If We Say..... Series

Tonight we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that reveals to us a special word that has become almost a secret in modern churches.

A certain lady died stood at the Gates of Heaven. The gate keeper appeared and said, “Hello. We’ve been waiting for you.” And she said, "This is such a wonderful place, how do I get in?" The gatekeeper smiled and said, “All you have to do is correctly spell one word.” “What is it?” She anxiously asked. “Spell love,” he said.

The woman smiled and spelled “l.o.v.e.” and she was welcomed into heaven.

About a year later, the same woman was on gate duty when her husband arrived unexpectedly. She said, “I am surprised to see you! How have you been doing?”

He said, “Actually, I’ve been doing really well since you died. Do you remember that pretty nurse that took care of you? We fell in love and married a few weeks after you died. Then I won the lottery so we sold our little house and moved into a huge mansion. My new wife and I have been very happy and have been traveling all over the world. In fact we were just on a skiing trip to the Swiss Alps when I was caught in an avalanche, and that’s why I’m here. By the way, how do I get in?”

His ex-wife said, “All you have to do is spell one word correctly and you can enter heaven.” He said, “OK, what’s the word?” She smiled and said, “Czechoslovakia.”

Can you spell SIN? M-I-S-T-A-K-E? It is pretty easy because it has a huge I right in the middle. That is the essence of sin. The holy trinity of sin is me, myself and I. Sin is our major problem, sin is why Christ had to come to die on the cross.

Sin will take you further than you ever intended to stray.

It will keep you longer than you ever intended to stay.

And it will cost you more than you ever dreamed you would pay.

Here we find John as the only living apostle, the elder statesman of the body of Christ. He is writing 60 years after Jesus died and about 25 years after the apostle Paul has died. Wrong things have begun to happen in the life of the church and John is the only one left who can try to fix them. We desperately need a John or a Paul in our day!

People like Joel Osteen are now seen as representatives of Christianity in America by the likes of Barak Obama and Fox News. Osteen told Fox News in a recent interview that Mormonism and Christianity are basically the same. "I don't believe that Mormonism is traditional orthodox Christianity," "I realize there are differences there. They follow the teachings of the Bible, I believe they are followers of Christ and that they're my brothers."

Others in the modern church are now making these types of statements, Brian McLaren ‘Theology is all about the searching, not about the finding’.

’we cannot know for sure….not to make judgments…..need to be more modest’.

‘truth is like a wad of BUBBLE GUM, shapeless and elastic’ and that ’biblical truth is evolving. We are moving beyond the New Testament’(I. Howard Marshall)) Statements like ‘Scripture is like a TRAMPOLINE that helps to propel us upwards towards God…would it matter if we took one or more springs out? Such as the trinity and the virgin birth? So long as there are still enough springs left to get us airborne?’ (Rob Bell Mars Hill BIBLE Church)

These are not unknown discreet people but they are pastors who write books and preach to thousands in the mega churches of our country. Young people are flocking to hear this new message of a God who allows us to determine what the truth will be in our lives. This bible was for a Christianity in the past so we can now pick and choose the truth that works best for us. We can now have a God who does not condemn us or send anyone to hell. And we can have a Jesus Who is not the ‘only way’ but just ‘a way’ to know God better.

Swiss theologian Emil Brunner stated that ‘we are living at a unique moment in the west. Never before has a major civilization sought to build itself deliberately and self-consciously without religious foundations’.

In fact in 2006 in Britain 99% of the Christmas cards had no religious message.

JOHN where are you today? We desperately need someone with that kind of authority to return the church to where it was originally called to be.

When John wrote he emphasized that the church in his day had strayed from problems such as: