According to this ecumenically minded world, there are many paths one can travel that will lead one to God. It is naively assumed that the varying, vastly different and often contradictory teachings about God that people abide in will nevertheless all lead to the same God, and what’s more, the true God. In no other area of life is this same mode of thinking adopted, or attitude taken, where things that differ and contradict one another are believed to lead one and all to the same conclusion, the same end. No one in their right mind says that any and every answer given to a particular equation is the right answer, or that every number can be reached mathematically by one equation. 4 + 4 does not equal anything but 8 and it never will equal anything but 8. The world responds by saying, ‘Yes, 4 + 4 does equal 8 but there are many other equations that also equal 8,' hence the logic behind the ecumenical mind-set that says that all religions lead to the same God. For example, ‘You can get to 8 by adding 4 + 4 or 3 + 5 or 2 x 4,' and so the world is convinced that people can believe anything about God and still be believing in the same God. ‘Elohim, God or Allah, the name doesn’t matter’—such is the mind-set. Even the President of the United States, George W. Bush, recently stated that he believes Christians and Muslims are worshipping the same God. Disturbingly, this same mode of thinking pervades the minds of many who profess to be born again Christians. They say, ‘Doctrine is not the be all and end all of one’s search for truth but is something for theologians to argue over.’ Simple faith just ‘Believes and loves God’ they say and all are encouraged not to get too involved in doctrinal controversies but to just ‘Believe Jesus’ and ‘spread the love’. ‘Doctrine divides, love unites,’ ‘love embraces all and does not discriminate’, are just some of the popular catch phrases of our day. Some say that the Gospel cannot be known and to argue over its particulars is a fruitless exercise. Others believe the Gospel to be the simple message of Jesus going to the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind. Whatever that might mean and entail exactly is not too important, at least not essential to one’s salvation, according to these pseudo-christians who say that just believing it happened makes one a Christian. What is important, we are told, is that one rightly confesses that one is a sinner in need of a Savior, that Jesus is Lord and that God is love. Some even say that as long as a person does not have anything bad to say about God, it is enough to show that God is on their side and that they have a good chance of being saved! The doctrines of Christianity are something that one comes to learn correctly about gradually over many, many years, they say. That one begins one’s Christian life in virtual ignorance, believing in many errors which are gradually corrected over time. Though one person’s beliefs about Who Christ is and what He has done may differ greatly from his neighbour’s, the important thing is, we are told, that one ‘believes in Jesus’. However, some on both sides of the fence have recognized that what differs from their own beliefs about the Gospel of Christ constitutes another gospel. Many Arminians believe that Calvinists are believing and promoting another gospel and likewise, many Calvinists believe that Arminians are promoters of a false gospel. Yet to the minds of those in both parties who see the other’s as a false gospel, this does not mean that the other is not saved! Those who do conclude that the other is in fact lost due to their favoring a false gospel are labelled as extremists. But is it extremist to hold to the view that if a person believes the answer to 4 + 4 is 9, that such a person does not have the right answer, that they are just plain wrong? Is it extremist to believe that there is only ONE correct answer and that ALL other answers to this equation are wrong? This booklet will investigate the claim that virtually no matter what doctrine a person holds to, if they ‘believe’ in the historical Jesus who went to the cross on Calvary’s hill and live a Christian lifestyle, they are saved nonetheless, whether they are doctrinally accurate or not. All roads may indeed lead to Rome, but only one Road will lead you to God.

How many Gospels? Just how many gospels are there that a person can believe, safely place their trust in, and rightly consider themselves saved of God? Five? Ten? Twenty? Or perhaps hundreds? Just how many gospels are there that God will lead a person to believe ie. grant the gift of faith to believe? How many gospels are there to which God signs His name and calls ‘My power unto salvation’? These are questions that strike right at the heart of the whole issue of doctrine, of what the true Gospel is, and who it is that can rightly judge themselves saved. It is important to realise at the outset that what a person believes about Jesus provides an immediate indication of which jesus they believe in, and therefore which gospel they hold to. What a person has been taught, via the gospel presented to them, and has accepted about God is what a person believes about God: what He is like and how He saves. Going by these two simple statements, we learn a basic principle and that is that we all believe what we have been taught and consider to be ‘the Gospel’. A person rejects or accepts a particular gospel based on the specific doctrines which go to making up that individual message. Some do themselves an injustice by accepting a gospel as truth based on who, or how many, believe it. What a person believes about God will reveal what that person says is the Gospel of God. As is often the case, most people’s introduction to things religious begins with what their parents tell them. And as they grow into adulthood, many continue to be flooded with a multitude of tenets from various sources concerning life and love including religion—what God is like. When it comes to the matter of religion, and more specifically the life and death issue of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, what we are taught or what we have come to believe from our private studies, are doctrines that we trust and believe are the true doctrines of God. We do not accept every doctrine we come across, especially those which clash with the teachings we believe to be the correct ones. We call them false doctrines. No one believes something because they think it to be wrong, and especially no one believes anything about God because they think that particular teaching is erroneous. So everyone believes what they believe because they believe it to be right. Yet this can never change the fact that no matter how much a person may believe what they believe to be right, their conviction, in and of itself, is no guarantee that they are right. Simply because a person knows that there is only one correct answer to an equation does not necessarily mean they have it. So, too, concluding that one has the true Gospel simply because one is firmly convinced that there is only one true Savior and that only one Gospel is the one true Gospel of God, is the height of presumption. In light of this, does it not appear strange to the reader that anyone, let alone the majority, could ever conceive of the idea and, what’s worse, hold fast to it, that two people can believe diametrically opposing doctrines about God and yet view both as