BACKSLIDING TO HELL by Mike Peralta (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

To those who deliberately keep on sinning, as Hebrews 10:26-31 describes, I solemnly submit the following warning. It is very direct and strongly worded. But I tell you this not because I hate you but because I love you. If you were driving off a cliff unawares I would scream and yell at the top of my voice to warn you. Please receive this warning in that spirit:

If you insist on sinning and not repenting and if you die in that state, then at the Great White Throne Judgment you will find that, contrary to what some deceived teachers are promoting, Jesus’ words as written in the Bible will prevail. How shocked you will be when you learn too late the truth about the consequences of your wickedness. How shocked you will be when you learn that, contrary to the popular seductive lie that “nothing” you could possibly do, and “under no circumstances” could you forfeit your place in the Book of Life, you discover to your own eternal loss and dismay, that you have been totally deceived, and stricken from the Book.

What weeping and gnashing of the teeth will abound when you learn the horrible news that you were totally deceived when you bought into the lie that you could continue in sin and still be saved, and find out that you have lost your very soul forever - without hope, without mercy, and with the eternal realization that you will suffer in Hell without end. And all of this because you loved your sin over and above God your loving Creator, His Son Jesus who suffered a horrible death on the cross for you, and the Holy Spirit who repeatedly called and tried so desperately to bring you back to the Lord.

As you are reading this message you probably sense danger in your heart. That sense of danger is the “Fear of the Lord” and it is essential in guiding you back to the ways of the Lord. Don’t reject it. Thank God that He is still working in your heart to believe. For the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But I must forewarn you that unless you allow that understanding lead you to true repentance toward the Lord, then the enemy will come in later and steal this word from your heart. It is extremely dangerous to cast away the solemn warnings from the Lord. And believe me, as the days and weeks go by, the tendency will be to forget and hence reject “the Fear of the Lord” from your heart. But if you do cast away God’s gracious warnings away from you, and continue in your sin, then your heart will become harder and harder as time goes on. And remember death can happen at any time. There truly is no guarantee that you will live even one more day.

One of the things that I know about sin is that if you continue to think and act upon it, your spiritual sensitivity to God will keep getting duller and duller until you hardly sense God at all in your life.

God is still there at times trying to get you to repent of sin and to turn back to Him but it is very soft because of sin's dulling effect on your conscience.

I will relate to you a true story. I remember once when I was in college. I would use an alarm clock, a very loud one, to wake me up. I always “intended” to wake up early. There was a time, however, when I would ignore the alarm clock. The first few days the alarm clock would ring, loudly. I did awake and turn off the alarm clock and went back to sleep. Then in later days I did awake but then I did not even bother turning off the alarm - I simply went back to sleep. Throughout all these times I always intended to “wake up.” But I didn’t follow through on my intentions. In still the next few days I did the same thing - the alarm went off and I awoke - I heard the alarm - but again I ignored it, did not turn it off, and went back to sleep. Eventually, I got to the point where the alarm came on, and remember it was a loud alarm, but I didn't even hear it anymore, and it didn't even wake me up anymore! I became insensitive to the loud alarm clock!

This is exactly the way sin operates in your life. If you keep thinking after and committing sin and ignoring God's voice calling out to you to turn away from those sins, and to turn to Him, then eventually you get to the point where you become insensitive to God's voice. Basically your conscience is seared and is not able to sense the evil and destructive nature of the sin you are involved in.

Yes, you can continue in sin and rebellion against God and risk that your life may not end in the near future. But what if it does? You may find yourself in Hell forever. And once you are there - you are forever doomed in severe eternal painful torment. In pain more excruciating than being burned alive. This is not a comfortable subject, I know, but it is better for you to know about this now - when you can do something about it - rather than later, in Hell, where you will never be able to get out.

This message you now have in your hand is a “very load alarm clock” being given to you so that you can wake up. What will you do now that God has so graciously provided you this message? Please don’t turn off, ignore, or sleep through this alarm. Take it to heart. Repent of your sins now - now that the alarm is loud and clear upon your spiritual ears. For surely when the weeks go on and your memory gets further away from this message, will you awake when the alarm is thereby relatively silent? If you don’t repent now when this message is so strong on your mind, what would cause you to repent later when this message is much duller on your memory? This is the very reason that the Word of God says in Hebrews 3:7,8a, “So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’ ”

Please do not turn away from this message. As Hebrews 3:12 says, “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” If you ignore this message by not repenting now, you are essentially turning away from this message and thereby turning away from the living God. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. Turn back to Jesus now. He loves you so dearly. Even though you have backslidden, Jesus still loves you and wants you back. Please repent and turn back to Jesus. He desires so much to forgive you and restore you.

“Remember therefore what you have received and heard; and keep it and repent. If therefore you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with me in white; for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”, Revelations 3:3-6.

There are three resources from which we all pull doctrinal beliefs:

1) Our imagination;

2) What someone told us; or

3) The Word of God (the Bible).

Since God never lies and is never in error, we must all rely on the Word of God over and above what our imagination tells us or what someone else tells us. Even if the Word of God contradicts everything we have ever been taught by our minister or churches we must put God’s Word before everything. As it says in Romans 3:4, "Let God be true, and every man a liar."

As uncomfortable as it is to some, we all need to give heartfelt warnings to those who profess to be Christians about the eternal danger of sexual immorality.

Before getting into this, let me explain a couple of terms which Jesus and the apostle Paul taught about salvation and about who would and would not go to heaven.

The Term WICKED:

The first term we will look at is the term WICKED. To understand what the term WICKED means let us look at 5 scriptures (there are hundreds more but these should suffice):

"Now the men of Sodom were WICKED and were sinning greatly against the LORD." Genesis 13:13

"The WICKED will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous." Psalm 1:5

"You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the WICKED cannot dwell." Psalm 5:4

"Salvation is far from the WICKED" Psalm 119:155

"This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the WICKED from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 13:49-50

As you can see, in the Bible, the term WICKED always refers to those who are enemies of God, those who are separated from God -- that is those who are not saved and who go to Hell if they die without repenting.

The Term INHERIT:

The next term we will look at is the term INHERIT. According to Jesus, salvation or eternal life is INHERITed :

"And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will INHERIT eternal life. Matthew 19:29 (NIV)

In Hebrews 1:14, salvation is also referred to as being INHERITed: "Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will INHERIT salvation?" Hebrews 1:14 (NIV)

Jesus also refers to INHERITing eternal life in John 4:14 and Revelation 21:6-7.

In John 4:14, Jesus refers to eternal life as a "spring of water welling up to eternal life" : "Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14 (NIV)

In Revelation 21:6-7, Jesus also uses the term "spring of the water of life" to refer to eternal life or salvation:

"6 It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of