Fiery judgment is facing evangelical believers. Their pastors rush to assure them no harm will come to them from the hand of the Lord, that the Christian life is an easy way, filled with delight and prosperity. This is not true. The churchgoers shall suffer unbearable remorse when they discover what they have lost (while they were waiting to be raptured into Heaven!).

We of today do not know the fiery God of Israel!

Let us turn again to the Scriptures and note the exhortations of the Apostles of the Lamb. Then let us get on our face before God and repent of our lust, covetousness, love of pleasure, lying, unfaithfulness, stealing, self-will, sorcery, bitterness, rebellion against authority, the criticizing of those whom God has placed over us, and all of the other sins with which the churches are filled. No person who practices these shall inherit the Kingdom of God.

The Scriptures can never be changed—not one particle of them. Especially the Book of Revelation. The Christian who does not overcome is in danger of having his or her name blotted from the Book of Life!

As soon as we make up our mind to be one of the remnant, one of those believers who press forward in the Spirit of God when the majority of the church people are living and working in the strength and wisdom of the flesh, the Lord assists us by clothing us each day with increased ability to embrace godliness and shun sin and rebellion. The end result of such walking with Christ is that our name is engraved for eternity in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Truly, there is a reward for seeking the Lord. There is a reward for righteous behavior. Truly we are rewarded in terms of our deeds and we shall reap, when Jesus comes, what we are sowing now.

The third reward assigned to the conqueror in Sardis is that Christ will confess his name before the Father and the holy angels.

The remnant always are a testimony of the Person of God and of Christ, of Christ's ways, of His will, of His love, of His wrath. The Sardis-type assembling does not give a clear testimony, either in word or in deed, of the Person, way, and will of Christ or of the true nature of His love and His wrath.

In the human-oriented church there is shame and embarrassment associated with the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and with the Presence of Christ in the midst. Instead, there is a tendency to exalt Christ in the abstract—Christ of the past and of the future—and to elevate talented men and women. People seek the glory that comes from other people rather than the approval that comes from God alone.

To be continued.