holding to the right teachings about the one true God! It must be established at the outset that no one can have the true God if they have been taught, and believe, lies about God. No one in a right state of mind would dare for a moment even contemplate the ridiculous assertion that the person who believes 4+4=8 and the one who believes the answer to be 9 are both right. That they both have the right answer. That which proceeds from the mouth of God, is an exact science, if you will, just like mathematics. It is precise, unchallengeable and unchangeable. If God has said something, then that is what’s right. If God has taught one Gospel, then THAT is the Gospel that saves and no other. Devise any other gospel you like, make it sound as sweet and inviting as you can and believe it with every fibre of your being, it is simply not right. It is not the true Gospel if it is not God’s Gospel! God says that the Gospel teaches ‘this’ and so we must understand and come to terms with the fact that the Gospel of God could not possibly be teaching ‘that’. The following illustration is not a Gospel issue however it will illustrate my point of how important it is to believe what God says about a matter. If God has said that He gave ten Commandments to Moses then ten is the correct number of commandments written on those stone tablets. Ten is the truth when it comes to the number of commandments God gave Moses. It is the only amount that God will agree with you over the number of Commandments that were issued. If you believe with all sincerity that God gave nine commandments, then you are wrong. Even the fact that you believe God gave Moses commandments is not enough if you believe He gave any less or more than ten. You are not right at all but in gross error when it comes to the issue of how many commandments God gave. The reason you are wrong is that you do not agree with what God says. You have decided to side with what a man says or what you have concluded in your own mind regardless, or in ignorance, of what God says in His Holy Word. Using this same and simple rule of logic, we declare unto you that when it comes to the issue of how many gospels there are that can save, there is only ONE Gospel that complies with what God has said in His Holy Scriptures and therefore only ONE GOSPEL that can save. There are no other gospels, no other plans of salvation, which are contained in false gospels, that can point one to the true God but ONLY ONE plan of salvation, ONE Gospel, leads to the true God and it is the only one God has ever and will ever claim as His own.

To commence our scriptural examination of the question posed, ‘How many Gospels?, we immediately bring to the reader’s attention perhaps the clearest teaching in God’s Word about just how many different and specific gospels there are that a person can believe and be saved by, that though differing in their content, will equally carry people through the gates of heaven. Paul the apostle wrote a letter to the believers in Galatia in which he stated most emphatically, without wavering and from which he did not vacillate for the remainder of his life, that what he had been taught by God was the actual and only Gospel of God. As far as Paul was concerned, it was the only Gospel that people were to believe in order to be saved. Anything short of this Gospel or anything that exceeded it, Paul termed another gospel—something that was separate from, and different to, what God’s Gospel said and therefore something that did not have the power to save. Also recorded for us in the same Letter was Paul’s Holy Spirit-inspired view of those who brought a gospel different to that which the Holy Spirit had taught him. Were they who believed these other gospels as saved as Paul was, to whom had been given the Faith to believe God’s Gospel and thus reject all others? Would there be room, after the true Gospel had been revealed to Paul by Jesus Christ the Lord, for belief in any other gospel as acceptable in God’s eyes that a person was to be saved? Let us see what Paul’s simple, straightforward and succinct answer to these questions is. Paul wrote: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8,9). Here we have a declaration that not only blows every gospel, other than the right and true Gospel of God, out of the water, but shatters them to smithereens!! In light of Paul’s words, it would not be presumptive, or highbrowed, to say that someone who believes that one can be in a saved, justified state before or without the revelation knowledge contained in God’s only Gospel, which reveals this single message to be the ONLY power of God unto salvation, is a person who is in a state of accursedness. This is God’s Word on the matter, and not man’s opinion. Nor is it something new or that has recently been added to the Scriptures. Observe, if you will, how utterly and completely convinced Paul was that what he had preached to the Galatians as the great power of God unto salvation—the Gospel—was as a matter of actual fact the only Gospel that God would ever sign, or put, His name to. Not one of the plethora of false gospels, which all bear the signature of men, have ever been countersigned by God! So convinced was Paul that he was not in error over the Gospel, or that he had not misinterpreted this most vital of God’s revelations to him, that he went so far as to tell the Galatians in no uncertain terms that even if he or those who were with him were to return to Galatia at a later date or write to them claiming that what they had preached to them was not the Gospel of God, and then proceeded to inform the Galatians of a different gospel that Paul now believed was THE Gospel, they were to count even Paul and his associates as accursed men! Not just men in error not just men who required a little correction, a little more teaching but who were nonetheless saved, NOT AS MEN OF GOD but MEN CURSED OF GOD! According to the apostle, anyone preaching a different gospel to his was a clear indication that they were in a lost state. Therefore it is safe, right and proper to infer from this that no saved person would ever preach or believe a different gospel to the one preached by Paul. There were many false teachers in Paul’s day, as there are today, some who even claimed to be Paul and who wrote fraudulent letters to try and promote their false teachings. Paul was not only saying not to believe anyone claiming to be him or a letter claiming to be from him, that taught a different gospel, but that even if he himself, Paul, actually stood there in the flesh face to face with them disowning the Gospel he had taught them and trying to present them with one that differed in any way from it, they should not hesitate in counting even Paul an accursed man! In addition, if this were not enough evidence for the Galatians of the veracity of the Gospel Paul had given them, and that there is no other gospel that can save, Paul then told the Galatians that even if one of God’s angels from heaven, not some demonic entity masquerading as an angel of God mind you but a real bona fide angel from God’s heaven, were to come and deliver to them, with all the seeming authority of God and with trumpet blasts, a gospel that differed from the one Paul the apostle had already taught them, that angel, too, was to be counted as an accursed being. There is no stronger language than this that Paul could have used to make his point any clearer.

