A Baptist church in Britain was investigated three weeks ago after posting a message on its outdoor sign board stating, “If you think there is no God, you’d better be right,” above a photograph of burning flames. After a complaint by an “offended” person, the police opened a “hate crimes” investigation against Attleborough Baptist Church of Norfolk, and Pastor John Rose agreed to take down the offending sign. A police spokesman said the matter “has been recorded as a hate incident” (“Police investigate Attleborough church ‘hate incident,” Wymondham and Attleborough Mercury, June 9, 2014). Robert Gladwin, the “offended” party who brought the complaint, said, “I was just astounded really. We live in the 21st century and they have put that message--that non-Christians will burn in hell--up to try and scare people into joining their mentality. It is my basic understanding that Christianity is inclusive and loving in nature.” Mr. Gladwin fails to understand even the ABCs of the nature of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is no surprise considering the apostate condition of the vast majority of England’s churches. Hell is not a warning; it is a law of God and a reality of man’s existence, like gravity and death. God is holy and just and He will punish sin. From man’s earliest days, God has warned that the wages of sin is death, and this is both physical death and eternal death in the lake of fire. The Lord Jesus Christ, love incarnate, preached about hell frequently, far more than He preached about heaven, and that is because He loves men and wants to save them from hell. If an individual has cancer, a loving doctor will not withhold the bad news. If a bridge is out in a storm, a loving individual will not stand by and let his neighbors drive on to destruction without trying to warn them. If a Christian believes in the reality of hell, he will not refrain from warning his fellow man. (Friday Church News Notes, June 13, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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