Shaking the Gates of Hell

John Wesley said, give me 100 men who fear nothing but God and hate nothing but sin and I will shake the gates of hell and he did just that. The title of my message today friends is shaking the gates of hell. As a church body we must ask ourselves the burning question or we live in such a vital New Testament Christianity that we are shaking the gates of hell with our lives or is hell running all over us because of her lack of power and authority.

I've been around a long time and I've never seen the church in such a state of emergency in such a state of impotency as she lies in now. The church in America and Great Britain sleeps the sleep of death on pillows of conformity and compromise. There are religious lectures dished out each Sunday that have the embalming influence of a funeral home.

People come to church for fellowship or business contacts and suffer through a anemic message by a pastor who merely wants to entertain or occupy his people with some light biblical teaching. Where is the power? Where is the authority from on high? In Matthew 729 we read of Jesus for he taught them. Does one have an authority and not as the scribes? Unfortunately today many church pulpits are occupied by scribes, religious men who don't know God, have no power with God, and cannot effectively represent God to a perishing generation on its way to a devil's hell.

There is a Sunday service but no spiritual transformation in the people. I've known some good preachers who had opportunities to address some large famous congregations but they folded to the acceptance of men and preached forgettable sermons that failed miserably to awaken and convict their hearers. Unlike Wesley's 100 they feared man more than God.

Your average preacher today would do his best to encourage you with his message but he will never warn of a future judgment that awaits all mankind. He will never preach against sin or man's duty of repentance. He will fail to warn you of the miseries and torments of hell and man's utter necessity of regeneration.

What you'll get instead is some humor, some funny stories, or a dry lecture given with no conviction. In the book of Amos God advances indignation against empty religious worship from people who just just give God lip service. He tells him in Amos 5 23, take thou away from me the noise of thy songs for I will not hear the melody of thy vials.

God has withdrawn himself from the church in the West today because it's a self-reliant church focused on church growth strategies rather than pulling men from the fires of hell. The country grows more wicked every day and your typical Christian foolishly thinks that a political election will change the heart of a nation back to God. The early church didn't focus on which Caesar was in control but rather they were consumed with the spread of the gospel even if it cost them their very lives.

The spirit of Antichrist is already in the land as evil is called good and sin is legalized. What the church desperately needs today are some men like John Wesley's hundred. Men like these.

The Apostle Paul, Luther, Wesley, Whitefield, Knox, Edwards, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody. Each shared a common denominator. A fire in their belly.

They each were so eaten up with the gospel and thirsty for Christ and filled with the Holy Ghost. They could not stand idly by while others perished. They saw nothing but eternity and worshipped the Holy God and served the risen Christ, living not for earth nor its gains but living only for heaven and its rewards.

When they preached they linked the devil with sin and the cross with salvation. They preached hell and its fire and Christ and him crucified. Not one of them feared king, queen, or Pope and not one of them sought the compliments of man.