Now, how do you think Paul arrived at such a conclusion? What made him so definite in his conviction that if a man taught or believed a gospel that differed from his, it would give him license to pronounce such a man accursed? Do you think Paul reasoned this out with his mind after the Lord had delivered him His Gospel? Perhaps. Even if he did he would have been right because what other gospel could possibly save apart from the one the Lord had told him. God did not reveal to him any other plan of salvation for He has only one plan and it is revealed in one Gospel. Doesn’t it sound reasonable to conclude though that the Lord Himself told Paul that there was no other gospel that could save; that there is no other message that any man could come up with that would be God’s message and therefore that was worthy of belief and that could save. After all, what Paul wrote on the matter was to become Holy Scripture. Now, I am not saying God did say this to Paul, or that He even had to say it, but just that it surely must be considered a possibility if not a probability. One thing is certain, the Lord most assuredly inspired Paul by the Holy Spirit to write such a thing and made sure that no man tampered with or removed this from Paul’s letter, which was later to become Holy Scripture. God not only wanted Paul and those in Galatia to know this but as many as would read it, that as far as God was concerned there was only ONE Gospel. God is not aware of any gospel other than His own that can save so how could any man come up with one! There is no better authority on the matter than God. Remember, Paul is here writing not his own words but words inspired by God Himself. EVERYTHING PAUL SAID WAS BACKED 100% BY GOD BECAUSE IT WAS HIS WORD TO BEGIN WITH!! IT WAS GOD’S THOUGHTS THAT PAUL RECORDED IN HIS LETTER TO THE GALATIANS. It was in fact God Who was saying, ‘Anyone who preaches or believes any other gospel than My Gospel is an accursed person.’ What Paul wrote was and is GOD’S Word on the matter, that is why it is part of the Holy Scriptures.

Can you imagine the amount and variety of opposition Paul was confronted with from those unregenerate religious leaders of his day? And how that the bulk of resistance Paul met with came not from the irreligious, not from the secular world, but from the religious community and perhaps the worst of it from false brethren (see 2 Cor. 11:26). Just like today’s Gospel preachers, Paul would have been accused of being extremist, elitist, a cult leader and an intellectual who conditioned salvation on knowledge (see Acts 24:5). An arrogant, unloving man who cruelly and dispassionately ruled out the possibility of a man being saved, who denied a man his ‘hope of salvation’, of being a true child of God, simply by the fact he believed incorrectly about a doctrine or two; that his knowledge of the truth was not on a par with Paul’s. And more than likely, Paul would have been accused of being one who dared to ‘play God’ by judging a man saved or lost because he did not believe what Paul believed despite a man’s adherence to God’s law and sincere devotion and faithfulness in worship. Perhaps their opposition was worded, as one man has supposed, as follows: "Dear Paul...we find your language to be somewhat intemperate. In your letter, after a brief greeting to the Galatians, you immediately attack your opponents by claiming they want to ‘pervert the Gospel of Christ’ (Gal. 1:7). You then say that such men should be regarded as ‘accursed’; and in another place, you make reference to ‘false brethren’ (Gal. 2:4). Wouldn’t it be more charitable to give them the benefit of the doubt—at least until the General Assembly has investigated and adjudicated the matter? To make the situation worse, you later say, ‘I would that they were even cut off which trouble you’ (Gal. 5:12). Is such a statement really fitting for a Christian minister? The remark seems quite harsh and unloving....Besides, Paul, we need to maintain unity among those who profess a belief in Christ. The Judaizers at least stand with us as we confront the surrounding paganism and humanism..." (K.R.) Isn’t this the kind of language and attitude that is popular today? That mealy-mouthed, soft, ‘We don’t want to offend anyone so don’t tread on anyone’s toes’ kind of attitude? The kind of non-judgemental attitude prevalent among the ‘churches’ that keeps the people coming through the doors every Sunday, that in fact attracted them there in the first place, and the offering plates full? Paul would not have blinked an eye or thought twice about what he had said, in the face of such ignorant criticism. Paul was not moved by what men said about him, but what God had declared to him. Paul was a "minister of God"  and a steward "of the mysteries of God" (1 Cor 4:1) and foremost in his mind was the fact that "...it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful" (1 Cor. 4:2). "Paul was not insensible to the good opinion of men. He did not despise their favor, or court their contempt. But this was not the principal thing which he regarded; and we have here a noble elevation