Repent or Perish: The Most Misunderstood Truth in Christianity

The text emphasizes the importance of true faith and repentance in Christianity. It warns against false beliefs and actions that don’t align with the teachings of the Bible. It also highlights the significance of understanding and following God’s laws, and the need for genuine repentance for sins. Lastly, it underscores the eternal rewards of true faith and repentance, contrasting them with the fleeting pleasures of sin.
The text emphasizes the importance of accepting and understanding the gospel, which is the teaching of Christ. It highlights that everyone is a sinner by nature, but through Christ’s sacrifice, we can be forgiven. It also stresses the need for genuine repentance, which involves a change of mind and heart, leading to a change in behavior. The text encourages individuals to confess their sins, accept Christ, and strive to live a life pleasing to God, warning against false beliefs and emphasizing that faith in Christ is the only way to salvation.
The text emphasizes that true Christians will show signs of their faith through obedience and good deeds, not because they’re trying to earn salvation, but because their love for God compels them. It also highlights that Christians will face discipline when they do wrong, but this doesn’t mean they lose their salvation. The text encourages Christians to spend time studying God’s Word to truly understand Him, warning that those who don’t may have a distorted view of God. It ends by reminding readers of the sacrifices made to make the Bible accessible and urges them to use this resource to grow closer to God.

When people come to God on that last day, there’s going to be people in their judgment and they’re going to say, Lord, Lord, I cast all demons in your name. I did all these things in your name. He’s going to say it apart from me. You worker of iniquity. I never knew you. Plenty of people worship a false God that they call Jesus, a false God that they call Yahweh, a false God that they claim is the God of the Bible, yet their beliefs don’t line up with the Bible. You can’t make up beliefs about God and think that you’re worshiping the true God.

The false convert says they’re saved, they’ve been born again, they’ve been baptized, all these things, right, the external, but they live in unbroken patterns of wickedness. Now, will a Christian fall into sin occasionally? Yes. But he’s not going to continue in this unbroken pattern of wickedness, and he’s certainly not going to stand on his soapbox and declare that his sin is not actually sin, even though the Bible says it’s an abomination. Temptation will come, you will struggle, but the amazing thing about being a born again Christian is that when you come to God and you confess your sin and you repent, you have to repent.

I don’t care what anybody tells you. The gospel without repentance is not the gospel, because first you have a changed mind, and that changed mind, that changed heart bears fruit of repentance. That’s biblical. Repentance has always been preached in the New Testament. It is throughout the New Testament, repent and be baptized. Plenty of people believe in Christ, and they’re going to be in hell. Demons believe in Christ. Satan believes in Christ, and they know he’s the Messiah. So just believing that Jesus paid for your sins, no. This is Justin Fall, and you’re watching End Times Productions.

We live in this time period where people think that evangelizing is just running out on the street and say, hey man, Jesus loves you, let me pray for you. That’s not the gospel. Matter of fact, that’s not even a mutated resemblance, toxic avenger version of the gospel. The gospel is that we are lawbreakers, and we are literally sitting here awaiting God’s wrath because we have turned our backs on our creator, and we have broken his law, and we have chosen iniquity and the pleasures, the fleeting pleasures of sin, over Christ. When you run up to somebody and you say, hey Jesus loves you, he’s got this amazing plan for your life, well first of all, you aren’t even qualified to make that statement.

If Jesus loves this person and has an amazing plan for their life, you don’t know. That’s extremely presumptuous. The better thing is to come up to somebody, show them that they’ve got a problem, and you’ve got the solution. If you just tell them they’re a sinner, and hey look man, Jesus died for your sins, hey that’s great. That is essentially a form of the gospel, Jesus died for your sins, absolutely. But that method doesn’t always work because people get offended. People hear that, like who the heck are you? What are you coming up here telling me about my sin? You don’t even know me, and you’re just running up on me, telling me that I’m a sinner and I need Jesus, no I’m good bro.

See, that’s the problem with that approach. Jesus actually taught us the approach with the rich own ruler, and throughout the entirety of the New Testament, Jesus was teaching the law properly. What’s the law there for? The law is there to show us, it’s a schoolmaster to point us forward to Christ. Now, 1st Timothy 1.8, the law is actually good when one uses it lawfully. Okay, what does that mean? How do you use the law lawfully? What we’re told in another place in the New Testament that the law shuts the mouth of every man, and we’re also told that the law evens the playing field, that no one has anything to say because the law silences their mouths.

