may continue in this state till God come to take away his soul. Therefore, let him who most assuredly standeth take heed lest he fall, not only partially, but finally.”

Charles Finney, “The Loss When a Soul Is Lost.” Using the Bible, he presents Wesley’s view in another way, a sermon based on Mark 8:36: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Finney: “This danger is exceedingly great, because men have only to neglect the soul and it is surely lost. It does not require attention and labor. You can lose your soul without the least possible effort made specially for this purpose. You need not go about to commit sin in order to ensure the ruin of your soul hopelessly and forever. You need only neglect its salvation and it is surely lost. You need only be as negligent as you have been heretofore. It is only necessary that you slide along in the same thoughtless, reckless manner as in your past days and the end will be “sudden destruction and that without remedy.” As says the apostle; —“How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” There is none other name under heaven given among man whereby ye can be saved. And there is no salvation through this name but by a living faith which works by love and makes the heart pure from sin.”

Liberal theology would have Bible believers to be ashamed about hellfire preaching. Any sort of “nice vs. mean” dichotomy over this subject comes from people who reject the existence of Hell as a real place in the realm of the spirit. Step 1: A person stops believing in the existence of Hell. Step 2: A person stops preaching about Hell and eternal punishment and thinks that it’s a joke or something trivial. Step 3: A person reframes their faith in terms of “relationships” and how to best cultivate them by talking about Biblical revelation in the “nicest” way possible–that is, by avoiding the absolute meanness, divine hatred, anger, wrath, horror, and terror of eternal punishment. Something a nice unbeliever in the supernatural has no problem doing away with.

Preaching the doctrine of Hell as eternal punishment in fire is supposed to be done by those who actually believe in it; not as something they force themselves to accept, but because they actually believe in it. Emotional regulation is not the driving force when the Spirit of God gets hold of a man to preach his guts out on this revealed doctrine: it will be characterized by urgency and agony, whether it’s regarding the holy hatred of God at his enemies, or Spirit-filled preaching on the wrath and judgment of God’s omnipotent power; being then directed to repentance and the substitutionary atonement of the cross for the sinner. It is wrong to succumb to the romantic sentimentality of liberals and their unbelief about Hell’s existence; all so that the Kindness and Niceness of American cosmopolitanism and workplace tolerance, are made to sit in judgment on the doctrine of Hell, and scoff at it’s evangelists with triviality. To do such is to trifle with the Word of God, unseriously, and having no fear of the Lord in our faith! Like Obstinate and Pliable who tried to dissuade Christian from embarking on Pilgrim’s Progress. To do such is to put out of our minds the reality of death, judgment, Heaven and Hell, the afterlife, eternity, and the immortality of the soul. These revelations are the foundation for the Atonement: which is the heart of the Gospel message.

Where’d all those people go in our history books? All those people in the cemetery down the block? The same could be said about the Biblical doctrine regarding the devil. Where’d all the schizophrenics go? Locked away out of sight in some mental hospital, tormented by the demons that the local pastors are unwilling to cast out, because they just came out of a children’s ministry room filled with little kids and bright colored toys. But what will he do to scare the fornicators, adulterers, and secret child molesters in his church? Or the embezzlers, the Judas looking after the money bag? Preaching to provoke a fight or flight response! Without this there can be no conversion and no sanctification in the church of Christ! Proverbs 16:6: “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.” The God of the Bible is not so loving, and so rated G, that he’s unwilling to COMBUST AND CUT APART THE BODIES of “the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars” (Rev. 21:8; cf. Matt. 24:51). God did not choose to reveal himself to Scripture writers in a time of scientific materialism and sissified romanticism, but in an age of occultism, and barbaric ancient warfare akin to a Braveheart battle scene, or an ’80s body horror movie. In his providence, God wisely chose to reveal himself in Scripture in those ancient and “barbaric” time periods, instead of this highly sanitized culture loaded up with pills! Look at the beast, the false prophet, and the devil violently thrown into the lake that burns with fire and sulfur! Along with all those people who’s names are not found written in the book of life! (Rev. 20:10, 15). What will you say to the people of the earth now, pastor! What will you say, and care about to preach, once you become fully conscious of the raging tunnel of fire, that rotates and twists out of the attribute of God’s wrath for all eternity, and then lands on the heads of “the wicked,” for “he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest!” (Psalm 11:6). The unbelieving pastor will die and sink into A WORLD OF BARBARIC VIOLENCE AND HORRORS that he has never known! He had kept those things out of his mind while he was alive. He always avoided the horror section at Blockbuster because he “wasn’t into that” as he used to say. But this has become his eternal existence from which there is no escape. What a great fool he was to not believe what the Word of God said about it! What an eternally miserable character in a “movie” with billions of extras, in a wasteland where God forgets the offscouring of mankind, which touches the mental and physical senses; one which is not called Dante’s Inferno, but is simply a place called Hell. Extreme pain in fire, flesh eating botfly larvae, sorrow, anger, fear, incessant phobias, loud shrieks and cries, caverns, darkness, and monsters are all he will know forever! –J.B.