of purpose and of aim, which shows how direct was his design to serve and please the Master Who had appointed him to his office." He knew what he believed and he knew Who he believed and he knew that he’d been given the only Gospel of salvation God had ever designed. The Gospel Paul preached was no private theory of his, it was the very Truth of God, it was the very mystery of God now revealed to him, which Paul said was "...the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust" (1 Tim. 1:11 cf. Titus 1:3). The ministry that Paul received was "...to testify the Gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24). What Paul believed was what God had said and not merely something he was convinced of. If Paul had been wrong, if this was not the only Gospel of God, his words would never have been recorded as part of Holy Scripture. At the least they would have been qualified. Imagine also the religious leaders of Paul’s day who opposed him by pointing to the fact that none of the great leaders of the Pharisees believed what Paul believed. Religious traditionalists who hold more fervently to the traditions of men rather than of God’s Word, in order to prove their teachings right, always refer their opponents to the testament of the history of their denomination or organization and their confessions of faith, their creeds, where it cannot be found that any of their forbears taught or believed the kind of things Paul and his successors were saying. The same attitude is most prevalent today in those who oppose our Gospel and the ramifications that come with it, ‘Which of the great reformers of the past said, and which of the great theologians, teachers and biblical scholars of today say, what you are saying?’ Such statements provide absolutely no proof whatsoever that those who subscribe to them are bearers of the true Gospel, but are actually a confession, an admittance, that that particular group does not, and never has, preached THE Gospel. Such a fleshly attitude is not without biblical precedence, for the religiously hypocritical Pharisees of Jesus’ day exclaimed "...are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?" (Jn. 7:47,48). Any teaching that is perceived to be new or that has not been part of a religious institution’s teaching manual, is labelled as false and that which causes division. So many believe this especially when it comes from long established religious institutions—as if no such group could have things so wrong for so long! "An old error is more popular than a new truth!" Now, the Gospel is not a new truth but it is ‘new’ to those who hear it for the first time. These people are not interested in truth; they are not interested in what the Scriptures say but only in what ‘great teachers of the past’ say. Their unquestioning subservience to such men, rather than the Truth of God, is detestable. These traditionalists need to leave their traditions behind and come to the Truth! They need to abandon their veneration of men’s words and start paying homage to God’s Word. Interestingly, it is not the Scriptures which these modern-day Pharisees immediately point to as not teaching the things that oppose what they say, but the traditions of the institution and their past ‘great teachers’ that are immediately called in as support. Imagine what these institutions would say if one taught independently of them, and something which it did not promote, who sought refuge in tradition rather than go immediately to the Scriptures for support! They would immediately cry out ‘CULT!’

Paul was not an unloving, arrogant or uncaring elitist and neither are today’s Gospel preachers who preach the same Gospel Paul preached and who insist, as vehemently as he did, and with as much right and authority as he did, that any who bring or believe another gospel are among the accursed. Paul preached the true Gospel, the only one given to him by his Lord and which He called ‘My Gospel’, so it made perfect sense, perfect biblical sense, or the Holy Spirit would never have inspired Paul to write what he wrote, that any who believed not that Gospel were lost. Speaking through Paul, God was not only saying, ‘This is My Gospel’, but also, ‘THIS IS THE ONLY GOSPEL THAT SAVES!’ Those who fail to believe this, fail to believe Him by not trusting in the only plan of salvation that actually works! Why would God have bothered to provide His Gospel AND define it as that which must be believed in, if belief in any gospel could save just as well? Respect of persons or traditions just did not figure in Paul’s reasoning at all. What was important was what God had said. It was, and still is, a black and white issue with no gray areas. God’s Truth, God’s Gospel, was all that mattered. Can you see how simple and basic Paul’s reasoning was and how perfectly it matches the logic behind the only proper conclusion that can be reached—that when a man answers 4 + 4 with the number 9, 10, 6, or any number other than the right number—he is a man who is in error, a man who does not have the only correct answer and is therefore not to be grouped with those who do.

