Impending Judgment

When Lamar accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior, he didn’t accept Christ because someone told him that that was a ticket to a better life (that gospel could never appeal to Lamar because he was born into great wealth), he believed in Christ because he now realized that Christ was the only one who could shield him from the judgment that was sure to come. He had several disturbing dreams before a preacher brought the gospel to him, and in those dreams, he saw himself descending into hell fire. He knew he was doomed but didn’t know the way out until the gospel came to him.

Today, there is a conscious effort by some to remove the warning about the judgment of God from the preaching of the gospel. Any gospel message that does not properly explain the ramification of Jesus’ salvation from impending judgment is a weak gospel. One main point of the gospel message is that receiving Jesus is the only way to escape the impending damnation (see John 3:18).

From today’s Bible verse, we can clearly see that one element of the gospel message preached by the apostles was “The Judgment of God”. When in the days of the apostles, people they preached to asked ‘what shall we do [to be saved]?’(see Acts 2:37, 16:30) they asked this question because they understood that there is impending judgment and doom, and they wanted to be saved from it.

Go into today remembering that there is coming judgment on all humankind. The only way to escape it is through the salvation of Christ Jesus.

Prayer: Ask the Lord to make you more effective in helping people escape eternal damnation by preaching the gospel to them.
— Abraham Damilola Arigi

Bible In 1 Year: Habakkuk