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Dr. William G. T. Shedd, The Doctrine of Endless Punishment (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1886; The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986).

Drs. Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson, Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Zondervan, 2004), ch. 8: “Universalism: Will Everyone Ultimately Be Saved?” (J. I. Packer).

Dr. John R. Rice, Hell: What the Bible Says About It (Sword of the Lord, 1945).

Dr. Robert Peterson, Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (P&R Publishing, 1995), ch. 8: “False Witnesses (1): Universalism.”

Rev. Harry Buis, The Doctrine of Eternal Punishment (P&R Publishing, 1957), ch. 7: “Denials and Their Answers.”

Dr. John Walvoord, “The Literal View,” in Four Views on Hell (Zondervan, 1996).

Dr. John Gerstner, Repent or Perish: With a Special Reference to the Conservative Attack on Hell (Soli Deo Gloria, 1997).

Drs. Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and the Last Things, Volume 4 (Crossway, 2024), ch. 39: “Eternal Punishment in Hell, Part 2: Objections and Applications.”

If somebody come along, and Pentecostals get ya, or the Jehovah Witnesses get ya, or Bob Feene at Houston’ll get ya, or Herbert Armstrong, somebody leads you off, you just half baked, you don’t know anything much about the Bible unless you read it.
–43:48–

As in his 1970 book False Doctrines, Dr. Rice used to put Pentecostals in the cult category, right along with Jehovah’s Witnesses. John MacArthur expressed the same view in The Charismatics, by comparing Assembly of God to the Mormons, because they both believe in continuing revelation from the Holy Spirit. The big difference is of course, that AG believes the sixty-six books of the Bible are the final authority and completed canon of Scripture; they filter through a fundamental Baptist and Wesleyan theological system; and believe that prophetic words need to be tested by Scripture to be useful (1 Cor. 14:29; 1 Thess. 5:20-21). I think that Dr. Rice’s big problem with Pentecostals was their doctrine of initial evidence. I’m a Pentecostal, and agree with Assembly of God in theology and experience; and I think it was an error for Dr. Rice to place all Pentecostals in the cult category. Especially since he used to hold evangelistic campaigns with some AG preachers. However, him stating his age as 77, this dates this sermon at 1972; and might suggest a drift towards a more negative attitude about Pentecostals that he developed over time. Dr. Rice started his evangelistic ministry right around the time Assembly of God was just getting started as a denomination; and it was probably more fundamental from the 1920s through the 1950s. Not the Purpose Driven seeker sensitive thing that it is today. The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMFI) was founded in 1952 and was the true starting point of the prosperity gospel mentality within Pentecostalism. By 1972 it had 300,000 members. As Pentecostals entered the 1970s, Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, and other televangelists had turned away from the fundamentals and mainly preached the prosperity gospel. So when Dr. Rice talks about reading your Bible so you won’t let the “Pentecostals get ya,” he’s probably thinking about the Word of Faith prosperity gospel types, which had clearly become the most popular expression of Pentecostalism through TV in the 1970s. The whole concept of TV evangelism should have been a red flag for fundamental Pentecostals, since TV was generally condemned by Baptists and Pentecostals alike. It should have been seen as a liberalizing trend toward antinomianism. It was in the early ’70s that Jim Bakker’s PTL Club also took off; and he was unfortunately a great pervert. The fundamentalist type of Assembly of God expression continued in the ministry of David Wilkerson at Times Square Church until his death in 2011; but his was considered a minority view compared with the prosperity preachers on TBN. –J.B.