In order to demonstrate the vital importance of this issue of how many gospels there are which save and can be safely believed in, Paul emphasized his previous statement to the Galatians by declaring in the following verse that it did not matter who it was that came to them. The truth of God, the Gospel of God, was never to be verified by personality! Paul said, "if ANY man..." No matter a man’s eloquent style or manner of preaching, no matter their reputation for holy living, degree of humility and gentleness of manner. No matter their fame, no matter which religious order they belonged to or how long it had been established, no matter how highly respected they might be or how popular they were or how many people were convinced they were authentic religious leaders sent from God. IF THEY PREACHED A GOSPEL WHICH DIFFERED FROM THE GOSPEL THAT PAUL HAD TAUGHT THEM, THEY WERE TO CONSIDER SUCH MEN NOT AS MEN OF GOD BUT AS MEN ACCURSED OF GOD!! It did not matter, it made no difference, how close their gospels came to the true Gospel. It did not sway Paul in the slightest how many truths their gospels contained or how many good works they claimed to have done in the name of Jesus (see Matt. 7:22,23). Paul reiterated, he did not say it once but twice, that if any man’s gospel was not the exact same Gospel as the one he preached, with all its specifics and doctrinal accuracy—for how else could his Gospel be identified—and which the people had received, they were to take this as a clear sign that such a person was not sent to them by God, they were not representing God, nor was their message representative of, or could it be rightly called, the great Gospel of God. This ruled out any possibility whatsoever that any other gospel could ever save, or that this Gospel of Paul’s would ever undergo change or modification authored by God. Paul was saying THIS IS IT! This is God’s Gospel and it will always be God’s Gospel! It will never be any different, it will never change, it will always be recognized by the distinctive doctrines it contains. YES, WHEN GOD CONSTRUCTED HIS GOSPEL, HE INDEED BROKE THE MOLD!!

A Reformed Calvinist pastor once wrote to me saying that he had ‘No idea how much error God is willing to put up with in His people when it comes to the matter of the Gospel’. The answer is: NO error which, by its very nature, contributes to the perversion of the Gospel of Christ, thereby revealing another gospel that God has not declared and another christ that God does not claim to be HIS Son, will be tolerated. And no one who believes in such error can be considered among God’s people. Error is the spoiler. Error is the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. Error is that which changes truth into a lie and THE Gospel into another gospel. Error is not what God has said but what an unregenerate man believes God has said. Error concerning the Gospel is something that can never be excused, but is always the identifying mark of a false Christian. Far from being something that God will overlook or excuse, error, when it comes to what the Gospel is, is deadly. The word heresies is found under the heading "works of the flesh" in Scripture and is part of a list of things upon which Paul commented: "...they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God" (see Gal. 5:19-21). Heresy is "an opinion, especially a self-willed opinion, which is substituted for submission to the power of truth, and leads to division and the formation of sects." There is no room in the interpretation of the Gospel for any self-willed opinion of man’s, for the Gospel is the Word and Will of God. All man can do with it is believe it or not. No one ever got saved by acknowledging error, or heresy! No one, whilst a child of God, has ever believed error that identifies a false gospel. Heaven is for lovers of the truth, not those who are enamoured with a lie. Those who believe a lie, i.e. another gospel, far from being saved, are under strong delusion (2 Thess. 2:11). There are no allowances made in God’s plan of salvation for those who believe error, for the whole idea of that Great Plan is that IT, and IT alone, be believed because IT, and IT alone, is what God has said MUST be believed in order that people can be saved. Knowledge and belief of God’s Truth, of God’s Gospel, is the fulfilment of God’s Plan for the salvation of His people. Everything has been done to save them and all that remains is that which will assuredly happen— their believing God’s Gospel. GOD SAVES THROUGH BELIEF OF HIS GOSPEL, NOT THROUGH UNBELIEF, OR PARTIAL BELIEF OF IT!

