I  know where Jimmy Hoffa is right now for those of you wondering.  He is in hell right  now.  He will be in hell 5,000 years from today.  Does it really matter where his empty body ended up when his soul lives on forever?

What is sad is the average church member would be more concerned where the body of Jimmy ended up rather than where his soul went.  I can prove that.   Do you think about who really killed JFK?  Do you ever think instead about his poor soul burning forever because his faith was in a dead religion instead of a living Savior?  God does not care if someone was a King or a President or Pope or a Bill Gates or the “king of Pop”.  God is not a respecter of persons, and he certainly is not impressed by our earthly titles.  There is only one title he will look at.  He only cares if you knew the King of Kings.  Many of the world’s kings are going to be burning forever and burning together in the lake of fire.

God’s Word says that God does not delight in the death of the wicked.  It is not God’s fault that men reject or neglect such great salvation.  God himself died in man’s place as man’s substitute because there is no other option where men can pay for their sins on their own.  Jesus saith I AM THE WAY.  Yet man continues over and over to find another way.   There is none.  There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is the way of death says the Bible.  Jesus has one thing to say to man kind — it is Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.  JFK and Jimmy Hoffa are examples to us and we can learn from it.  We will all end up in eternity one day.  It is less important how we enter it than where we spend it.  Five billion years from now the atheist who lived to be 114 years old and the 22 year old who died of a drug overdose are forever burning.  The nice yet lost Sunday school teacher and the child molester are forever burning.  Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.  How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? The answer is you can’t.  Flee from the wrath to come.  Run to God.  America in general wants to run from God.  Foolish decision.

Sadly mankind seems still oblivious they have an appointment with death and an appointment with God.  God has commended all men everywhere to repent for he has appointed  a day in which he will judge this world in righteousness.  Religion does not make you righteous, meaning right standing with God. Only the cross will do that.  Without the cross, we have no hope.  If  you are more concerned about finding Jimmy Hoffa than finding Jesus Christ, you can ask him yourself one day if you see him. You will be in hell with Mr. Hoffa.

I am not trying to be harsh, but I am trying to get you to consider your ways.  Consider the end.  Consider where you will be 500 years from now.   I have truth.  If you want truth, you will desire it, whether it is sugar coated or as tasty as an unsweetened chocolate bar.  If you want to “stay right” it doesn’t matter how much sweetener I use.

I think I have the format of my book, which has been a dream of mine for a while.  I am a dreamer.  That is not necessarily a good thing.  Thankfully I have a wife who has the ability to light a fire under me and get my head out of the clouds and put some feet to my prayers.  I would rather sometimes pull back the covers of life and stay asleep so I can dream.  My wife will drag me out of bed if she has to so I can get up and face the world and put my dreams into action.

It is a good match, but dreamers do not like their sleep disturbed.

Yet it is time to arise.  I need to wake up just like the rest of the church.  Dreaming is nice because you can’t get criticized if you never reveal your dreams.  You can’t fail if you don’t try.  You can’t quit something you never start.  And you can’t have to pay the bill for the expensive dreams you don’t cash in.

Anyway…. more on Jimmy Hoffa at the end of this article.  And no he was not found below Giants Stadium.

Here is the potential title for my book.  “Where’s the Beef? An inspection of the Sacred Cows of Modern Evangelism”.

The 3 areas I want to address cover the past 100 years of evangelism through  the lessons I learned from 10 years as a pharmacist:

Evangelically speaking, it is time to get churches in America to:

1. Clean out the contaminates that have corrupted the cure.

2. Change the dose and duration of treatment.

3. Convince of the disease so there is a commitment to the cure.

These will be addressed in 4 parts.

Part 1 will look at modern evangelism.  Part 1 will be called “The Romans Road is in the Bible — but is it Biblical?”

Part 2 will contrast the sowing and planting during the great awakening vs. today’s methods.  “Shortcuts to Salvation”

Part 3 will look at the motive for salvation today vs the motive of yesterday of turning from convincing of the disease. “Jesus is not a Flu Shot”

Part 4 will address how to fix today’s evangelism.  “Don’t recruit with the Fatted Calf”

The challenge is all 4 themes are so closely related and intertwined that to me, there doesn’t seem to be as much of a clean line drawn in the sand as I’d like.   Romans Road and other “presentations” today are from the Bible but they error in encompassing all 3 other parts — they are shortcuts to salvation, they turn Jesus into a flu shot, and they recruit with the fatted calf.  These methods are wrong in that they violate Biblical principles, but they are also wrong because they neglect Biblical truth.   They commit sins of commission as well as sins of omission.  The challenge I think will be to keep each section separate and able to stand on it’s own, and then merge the parts together in a conclusion that not only addresses the problem but presents a solution too.

