When people hear someone preaching that humanity is headed for hell unless they repent, most people take offense and say something along the lines of, “God is a God of love, but you are portraying Him to be the very opposite!”

The funny thing is, this has always been God’s way of showing that He loves us. Because there is impending doom on the horizon, God clearly spells it out to warn us and encourage us to repent. It is all throughout the Old Testament in the history of Israel. It’s Peter’s first message on the day of Pentecost, the birth of the Church, when the Holy Spirit first came down. Look at the city of Ninevah. Wasn’t this God’s message to its inhabitants as well? That they were going to be destroyed by God! (Which is why God is accused of not being loving.) But what happened? They repented, and God’s deeper will (that all come to repentance) was fulfilled. You see, God really DOES love us, even though we are in serious trouble with Him if we don’t repent. This is why Jonah had run away to begin with–he knew the heart of God–that God would show mercy on repentant sinners.

Remember: Jesus is coming back. The first time He came, the message was to repent and follow CHRIST (John the Baptist). It’s no different this time either. And remember this as well: It was the religious teachers who refused to be baptized by John. It was they who refused to believe that John’s message came from God. They also felt that it wasn’t necessary for them or their followers to follow Christ, subsequently. That’s because they thought God was pleased with their efforts at being good people as they followed their religion. These same people today are telling us that people who follow the world’s religions are ok with God because they are trying their best–“so stop judging them!” These religious “leaders “are fools. Why? Not only are they leading themselves away from God, but they are blindly leading many other blind people who look up to them into the same pit. These people take God’s message of repentance and surrender to Christ as a message of intolerance and hatred, instead of seeing it for what it really is: a message of how GREATLY God loves us.

Jesus said it clearly: A doctor comes for those who are sick, not the healthy. So are we in desperate need of the Doctor’s services, or will we somehow pull through in the end even if we don’t receive His treatment? Come on now!! Did Christ have to come to save us, or not?? Christ comes only for those who recognize their need for Him and Him alone. Today, we have religious teachers telling people that they don’t need to come to Jesus for life-saving treatment–the world isn’t going to hell, they would say. God would never do something like that. There are various treatments to be found from many other facilities! (Although many “Christian” leaders would say that Jesus is the “best” doctor out there to perform the surgery.) That’s not at all what Jesus said about himself, and it totally changes the message of Scripture. These “leaders” are just as blind as Nicodemus. They do not realize that the fact that we are without hope outside of salvation through Jesus is exactly the message God gives us, precisely because He loves us.

So, if you wonder how you can know that God loves you, it’s that He warns you that you are in trouble with Him, and that this ends in your destruction. That is, unless you repent and receive Christ. This is God’s kindness being shown to you, and it’s His kindness that leads to repentance. If God was unkind, He would keep this message of impending doom far from you–but He hasn’t. He loves you.

In today’s society, this is seen as horribly intolerant. In a way, this is true. It is true that God is intolerant toward sin. God doesn’t tolerate everything, as our society tries to tolerate everything. But even though God doesn’t tolerate everything, He loved us enough to allow His Son to redeem all who are willing to repent. The question is: are you willing to repent?

In order to repent, you have to first understand that you need repentance. That you are indeed in trouble with God as things stand. That you are in trouble with God doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love you. Only fools (religious leaders or not) say nonsense like that. I say they are fools, because it’s a very dangerous and foolish thing to twist God’s words. As I’ve stated before here, the fact that He reveals your damning condition clearly shows that He loves you. If He didn’t love you, He’d let you blindly continue on your way to a hopeless death. If you are willing to bow before God and recognize your helpless condition, and turn to Him for desperately-needed rebirth, He will make you alive to Him once again.

You can’t be reborn unless you’re already dead. Yet most refuse to believe they are dead–they see themselves and everyone else as “good people” who are not dead to God. Can you see that you’re dead? Has God shown you that you are helplessly lost? Can you see it, or will you continue in denial? You know, everyone who is evil is in denial of their condition for quite some time–some for their entire lives. As long as you stay in this state, you will remain lost. Until the truth is spoken, and you REALLY hear it, you will remain in denial. The question is, when the truth is spoken, are you big enough as a person to realize how little of a person you really are? Can you admit before God that you are a worm like everyone else (including myself)?

The Bible says that those who repent and receive the Holy Spirit (Jesus’ gift of His righteousness to us) have become united with Christ. And the Bible uses the imagery of a bride/groom relationship between us and Christ. Here’s why that’s so amazing: Because Jesus isn’t headed for hell. He already went there and had no chance of being held in the grave. He was triumphant over hell, because He alone had no sin. The rest of humanity, however, cannot say this about ourselves.

But if we’ve become united with Christ, we are to be married to Christ. And by becoming one with Christ in a spiritual “marriage,” our identity is now with Christ, and He isn’t headed for hell! Today, many “Christians” are teaching that you don’t need to be united with Christ to go to heaven. They say that a loving God wouldn’t destroy sinful people. They say that God loves everyone, so quit saying that people are headed for destruction! (They would say the same thing to Jonah, Peter, and John the Baptist.)

So if anyone tells you that you don’t need to come to faith in Christ to go to heaven–they are blindly ignorant of Scripture, and they are just telling you what you want to hear. That’s not how a God of love would treat you if you were in danger. A God of love would tell you the honest truth, because He loves you that much. He’ll shoot straight with you. Those other people, they don’t love you, although they may think that they do. They are just telling you what they think will make you feel good. They just want to draw a crowd. As a result, they are not speaking for God. They are following in the steps of the false prophets in Old Testament times. The ones that said, “God is ok with who you are and what you do. Look around; He is blessing you with all of this peace and prosperity!” The true prophets were laughed at and ridiculed and accused of making God look to be a vicious tyrant. Yet it was out of love for God’s people, that the prophets spoke such harsh things. And ironically, it was those people who preached “tolerance” who hated the prophets and their message, and spoke evil of them. They tolerated everything except God’s truth. You see, our society today is really no different from previous societies. This has been going on for a long time, and it seems humanity never learns their lesson.

That is, except for those who hear the message and repent. That’s always been a minority (remnant) of people, and I suspect that will always be how it is, although I hope not. I hope that more and more people will realize how much God loves them, and that He has gone to great lengths to save them from their sins. How about you? Will you become identified with Christ, become one with Him? Are you willing to repent and follow Him?

Don’t listen to false “religious” teachers who try to make you feel good about yourself. You are not a good person–even Jesus himself said only God is good. We, who are evil, may know how to give good gifts to our children, but we are still evil. Wake up to your current condition and cry to God for salvation. Become like the citizens of Nineveh and be delivered from punishment. God really does love you. Enough to die for you (our last and only hope), and enough to continue to reveal to you the truth of your condition until you repent and come out of denial and death, into a wondrous reality and eternal life! You will become one of God’s children that He has redeemed from sin and hell, and there is no greater joy than to be reunited with God! God rules and He loves you!