Some see doctrinal issues as only minor. They say, ‘We can’t know everything when we become a Christian.’ No one is saying that one must know everything there is to know at the outset of one’s Christian life, just the Gospel, which God Himself has said must be believed for a person to be saved. Surely you are not of the opinion that there can be salvation without faith? Then why so much resistance to the truth that unless there is faith in God’s one and only Gospel, there can be no salvation? The ignorant say, ‘What does it really matter if one has a few errors when it comes to the Gospel.’ My friend, those ‘few errors’ are precisely what the Word of God tells us are the identifying mark of false gospels! HOW ELSE COULD A FALSE GOSPEL BE IDENTIFIED BUT BY ITS ERRORS!! They are the very thing the Bible tells us to watch out for! Error is that which has strayed from the truth and all who believe it share in its accursedness. We have not been told in Galatians 1 by Paul how large or how small an error would need to be for a gospel to be called a false gospel. And this is something which some have latched onto as being the loophole that will admit into heaven even those who hold to some error when it comes to what the Gospel is, in other words, how God saves. But Paul’s silence here on exactly what it is that constitutes a false gospel reveals more than one might think. Paul did not qualify his warning with some line about a person’s message being another gospel only if the error they proclaimed reached a certain level. A false gospel was not to be judged so when its errors reached a certain point, but in the fact that it contained any error at all! Paul left his readers with no doubt in their minds, and with nothing else to conclude, that if anyone were to bring a gospel which differed in any way, to any degree, with what Paul had told them, they were accursed people and their gospels spurious. Paul’s succinct statements regarding what the Gospel was and what it was not, shows the simple reasoning of Paul that if what a person presented to the Galatians was not what he had told them, if they did not agree with Paul’s Gospel or claimed to believe it yet added or took away one jot or tittle from it, it would no longer be what God had told Paul and would therefore qualify as another gospel. The strongest evidence for this, that even the smallest or slightest deviation from the truth, from what God has said in His Gospel, qualifies a person’s gospel as something other than God’s Gospel, is found further on in Paul’s letter in the following key verse: "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Gal. 5:9). Leaven, as seen in Matthew 16, is symbolical of teaching. "By leaven the Hebrews metaphorically understood whatever had the power of corrupting, whether doctrine, or example or anything else....Leaven is used in making bread. Its use is to pass through the flour, and cause it to ferment or to swell, and become light. It passes secretly, silently, but certainly." What Paul was saying in the context of this fifth chapter was that even if the Galatians claimed to believe the Gospel and yet added, for instance, something as seemingly benign as the doctrine of circumcision as a necessary rite that had to be performed in order for a man to be or remain saved, the Gospel would be perverted, their hearts would belong to another gospel, and Christ would profit them nothing: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing" (Gal. 5:2). This shows clearly that even if a person claimed to believe the Gospel, all the right doctrines, yet added anything to it, the true Christ of the true Gospel will be of no advantage to them. An appeal by such people to Christ and what He did on the cross will fall on deaf ears for they have turned their heads and hearts to something in addition to what Christ has done, thereby revealing a lack of confidence in the efficaciousness of what Christ has done to save. This absence of trust in the Savior’s Work is so pronounced that it has convinced them to look to what they do to ensure the completeness of their salvation. A dependence upon anything outside of Christ, including any degree of self-reliance, "...amounts to a rejection of the Savior, and of the doctrine of justification by Him." Christ profits them nothing who believe in anything apart from, less than or in addition to, His Gospel. Paul was saying that they could claim Christ all they wanted to, but if they added circumcision to the Gospel he taught then it was another gospel they had turned to and had abandoned his, showing that they had never savingly believed it. Can you see that Paul is not dealing with the Galatians’ ‘good intentions’ or sincerity of belief, but with the cold hard fact that if they looked to anything other than Christ and His Gospel as that which saves then, whether they believed it or not they held to another gospel, which cannot save. Only Paul’s Gospel demands that a person wholly trust in Christ for their salvation. What the Galatians were being taught was a gospel that claimed to exalt Christ and yet included circumcision as part of, therefore essential to, God’s great plan of salvation. For a person to be circumcised in order to ensure or secure their salvation, they must first have been taught such a thing and then believed in this false doctrine that was part of a false gospel, which dared add this religious work to the glorious Gospel of God. Those who taught, and who even today continue to teach, such things—adding anything to the Gospel message, or modifying it in any way—may not be overtly denying any particular doctrine of the Gospel, or even be aware that they are, but by adding to it, by conditioning any part of salvation on what a man must do, they affect the whole and Christ shall profit them nothing. "He is to be a whole Savior. No one is to share with Him in the honor of saving men; and no rite, no custom, no observance of law, is to divide the honor with His death." By changing even the smallest detail, one does away with what God has said is required for salvation. Its like adding the smallest mark to a beautifully painted white wall. No matter how small the mark, it has spoilt the purity of the whiteness, and the wall can no longer be considered purely white. One’s eyes will virtually always be drawn to the blemish. You see, the Message, or Gospel, of God is so perfect, so pure, so absolutely excellent, that once you change any part of it or fail to believe any part of it, you are left with another gospel and not that Holy Gospel