Are you prepared to pay the price? When you depart from wickedness you will make yourself a prey of the church people. Israel always murders her prophets.

What Christ begins He finishes. He is the Alpha. He started salvation on the cross of Calvary. Christ is the Omega. He will bring all those believers who follow Him to the standard of holiness He requires. There shall be a Church without spot or wrinkle. The only question is, will you and I be part of it? We shall if we don't quit; if we get up on our hind legs and fight the good fight of faith.

"I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely."

This promise applies to the Church as well as to those who will come to the Church for help. The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come."

The water of life is the Holy Spirit of God.

We have made the Christian salvation an escape from Hell and a ticket to Heaven. There is a real Hell where the rich man is suffering. There is a real Heaven where God, Christ, the saints, and the holy angels are.

But the emphasis of the New Testament is not an escape from Hell and admission to Heaven. Before you start screaming, get out your New Testament and read what it says. You will not be able to find one passage to show that accepting Christ delivers us from Hell and admits us to Heaven. You will find many passages that speak of eternal life.

Even the story of Lazarus and the rich man is not about accepting Christ but about selfishness.

Hey! Are you there? We are not preaching the Gospel according to the New Testament today but an assortment of unscriptural traditions.

The Gospel does not emphasize the move from Hell to Heaven but from death to life.

God loved the world and gave His Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life.

"Well, aren't perishing and Hell the same thing? Aren't eternal life and Heaven the same thing?"

Of course not. Christ had eternal life while He was on the earth. How then can Heaven and eternal life be the same thing?

While we are alive on the earth without Christ we are spiritually dead. Right? But we are not in Hell (as yet). How then can spiritual death and Hell be the same thing?

Eternal death and eternal life are not places, they are states of being. Can you live with that?

The reason we stress Hell rather than spiritual death, and Heaven rather than eternal life, is that we are thinking with the natural mind. The natural mind can understand the difference between a place of torment and a place of joy. Beyond that it is not prepared to go.

To be continued.