You have nothing to say when the law is brought to you because you in fact, me in fact, everyone in fact, is a lawbreaker. We have broken God’s moral law. Congratulations, you’re just like the rest of us, right? We’ve all done it. You’ve done it, I’ve done it, your mother’s done it, your grandmother, your grandfather. We come from a long line of lawbreakers, and it goes all the way back to the original lawbreaker, Adam. Eve, technically 1st, but Adam and Eve. So, we are born into this culture of lawbreakers. All of us have broken God’s law.

Not one man is without sin, except for the God man, Jesus Christ. So, you go to someone, and you can easily open up a conversation with them over any small thing. Most people like to be asked questions about what they believe. It validates the fact that they’re valuable. Oh, wow, somebody cares what I believe. So, hey, do you have some kind of religious background? What do you think happens when you die? Great way to start the conversation. Quickly, you can move into the fact that there is a God that you believe there is a God, and that there is coming a day of judgment, where we are all going to give an account for the things that we’ve done in this life.

Now, you don’t have to go into great deep theology here. You don’t have to go into the judgment seat of Christ versus the white throne judgment. I mean, this is just not the time or the place. The gospel is simple. This person here is just like you, and you need to tell him he’s just like you. He’s a lawbreaker, and you can ask him, have you ever told a lie? And really, the harder ones are getting into the non-physical acts, such as the lust, the hate. Everyone has lusted. Everyone is hated, and according to Jesus, that’s murder.

That’s adultery in the heart, which is just as wicked as if you’re physically doing it. So, technically, looking at pornography is fornication, and that’s lust, and that’s adultery. Hating someone. Hating someone, that’s murder in the heart. Jesus said this. Again, the law manifests so much deeper into your understanding when you realize that it’s dealing with the moral issues of your heart. So, prove to this person, show them that they have broken at least one of the Ten Commandments. And, you know, most people have broken most of the Ten Commandments. Everybody, if they’re being honest, is a liar, some form of cheater, some form of idolature, some form of blasphemer at heart, adulterer, murderer.

I mean, nobody can escape the law of God, and that’s what the Scripture teaches us. So, if you’re going to use the law lawfully, it’s good. If you’re born again, it’s in here, it’s part of the New Covenant, it’s promised. So, the moral law of God, which was literally the undergirding of the entire Scripture, from the old all the way through the new, we also have this amazing idea that when you have the law in your heart, it becomes part of your conscience to where you know what’s acceptable to God and what’s not.

Because you no longer have a heart of stone, God changes your heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh. And He inscribes those laws into the flesh of your heart, and that’s shown in our conscience. But even the natural man, who’s not been regenerate, the unsaved, the unborn again, the rebellious man at heart, still has a basic form of conscience that God has put on every man’s heart. And so, you want to appeal to that person’s conscience, not to their intellect. Let me give you an example. You don’t want to run up to a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness and try to dismantle their religious system.

That’s not evangelism. You don’t want to run up to somebody who has a different view on sexuality or drug use or anything and try to dismantle their beliefs. That’s not the gospel. The gospel is show them that they’ve broken God’s law. Use God’s law lawfully. Use the Ten Commandments lawfully. Show them that they’ve broken God’s law. And now explain to them how, even though they’ve been separated from God and they are literally awaiting God’s wrath, there’s a payment that has been made eternally, once and for all, to completely reconcile their soul unto God.

And also, every soul is eternal. One to judgment. One to reward. I’d prefer to be eternally spending my life with God and Christ. When I leave this earth, I’m going to be with Christ forever. You’ve got heaven. You’ve got the new earth. You’ve got these amazing things in Scripture about the promises, the inheritance of the believer, the riches and the glories of Christ Jesus that we’ve become partakers of. And it’s an even greater inheritance than you might get in this life. It’s like someone coming to you and saying, hey, you just inherited a million dollars from some long lost uncle.

That’s a drop in the bucket to the inheritance that we’re going to have in Christ for eternity. Your money in this earth, it’s going to perish. Your health, it’s going to perish. But once you move past this temporary short term life, you have eternity. Everyone’s soul is going to go with Christ or eternal damnation. Eternal death. Literally the pains of death eternally wrought out. Jesus taught this. The point is, foodies with your friends, with your co-workers, with some random person on the street who’s going straight to hell unless they receive the gospel.

The good news is that you are not responsible to soul when this is good. God already knows who’s going to get saved and who’s not. God knows who his elect is and who’s not. The good news is that that’s not your business. All your business is is to share the gospel and move on. Plant those seeds. You’re not the soul when you’re here. God is. You’re a seed planner. How will they get saved if they haven’t heard the gospel? How will they hear the gospel if there’s not a preacher to preach it? Romans.

