Word came during choir rehearsal that the young man had died in a car crash. And these wails of agony went up, people falling out in shock and disbelief, mourning this young man, crying out to God. It got so bad the folk got out of the choir stand and left, saying they were too disturbed to continue. Some figuring it would be disrespectful to the young man or his family to simply continue with the rehearsal as though nothing had happened.

Okay, first we have to separate man’s work from God’s work. Stacking boxes at Wal-Mart is man’s work. Choir rehearsal is God’s work. Please, folk, when you hear I’m dead, please finish your rehearsal. Leaving rehearsal won’t bring me back to life or bring my loved ones any comfort. The first and best thing any of us can ever do is to honor God.

Second, upon hearing this story, the first thing I wondered was, of the people wailing and carrying on, how many of them had shared Jesus Christ with this young man? You see, if this young man knew Jesus Christ, what on earth was all that hollering about? If he did not know Jesus, then the hollering shouldn’t be for him, shouldn’t be for his family, but should be for us: our great remorse at having blown it, at having allowed this young person that was obviously so loved to slip into a Christ-less eternity.

Watching the Word Network these days, I don’t hear a whole lot about sin. I hear a lot about money. From dawn to dusk, people talking about money, asking for money, holding up special offers and gift packages. Money, money, money. Preachers wearing custom-tailored suits exactly one time before discarding them—and proud of it. Preachers dripping in diamonds and driving Bentley’s. Money, money, money.

Not much about sin. And almost nothing said at all about hell. It’s a common mistake: an assumption your audience knows the story. Like bad TV writers, these preachers leave out the consequences of rejecting Christ, mainly because what they offer most consistently is not Christ but some book or DVD telling you how good you are. Well, pal, you’re not good. Somebody ought to love God enough to tell you that. The Bible says so: you’re not good. I’m not good. Bishop Phony Bling-Bling isn’t good. None of us are good. Romans 3:9 says there is none righteous. Not Bishop, not me, not you.

These guys are supposed to be offering Christ to you. That’s the reason the IRS doesn’t lock them up: they’re supposedly religious leaders. But, watch that network all day, you can count on one hand the number of times Christ is offered as compared to the hundreds of times some junk is offered to you for three easy payments of $29.95. It’s embarrassing. It’s a racket, folks. A huge racket, fed by people like you who fall for this ungodly mess. The more lazy you are about reading and studying your bible, the more susceptible you are to this nonsense. Most of these guys (and gals) are simply con men. Serious phonies getting rich off of people foolish enough to write checks to them.

The sheer brazenness of it all causes me to know these folks do not know Christ. First, there’s no love there. Everything about Christ is love. Love would never cheat you out of your paycheck. Second, if these folks actually knew Christ for themselves, they’d actually fear God. And, if they actually feared God, there’s no way they’d be running around ripping off God’s people.

In everything we do, we must go to the bible, we must ask, “What is the biblical model?” warns us about false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing [But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. —2 Peter 2:1]. It’s impossible to sort out the legit from the fakes other than to try the spirit by the Spirit [Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
—1 John 4:1], to go back to the bible as out standard and ask which of these ministries hold up and which do not.

These false teachers should be fearful of God. Instead, they brazenly insult Him and spit on Him as they sell their various junk, twitching and shaking and babbling on your TV screen while dedicating more and more broadcast time to whoring their wares.

It’s possible these people once knew God, but have become so consumed with themselves that they’ve wandered off. And now they’ve lost their way: no longer fearful of God because they no longer believe in God or in His Son, Jesus Christ.

For, to believe in God, to truly believe in Him, is to both love and fear Him. Because, if the Bible be true and God be God, then, certainly, the consequences of sin are true as well. And this is something almost nobody talks about anymore:

If you do not know Jesus Christ in the pardoning of your sin, you are on your way to hell. I know nobody wants to preach that anymore. I know nobody wants to even believe it anymore. It’s all Prosperity Doctrine and Happy Feet Doctrine and You Can’t Lose With the Stuff I Use Doctrine. But this is the truth. Not my truth, God’s truth. Just as heaven and God are surely real, the terrible consequences of rejecting God are real also.

To the believers: evangelism isn’t just for evangelists. Evangelism is our duty. Just as surely as dragging a child out of a burning building is our moral obligation, telling people about Jesus Christ is a moral imperative because there are consequences—to them and to us—if we do not. This thing called hell. It’s what we deserve. It’s what we’ve earned. It’s not a punishment, not some bad thing God is “doing” to us. We were born in sin and shaped in iniquity [Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Psalm 51:5]. Just by being born, we entered a sinful world in a sinful state, our feet set on a path that leads to eternal damnation.

Far too many of us church folk grow so comfortable in our Christian skin that we start to think of hell as for “other people.” That we are somehow better than them or that we’ve earned heaven by frying just enough chicken and hitting that tambourine just enough times. Sister: hell is what you deserve. Escaping that certainty is what grace is all about. It is, literally, what it means to be “saved.” Many of us run around claiming we’re “saved” without even knowing what that means. It means avoiding a fate so terrible, an eternity so absolutely horrible, we wouldn’t want our worst enemy to suffer it.

So, I’m begging you, whoever you are, “saint” or “sinner”: if you’re not sure, get sure. If you’ve been in church all your life, get sure. Don’t die of embarrassment. Find out what it means to be saved and make sure Christ is in your heart and in your life. Despite what you see of those grinning jackals on the Word NetMess, this hell thing is real. And you’ve got a choice to make.