of God. If you go beyond it or fall short of it, if you abide in that which falls either side of what God has said, then you cannot have the Gospel for your faith is found to not be within its boundaries. This is why when there is error concerning the preaching of the Gospel, such erroneous teaching is termed another gospel and is not for a moment to be considered, as we see from Paul’s writings, as God’s Gospel, and therefore as able to save. This is also what lies behind the reasoning in such verses as Proverbs 30:6: "Add thou not unto His words, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar" (cf. Rev. 22:18). Liars tell lies, and if the gospel you teach or believe is not God’s Gospel then your message, your hope, is nothing but a lie and when you tell it to others, you are found to be nothing but a liar. So many professing christians would not dare even think to lie to their brethren, yet do not realise that when they share their false gospels with others, they are committing the biggest lie of all. Anything added to what God has already said is His Gospel changes the message into a different gospel, just like adding even the smallest fraction to a correct answer to a mathematical equation changes that answer from being the right one to one of a multitude of wrong ones. For example, 2 + 2 = 4, but if you change that answer ever so slightly by saying that 2 + 2 equals 4¼, you no longer have the truth but are left with a lie. Even though your answer may contain the truth, what you add to it changes the whole into a lie, an untruth. No matter how much you plead your case, no matter how fervently you believe your answer to be right, your answer will be marked WRONG! Those who believe that all religions lead to the same god, or that all gospels lead to the same god, have confused the Gospel as being part of the equation and not the Answer. When it comes to spiritual matters, the equation is: ‘How can I be saved?’ The answer is: ‘By God’s only Gospel!’ THE INDISPENSABLE LINK BETWEEN MAN AND SALVATION IS GOD’S ONLY GOSPEL!! No other gospel can bring or hold the two together. God has only one answer to man’s dilemma and it is revealed only in His Gospel. A gospel preached and believed in that is not God’s Gospel is a denial of God’s Gospel, it is a rebellion against God’s Gospel whether it is intended to be or not, and those who harbor such doctrines do in fact replace the true Gospel with what Paul called another gospel, another message, another plan of salvation that is NOT God’s plan, NOT God’s Message, NOT God’s Gospel. All man has is his version, GOD’S GOT THE TRUTH! All false gospels are merely pale imitations of the true one. A FALSE GOSPEL IS A LOST MAN’S TRUTH. All false gospels are anti-Gospel, for they are preached in its stead and are therefore against it. All false gospels are perversions of the true Gospel and all who preach and believe a perverted gospel have a perverted view of God, and therefore a wrong view about how He saves. They are not true Christians but perverted versions who trust in a different plan of salvation than the one God has revealed in His Gospel. Their hope is in something other than what God has said and is utter vanity. False gospels are man’s attempts at outlining a plan of salvation and they are all miserable failures, for they have never saved anybody. Even one erroneous teaching, one false doctrine, added to the truth affects all of the right doctrines, just like a little leaven will always leaven the whole lump of dough. Just one false teaching will affect the true Gospel doctrines and leave you without God’s Word on the matter. Dough is no longer purely dough if anything is added to it. Here is the essence of what Paul was trying to establish in the minds of those believers in Galatia. Once you have changed the ingredients of the Gospel by either leaving some of them out or by adding to them or perverting them in any way you no longer have THE GOSPEL but ANOTHER gospel, which is not that message, not that recipe for salvation, which God has specified in HIS Gospel. To corrupt is to render a thing "...meaningless or different in meaning from the original by scribal errors or alterations." Remember, only a little leaven is needed to leaven the entire lump! "Erroneous doctrines are like leaven in the following respects: (1) They are, at first, slight and unimportant in appearance. (2) They are insinuated into the soul unawares and silently, and are difficult of detection. (3) They are gradual (4) They act most certainly. (5) They will pervade all the soul, and bring in all the faculties under their control."

To elaborate on what has just been said concerning the addition of a false doctrine to the Gospel message affecting all its doctrines, or removing a certain right doctrine or changing one in any way, we learn that if, for instance, the Gospel doctrine of God sovereignly electing those He chose to salvation according to His will before the creation of the world (see Eph. 1:4) were to be omitted and replaced with the false doctrine of salvation being dependant on a free will choice of man’s, this would necessitate changing the doctrine of who Christ actually died for from those God gave Him (see Jn. 17:2) to every individual ever born. This would in turn necessitate changing the very essence of what atonement is and therefore what Christ actually accomplished by His death. There is no doctrine that Satan has sought to corrupt more than the doctrine of Christ’s atonement. In addition, a gospel which teaches that Christ died for every individual could not logically include within it the doctrine which states that all men by nature are dead in sin, do not seek God, are without God and therefore without hope in this world (see Rom. 3:11; Eph. 2:1,12). The doctrine that salvation is an impossibility with man (see Matt. 19:25,26) would also have to be changed to accommodate the erroneous doctrine that does away with God’s sovereign election and replaces it with man’s free will choice. No doubt the reader can see the domino effect which occurs anytime there is the presence of false doctrine, and the depth to which error changes truth. Just like the leaven affects the whole lump of dough, error affects the whole truth—false doctrine changes the whole Message of God into something which He has not said. Whether you add to it or take away from it, the whole message is affected, which is why Paul did not hesitate to call any gospel that differed to ANY extent from his Gospel another gospel, and those who believed it accursed.

