False teachers are God’s judgment on people who don’t want God, but in the name of religion plan on getting everything their carnal heart desires. That’s why a Joel Osteen is raised up. Those people who sit under him are not victims of him. He is the judgment of God upon them because they want exactly what he wants and it’s not God. And you can line them all up along with him. That’s where it is.
“…For ourselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.” So you get a Benny Hinn in there who all he wants to do is tell you you’re going to have a Mercedes Benz. Those people aren’t victims. He is God’s judgment upon them. They want what he wants and so they accumulate him to themselves along with all those other teachers because they teach exactly what they want. Do you see that?
You boast in the fact that God has children running around all over this country full of carnality, steeped in sin, doing whatever they want, and God does nothing according to your preaching. But they’re saved, bless God. When you preach their funeral, you’ll preach them straight into Heaven. I’ve seen it a thousand times.
I remember just awhile back, a man in my own town in Illinois who was a known drug addict, drug dealer, fornicator, absolutely everything, and he is there. He passes away. And the pastor of one of the largest Baptist churches in the area standing there at the funeral – that place is loaded with every person that’s hardly ever been in church. Drug addicts and everything you can imagine are all there in church to honor their dead friend. And that pastor gets up and he says, “I praise God! I know this young man. He sowed a lot of wild oats, but when he was 9 years old, I was there when he prayed to receive Jesus Christ as his Savior, and he’s in Heaven today. And all those lost sinners went straight out into the streets justified in their sin because of conservative evangelical Baptist preaching. That’s typical in almost every church in this country. It’s true. It’s true and it’s pathetic. It’s pathetic.
You say, well, that’s mean spirited. Let me ask you a question. My mother passed away last year. And I remember three years ago when I went to the doctor’s office with her because she thought something’s not right. And that doctor, very gentle, very noble, he looked at my mother and he says, “Ms. Washer,” he goes, “You’ve got cancer.” And he goes, “It’s radical. It’s bad. And we’ve got to move right now if we’re going to have any chance of saving your life.” I want you to know that man made my mother cry. He hurt my mom. He ruined her day. We were going to go out to get something to eat. He ruined her week. He tore my mother to pieces! But he tried to save my mother’s life. And if he hadn’t done that, if he hadn’t been so truthful, she’d have had no hope of salvation whatsoever. We’d have had no recourse at all and he could have been kicked out of his own practice for being immoral.
They ought to kick most pastors out of their practice! Because out of cowardice or self-preservation, they will not preach the Gospel. That’s all there is to it. This job’s not for cowards. It may be for wild men and fools, but it’s not for cowards. I’m telling you there’s too much at stake. Too much at stake to allow this to happen any longer. And it’d be different if it was happening in churches that denied the deity of Christ or substitutionary atonement, but this stuff goes on every day in men’s churches who hold to these truths. But when they get to the Gospel, they just seem to lose their minds. This country’s not Gospel-hardened. This country’s Gospel-ignorant because most of the preachers are Gospel-ignorant. It’s just the truth.
…That salvation is not merely the change of practice. It doesn’t even begin it. It’s not turning over a new leaf. It’s not New Year’s resolutions. It’s not this strong conviction to want to be a different person. None of that! Salvation is a supernatural work of God whereby someone really does become a new creature – really! That’s not poetry. It’s not poetry. It’s not poetry.