The main point about the Romans Road, the 4 spiritual laws, “4 things God wants you to know”, etc is this.  They are all created by man and all originated in the 1950’s or later during the start of the great falling away.  I am not attacking a “man” but think of it like this.  Imagine that there is a doctor in your home town who treats children with cancer.  He is sincere in what he does.  However he purchased a shipment of arsenic that was mislabeled with a cancer drug name on the packaging.  Everyone he treats gets poisoned and ends up dead months later after treatment.    Thousands of patients keep being referred to this doctor.  You can either ignore the allegations, as you don’t want to slander a health care professional, or you can look at addressing the areas of contamination. Independent of your opinion of who is doing the contaminating.    It doesn’t matter if the doctor is  a wonderful guy or has an amazing bedside manner.  It is simply that if his cure is killing people then it needs to be investigated and addressed.   Our love for the unsuspecting patients needs to outweigh any loyalty to the potential source for serious harm that could be preventable.  The Bible says the fear of man bringeth a snare.  There are many men today who would rather go to their grave teaching heresy than dare go against their alma mater.

Addressing the problems is for the doctor’s sake as well.  Why on earth would a man of God want to go through life teaching lies, creating two fold children of hell even if it is in ignorance, and then have to face God for it on judgment day?  Would you not want to at least be warned and get a chance to examine your teaching and make sure it is in the faith?  My position has been that I would rather find the truth than stay right.  It has cost me.  I was kicked out of attending a college church group because I was giving out doctrine.  It cost me churches and friends and jobs and ministries and made me a lot of times the black sheep of the flock.   Yet I would rather be on the narrow path that few find because I know his voice and I follow Jesus.  People may not understand, but I want the truth even when I can’t handle it.  I am not afraid of the truth, and I want the truth and so I examine all sides and try to follow every piece of evidence and embrace the truth no matter what it costs.   Yet today, we often are the enemies if we even mention that a doctor so and so might be poisoning folks.  I am not attacking a man, but if his doctrine has helped corrupt the entire field of modern evangelism, this needs to be addressed.  And I will try and watch my bedside manner.

Jesus said follow me and I will make you fishers of men.  Instead these men become the authorities and we become mesmerized by their ability to generate decisions at the blink of an eye.   They pull the verses out of the Bible, but the overall presentation is created by man so it is as empty as if they pulled their doctrine out of thin air.  It has turned the blood sweat and tears of the evangelists of yesterday into a salvation assembly line that requires little start up cost but can bring in big bucks by the excited converts it mass produces.  Yet these converts burn out as quickly as they first lit up.

The problem begins when one honestly and objectively examines our converts and compares them with the converts of yesterday.  When you prayerfully examine the country as a whole, you will see that the multitudes making decisions in this valley of professions are not making any noticeable dent nor impact on this world.  I find however each circle boasts that they have the answer but they don’t want anyone really asking the tough questions.  I see each circle attacking the rotten meat served in the other camps, but within the camp it is hands off the sacred cows.

Instead, the majority of today’s converts are more of a problem than a solution in a country that has lost it’s fear of God and has turned it’s back on God.  Missionary David Cloud said, “A weak gospel produces weak converts”.   A soft, shallow gospel produces soft shallow converts.

The Bible says the FEAR OF THE LORD IS TO HATE EVIL.  Does anyone hate evil anymore?  We can tear apart babies in the womb and call it a legal right, we can allow sodomite marriages and call it acceptance, we can watch blasphemy on TV all night long and not bat an eye and call it free speech, and we can walk by all kinds of nakedness and not blush and call it adding spice to our marriages.  We can over spend, and over eat, and over sleep and over charge, and under dress, and not think of God for one second.  And think we have a right to do what God says is clearly wrong.

What is inexcusable is on a lot of the above, you will find the average church member justifies his American right to sin just as strongly as the lost do.

America’s got talent, yes.  The problem is America no longer has God.

And America hasn’t had God for a long time.

And until the churches start hatching some genuine on fire courageous converts instead of genetically engineered cookie cutter chickens, America will continue her path toward hell.

The wicked shall be turned into Hell and all the nations that forget God, says the book of Psalms.

The churches first need to get their memories stirred and once again remember God.  Jesus is standing outside the average church today and saying, Behold I stand at the door and knock.  Modern evangelism says Jesus is knocking on every sinner.  The bible says he has been thrown out of HIS church and waiting for someone to notice his absence.

This week America may finally find Jimmy Hoffa after an 80 year old mafia man blows the whistle on what happened.   Allegedly Jimmy was killed by Detroit mobsters and buried in a farm miles north of where he was last seen.  Whoop-dee-doo.

When America finds God again that will be headlines worth shouting about.