Listen to the scriptural warning given to all believers, to all of God's elect; because there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in Christ:

The above passage hardly supports the overconfident, assured attitude so prevalent among us today.

The Lord Jesus Christ is not the good-natured fellow the spiritually careless, smug churchgoers believe Him to be.

A study of the fourth chapter of I Peter will reveal that our suffering in the world is Divine judgment, a judgment that is saving us so we may be prepared to meet the Lord when He appears in the clouds of heaven. This message from I Peter does not agree with current Christian teaching.

Christ is giving His Word to the elect of today. Each individual who hears the Word of God will discover before too long that the Word that has come to him is separating him from the world and—in some instances—from people whom he always had considered to be his brothers and sisters in the Lord.

The Lord of the churches is walking among the "lampstands" in the present hour. His eyes are flames of fire. He is not appearing as an amiable, soft Jesus who loves and forgives us whether or not we are doing our part in the work of redemption that is to take place in our personality.

Perhaps the question is, will the Lord Jesus actually spit from His mouth all the lukewarm believers of today, or will He accept them anyway because they are "saved by grace"? The writer is firmly persuaded, in accordance with the written Word of God, that Christ indeed will spit them out of His mouth.

How about you, dear reader? Your eternal destiny is the issue here. Will you gamble that the "prophets" of today who advise us not to worry, that after we have confessed Christ we can sit back and wait for the "rapture," actually are speaking by the Spirit of the Lord God of Heaven?

The present writer is stating that their message is not coming from the God of Heaven. Will you take a chance on being cast into outer darkness, there to gnash your teeth in an agony of remorse because of the memory of opportunities forever lost?

Or will you instead turn to the Scriptures, particularly the New Testament, and find for yourself if the Apostles of the Lamb, or the Lamb Himself, ever taught or in any manner suggested all that God requires of us is a statement of faith in Christ?

While you are examining the writings of the Apostles, do not extract one, or two, or ten verses in order to prove a point. Read the entire epistle and attempt to grasp the main thought and important ideas.

One or two passages from Paul's writings would appear to support the current overemphasis on grace; but the theme of Paul's arguments in each epistle reveals that the overemphasis on the grace of forgiveness (the notion that godly living is not critically important in our salvation, in the Kingdom of God) is a poisonous wresting of Paul's gospel.

To be continued.