PUT OFF…FILTHY LANGUAGE OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.
–Colossians 3:8 (NKJV)–

RID YOURSELVES [COMPLETELY] OF…
OBSCENE (ABUSIVE, FILTHY, VULGAR)
LANGUAGE FROM YOUR MOUTH.
–Colossians 3:8 (AMP)–

DO NOT LET UNWHOLESOME
[FOUL, PROFANE, WORTHLESS, VULGAR] WORDS
EVER COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.
–Ephesians 4:29 (AMP)–

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Richard Steele, The Religious Tradesman (Sprinkle Publications, 1989).

Larry Burkett, The Word on Finances (Moody, 1994).

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook.

John Wesley, “The Use of Money,” 1.1. The first of these is (he that heareth, let him understand!) “Gain all you can.” Here we may speak like the children of the world: we meet them on their own ground. And it is our bounden duty to do this: we ought to gain all we can gain, without buying gold too dear, without paying more for it than it is worth. But this it is certain we ought not to do; we ought not to gain money at the expense of life, nor (which is in effect the same thing) at the expense of our health. Therefore, no gain whatsoever should induce us to enter into, or to continue in, any employ, which is of such a kind, or is attended with so hard or so long labour, as to impair our constitution. Neither should we begin or continue in any business which necessarily deprives us of proper seasons for food and sleep, in such a proportion as our nature requires. Indeed, there is a great difference here. Some employments are absolutely and totally unhealthy; as those which imply the dealing much with arsenic, or other equally hurtful minerals, or the breathing an air tainted with steams of melting lead, which must at length destroy the firmest constitution. Others may not be absolutely unhealthy, but only to persons of a weak constitution. Such are those which require many hours to be spent in writing; especially if a person write sitting, and lean upon his stomach, or remain long in an uneasy posture. But whatever it is which reason or experience shows to be destructive of health or strength, that we may not submit to; seeing “the life is more” valuable “than meat, and the body than raiment.” And if we are already engaged in such an employ, we should exchange it as soon as possible for some which, if it lessen our gain, will, however not lessen our health.

John Comenius, The Labyrinth of the World, ch. 9.

By Brendon Powell. Taken from the Revival List.

There seems to be more than one Jesus to choose from these days.
Which one is the true Jesus and who am I following?

FALSE JESUS:

· There’s a ‘seeker friendly’ Jesus, he’s the one who will not
offend anyone in anyway. He loves everyone no matter what they do.

· There’s a ‘sow and reap’ Jesus, he made a covenant with man
so that man could sow his seed and reap wealth and happiness on
earth and then go to heaven when he dies.

· There’s a ‘blend in with the world’ Jesus, he wants us to look
like, act like, and be like the world in order to reach the lost.

· There’s a ‘neverending grace’ Jesus, his ‘grace’ covers us no
matter what we do or how we live.

· There’s a ‘just believe’ Jesus. As long as you truly believe
in your heart, you’re saved.

· There’s a ‘name it claim it’ Jesus. You name it; anything and
it’s yours! If you don’t get it, it’s because you lack faith. It’s your fault.

· There’s a ‘carnal’ Jesus. He doesn’t expect you to overcome
sin, he understands you’re just carnal.

· There’s a ‘heart dwelling’ Jesus. All you have to do is ask
him into your heart and voilà, he’s there. You’re going to heaven!

BIBLICAL JESUS:

· There’s the Jesus who said ‘Repent and believe the gospel,
the kingdom of God is at hand.’ -Mark 1:15

He said, ‘Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him.’ -Lk 9:23-25

He said without Him you are already condemned. -John 3:18

He said He came to save the world -John 3:16

He said unless you forsake all you have, you cannot be His disciple.
-Luke 14:33

He said if we love anyone more than Him we are not worthy of Him.
-Matt 10:37-39

He said if you love this life you’ll lose it. -John 12:25-26

He said you cannot serve God and money. -Matt 6:24

He said fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell. -Mt 10:28

He said be extreme in your war against sin. -Matt 18:8-9

He said love God with all your heart, soul and mind and your
neighbour as yourself. -Matt 22:37-39

He said He is the light of the world. -John 8:12

He said the gate is narrow and the way is difficult and few find it.
-Matt 7:13-14

He said those who believe in Him but work iniquity will be
cast out. -Matt 7:21-23

He said you’ll be hated for His name’s sake, but if you endure to
the end, you’ll be saved. -Matt 10:22

He said I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to
the Father but by Me. -John 14:6

Which Jesus do you serve?