Would You Still Follow Him?

I would like the Spirit of God to ask you a question that perhaps you've never been asked before. You see, He asked me this same penetrating question. It is a question that I've never been asked before, and in 31 years of being a follower of Jesus Christ I really had not thought about because I was born again in the perverted Christian atmosphere that permeates ever rotten corner of contemporary Christianity. It is a question that pulls down the fabric and foundation of what I had grown to acknowledge as truth, and like the rudder on a large vessel it turns the direction and perspective of my entire Christian journey. My Spiritual compass had been magnetized by a false motivation of what the life of a follower of Jesus Christ should be. Now here is the question:

Would you have become a follower of Jesus Christ if there was no promise of heaven after death?
Now many people commit themselves to affairs even when they know the other party will never leave their spouses to marry them. Many people practice long, arduous hours at a sport they realize they'll never be good at. Many people stay at a career about which their position will not change. The central core of a follower of Jesus Christ is not going to heaven when he dies, no, it is the glory of God Almighty and the Risen Christ our Savior. Have you, as a believer and follower, had such a Spiritual revelation of Jesus Christ that you realize that He deserves all glory regardless of our happiness and pleasure?
In the movie "Close Encounters" the people who had a brief encounter with these aliens were forever obsessed with going to be with them. Ever waking moment they meditated on the next meeting. There was no inconvenience too great, there was no embarrassment too much, and there was no expense too extravagant as they lived their entire lives pointing toward that final encounter. They were completely consumed. Those of us who have had an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, are we obsessed with glorifying Him? Do we awake each morning to pick up where we left off the night before and incline our ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to us?
Let's move it even further along. Do we witness to others to glorify Jesus and add to the praise of His cross, or do we witness for the benefit of others. It seems like semantics, but it is a stark line of demarcation between the glory of God and the happiness of man. Would we tell people about Christ if we knew there was no hereafter? Is His majesty such that it transcends our reward and is solely fixated on His Personhood? Would just the knowledge of Him be a reward in and of itself? If we question any of those then we haven't fully come to know Him.

Would you have become a follower of Jesus Christ if you still knew you'd end up in hell anyway?
Wow, there is an incredibly self stripping question. The essence of this query draws into total focus the consuming thought - Is the Lord Jesus Christ so glorious that anyone would desire the chance to serve and glorify Him for their entire earthly lives while knowingly receive no eternal reward and still be punished for one's sins forever? The betrayal of the ages is that following the Lord Jesus Christ today has been portrayed not as a living sacrifice in this life with an eternal reward promised, no, we have been told that Jesus exists to make us happy in this life and in the life to come. People even believe heaven was created for us!? It used to be that people would become followers of Christ purely to gain eternal life which is still humanistic at its core, but today people become "followers" to gain the earthly favor of their Creator and have Him make their journey more pleasurable which is humanism through and through. People today are not following Jesus at all, they are following themselves and they have borrowed the name "Jesus".
How many people are actually born again and have entered into a sacrificial life that seeks nothing but the glory and praise of the Risen Son of the Living God? Only God knows the answer to that question, but it is a frightening prospect to think that tens of millions of "professing" followers have been lied to! Singing on Sundays but bound for hell. Hearing "another Jesus" preached and saying "Amen!". I'm not talking about liberal theologians or cults that we all would recognize. No, I am speaking about mainstream American evangelical churches that speak of being lost and saved, that are interested in missions, that use the Bible, that somewhat believe in prayer, but have "changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man". They make false promises that Jesus never made and with them draw unsuspecting sinners to a man made Santa Claus/Jesus, and after they pray to this modern evangelical Dagon they tell these still unregenerate sinners "You're saved!". They bring in secular songs, some of them written by demon possessed men, and with them they draw men by their emotions to a finely crafted altar call designed to quickly and efficiently get people to "make a profession" as a result of their tactics not as a result of the deep working of the Spirit of God. They have "baptism days" which provide a carnival like atmosphere in which people can feel comfortable among many others while they "publicly" profess Christ without even the most surface testing of the Spirits and like lemmings they go over the cliff and drown in the ocean of false assurance.
You think people like me are being too harsh? There is no middle ground. Either Wesley, Luther, Edwards, Spurgeon, Moody, Stoddard, Judson, Carey, Whitfield, Knox, Huss, Calvin, and may I add Jeremiah, Isaiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Paul, James, Peter, John, and John the Baptist were right in their unveiling of who God is, or Rick Warren, Hybels, Schuller, Osteen, and all the other Pied Pipers of bloodless makeovers are. There is no compromise. If you are reading this exposé and you agree, then you are inwardly saying "Amen". But if you are reading this and you really don't understand what all the fuss is about, I BEG YOU, ask the Lord to help you do some research about what the evangelicals believed in former generations and compare that with the changeless Word of the Living God. Not just to find the interesting theological schisms they would have from today, no, much deeper than that. We are in Laodicea(Rev.3) today and the true message of salvation has been changed. It sounds the same, it looks the same, it's pleasant to the touch, it's costless, and the cover is quite attractive. It has pushed God's Word off the top ten and become the #1 bestseller. But open to the title page and read the title. "How to be God and have Jesus Serve You", by the Angel of Light.

BURN IT!!!