The Romans wrote, preach the gospel. Tell the truth of Christ. Show someone that they’re a lawbreaker and show them how there is now recompense being made by Christ so that they can have reconciliation out of God. That’s the gospel. The gospel is that we are lawbreakers by nature, but Christ came, fulfilled the perfect law, became the perfect ultimate sacrifice, and is made a way to where we don’t have to go to a temple anymore to have these priests offering sacrifices annually for our wickedness. Matter of fact, God said in Jeremiah, I believe, and in other places as well, he’s going to remember our iniquity no more because that coming wants and for all sacrifice is going to completely wipe away all of our iniquity.

Every sin that you’ve committed, paid for in Christ, if you profess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Christ is God and that he was raised from the dead after being sacrificed for your sins, God raised him from the dead on the third day. Not intellectual belief. Plenty of people believe in Christ and they’re going to be in hell. Demons believe in Christ. Satan believes in Christ and they know he’s the Messiah. So just believing that Jesus paid for your sins, no, you have to believe in your heart.

That’s where regeneration takes place. These things are lacking from the modern gospel message. So many people want to water down. Jesus is really cool and he loves you. He just no, he is holy and he’s righteous and he’s coming back with wrath and you want to be on the right side of that. You don’t get fire insurance. That’s the stupidest garbage that came out of the Hal Lindsey 70s and 80s. Oh, brother, just get that fire insurance, man. Just say this little prayer. No, it’s not fire insurance. If your gospel message is getting fire insurance, you don’t have the real gospel.

The real gospel is recognizing your sinner and wanting to be reconciled to your creator out of love. You are not saved because of good works. You are saved unto good works. Good works is not just doing good things, but it’s obeying God. He saves you. He enables you with the Holy Spirit. That enabling allows you to do obedience unto him. It allows you to repent. It allows you to know the truth from the error. My encouragement, make your profession in Christ, not an audible profession only, but through your mouth and in your heart.

That’s the true gospel. Receive Christ today. People can receive him right now, but they have to admit their sins. They have to recognize that their sin is enmity. It’s division against God. The modern gospel message just wants to avoid all of that. If someone’s watching this right now and they feel that tugging at the heart, that’s God. That’s the Lord preparing the soil of their heart to receive the gospel. Now repentance is key. Modern evangelism has really lost this or they’ve gone way extreme on it, not being truthful with what it means to repent.

Repentance is part of getting saved. I don’t care what anybody says. Repentance has always been preached in the New Testament. It is throughout the New Testament. Repent and be baptized. Now I also want to say baptism isn’t just a water baptism, but you’re actually baptized into Christ, meaning it’s part of your born again experience. You are literally immersed into Christ. So if someone’s watching this and they feel that drawing, that tugging at their heart, now’s the time to just get on your knees and just pray and say, lawyer, I recognize that I’m a sinner and I recognize that I struggle with all these temptations.

And I recognize that I do deserve judgment. See, you can’t come to Christ until you fully believe in your heart that you deserve God’s wrath for your sin. Once you recognize that you’re a sinful monster in God’s eyes because of your flesh, just like me, just like you, just like everyone, we are all putrid. Matter of fact, the best works we can do in this life are like bloody rags. We read in Isaiah, the best of your good works amount to nothing in God’s eyes. You cannot please God outside of faith and you cannot have faith outside of Christ.

There is no other way. Abraham’s descendants, they’re trying to climb and jump into the gate without Christ. They can’t. That’s a thief and a robber. You come through Christ, he’s the doorway. Admit your sinner, confess your sins before the Lord. Now the word repent in Greek is metanoia. It literally can mean a change of mind. But when you change your mind, your actions change. If you really have a change of mind, and remember it, throughout scripture, there’s a connection between mind and heart. There’s this connection of the central core of your mind and your heart kind of being interwoven.

And so if you have a change of mind, you’re having a change of heart, and that means that your behavior is going to change. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to struggle anymore. God knows we all struggle. And Jesus was tempted, yet he never sinned. Because if he would have sinned, he would not have been the perfect sacrifice. So temptation will come, you will struggle. But the amazing thing about being a born again Christian is that when you come to God and you confess your sin and you repent, you have to repent.

I don’t care what anybody tells you. The gospel without repentance is not the gospel. Because first you have a changed mind. And that changed mind, that changed heart, bears fruit of repentance. That’s biblical. You will struggle. Again, I can’t say that enough. You will struggle. You will be tempted, and you will fail. But you have a mediator between you and the Father, and that is Jesus Christ. And that blood covers your failures. But here’s the thing that you really need to, this is awesome. You want to be equipped. Christ will equip you that no matter what you go through, whatever temptation you face, God will always provide a way of escape.

So you really don’t have an excuse to be sinning continually. And if you think you can sin, this is another sign of people that are false converts. Okay, false converts says they’re saved, they’ve been born again, they’ve been baptized, all these things, right, the external, but they live in unbroken patterns of wickedness. Okay, now, will a Christian fall into sin occasionally? Yes. But he’s not going to continue in this unbroken pattern of wickedness. And he’s certainly not going to stand on a soapbox and declare that his sin is not actually sin, even though the Bible says it’s an abomination.

Okay, if the Bible says God hates it, he hates it, don’t justify it. If you justify it, that’s fruit, that’s evidence that you are not God’s. Going back to the idea of you creating an idol in your mind of who God is. And let’s not be mistaken here. Plenty of people worship a false God that they call Jesus, a false God that they call Yahweh, a false God that they claim is the God of the Bible, yet their beliefs don’t line up with the Bible. You can’t make up beliefs about God and think that you’re worshiping the true God.

People who are being drawn by God follow that drawing, press into that, confess your sins before the Lord, ask him to equip you to repent fully of those things. And he will sanctify you, he will set you apart, and he will equip you to be able to take the way of escape. He will always give an escape route whenever temptation comes your way. But you got to take it. And let me also say, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes along. The believer’s responsibility is great. And you’re going to be now accountable and responsible for far more than they have ever been responsible for in their lives before coming to Christ.

When people come to God on that last day, there’s gonna be people in their judgment. And they’re gonna say, Lord, Lord, I cast out demons in your name, I did all of these things in your name, he’s gonna say, depart for me, you worker of iniquity, I never knew you. He’s not gonna say, depart for me, I knew you for a little while, and then you lost your salvation. No, that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, depart for me, I never knew you, worker of iniquity. Never knew you, a little bit different than I knew you for a couple years until you rebelled against me, and you send your way out of this? No.

A true Christian is going to cling to the Lord, there’s gonna be fruit, there’s gonna be evidence. It’s kind of like, when people get saved, there will be signs. Some of the first fruit that you experience as a Christian is obedience. Your heart wants to obey God. It’s kind of like, if you love someone, you want to do nice things for them. You know, someone who loves their spouse, they’re not going to come in and slap their spouse in the face. Oh, I’m really sorry, I love you, I love you, you know, let me just slap you around a little bit.

No, if you love someone, you’re going to want to do right to them. They’re going to want to do what makes them happy. And listen, God’s law is perfect, his moral law is perfect. We can’t keep it perfectly, but in Christ, that’s imputed unto us, meaning that God looks at us through the righteousness of Christ, if we are born again. And if you’re born again, there’s nothing that can snatch you out of his hands. Doesn’t mean you’re going to be perfect. And let me also say, if there was a sin that could actually cause you to lose your salvation, that would mean that there’s something that would cause you to earn your salvation by good works.

Salvation is not by works, it is faith. It is a grace that we receive by faith that we’re saved unto good works. And when we do wrong, as Christians, God will discipline us. Matter of fact, the Christian suffers great chastisement for sinning. You’re not losing your salvation there, but you are definitely going to be disciplined. That is a fact, that is a biblical concept. Come to God, be obedient. The fruit of the Spirit starts to blossom. You’re going to have faith, you’re going to have peace, you will have challenges, and you will have opposition, but you’ll have a peace that will literally surpass all understanding.

And when your mind gets into the stress of the world, you have an escape in Christ. You can go get alone, get in the Word of God. And I want to say this, if you’re spending your time reading all these books and watching all these movies and shows, but you’re not even spending time in God’s Word, like that really shows kind of a magnified summary of your faith. If you really love God, you’re going to get to know God, you’re going to study His Word, you’re going to want to grow close to God based on what His Word says to do.

And that’s one of the things I find very disheartening is a lot of people claim to be Christians, but their Bible is recovered in dust. You know, or the only Bible they have is a Bible app, and they only pull it out on their phone when they’re at church. That’s not Christianity. I’d like to remind people real briefly before we close that the Bible came to us through much bloodshed. We have this tool in our hands. We have it available everywhere we look. The Scripture is everywhere. Why are we not reading our Bibles? So basically, what we have is a culture of people calling themselves Christians whose complete understanding of God, supposedly the author of their faith, is even based on His Word.

So we have this revealed Word. That’s how we know who God is and how He operates. Without God’s Word, literally, there’s a very good chance, depending on who you’re listening to as teachers, that you have created a false God in your own mind, in your own image, because you don’t read His Word, and so you have false beliefs of who God is. So I want to make that real clear. People died getting the Bible put into English. Get the Bible, get to know God. Period. Don’t call yourself a Christian. If you’re not spending time getting to know God in His Word.

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