Notice again in our passage from Galatians 1 that Paul did not speak about a man’s ‘good intentions’ when he warned about those who brought with them another gospel. He did not exclude or exonerate people from being among the accursed if it was discerned that they ‘meant well’, as is the intention, no doubt, of most religious teachers when expounding their beliefs. Meaning well is fine. No one is doubting the person’s intention when they unknowingly bring another gospel, but it is what they are saying about God that is the issue. A person may well have good intentions and mean well when they give directions to someone who has lost their way, but if those directions are wrong, then no amount of good intentions is going to get the person to whom they were given to their intended destination! Its just going to confuse them even more. So too, a false gospel, no matter how much it may be accompanied by the good intentions of a well meaning person, has never and will never get anyone to heaven. Paul couldn’t care less what a man’s motive was in preaching the true Gospel (Phil. 1:18), but it mattered a great deal when they came preaching a different gospel. What do they say His Gospel is? Who do they say Christ is? What do they say Christ did? Do they agree with God? If they do, it will be evidenced by their speaking the same Gospel HE teaches. Does their gospel differ in any way with God’s? If so, they reveal themselves as accursed people, not saved people who have a few errors, but ACCURSED PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THEIR ERROR! People are so often prone to legitimizing that which a person says because of their manner and presentation. No less so in matters spiritual. People give legitimacy to a gospel taught them simply because those who bring it are learned people or respected and recognized ‘ministers’. Because they are such ‘nice’ people. For many, the fact that a man is an ‘ordained minister’ is seen as proof that he has passed through some rigorous series of tests concerning his character, and that he is now somehow beyond repute, and that he was able to retain an accepted level of that which he was taught over several years. All this combines to assure people that we can, and should, trust such men implicity. Remember the old adage, Don’t judge a book by its cover! Someone might say, ‘But they are such lovely people, such God-fearing people.’ Yes, but which god are they fearing? If it is not the true God’s Gospel they believe, then it is not the true God they are fearing. Paul spoke not of a man’s reputation or eloquence of speech as being the reliable and verifiable factors we were to look out for before deciding whether or not he was of God and his message true. Not at all. Do not allow yourselves to be moved simply because a preacher sounds good, is easy to listen to and speaks with high reverence and whose voice echoes with authority or who exudes confidence that what he is saying is true. Do not merely believe what a man is saying because of how convinced he seems to be that what he is saying is the truth. The only thing Paul pointed out, the only thing he drew attention to, was the one reliable and verifiable factor to determine whether or not a man was sent from God and preaching the Gospel of God, and that was whether his gospel was the exact same Gospel that Paul had preached to them. The man could be the most respected religious leader on earth, he could be the one who had the greatest reputation, he could be the one who was loved and trusted by all, he could even be a trusted family member such as your father, husband or brother. He could be an extremely and impressively learned man familiar with all the great doctrines, with an extensive knowledge of the history of Israel and of the Old Testament, able to locate any town on any Bible map in an instant, able to recite verbatim any verse of Scripture, renowned for being a fervent and ardent man of prayer, a man who has given up the world and all its pleasures, a man who tirelessly preaches against sin and who encourages holy living. A man who has been able to write great volumes of teaching concerning God and the holy life. Even a man who is now dead, which for many is some unwritten and automatic stamp of approval on just about everything he ever taught. All of this counted for nothing in the mind of Paul the apostle if the man preached any gospel other than the one Paul preached! Is this arrogance on Paul’s part? Is this the most flagrant display of religious pride ever seen? Had Paul been driven mad by power? NOTHING OF THE KIND!! What mattered to Paul was, ‘Is what they are teaching the Gospel of God or the words of men?’ It is wisdom that is in evidence here; wisdom that comes directly from God, which deals in black and white terms, and which is resident in every person who believes in the Gospel of Christ, in turn evidencing that they have the mind of Christ.

In light of his words in Galatians 1:8,9, it is most revealing to see what Paul the apostle wrote in the verses immediately following. In verse 10 we see that Paul’s purpose was to please God, unlike his days prior to his conversion when he sought to please men. The position that Paul took, evidenced in the previous two verses, for as a Christian he could take no other, precluded him as a pleaser of men, for all men by nature would reject Paul’s Gospel and his claim that any religious teaching that contradicted or differed in any way to the doctrines contained in his Gospel, constituted a false teaching and all those who taught and believed it as accursed people. Now, taking the still highly unpopular and frowned upon stand that the Gospel he preached was the only Gospel that saves, Paul showed that it was no longer the teachings of men which he followed but the glorious truth of God. Truth that comes only from God and which man in his natural state knows nothing about. It must be clearly understood that Paul, in preaching the Gospel of God, was not attempting to win the favor of men, for it was completely foreign to natural man, something which by sin he was alienated from (Eph. 4:18; Col. 1:21). If Paul were still seeking to please men, then what was he doing with a Gospel that called all men accursed who did not believe it? That stated that none of their efforts, something which all religions had always taught them, would ever win the favor of God. If he were trying to please men he would not have been advocating an exclusive Gospel, but a popular one. If he were trying to please men, he would not have been advocating and promoting a Gospel that was contrary to the very nature of men and which they would see as foolishness. His reasoning behind all this was: "...for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ" (Gal. 1:10). Conversely, this shows that all those who bring another gospel are pleasers of men rather than God and are therefore not the servants of Christ (cf. Rom. 16:17,18). Is it any wonder then that Paul refers to them as accursed! In Philippians 3, Paul said that the things he thought profited him in his religious heyday before he heard and believed the mighty Gospel of God, he now counted as rubbish: "...I count all things but loss (no profit) for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for Whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in Him not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3:8,9). Paul accounted everything outside the Gospel of Christ as worthless in comparison to the knowledge of Christ as revealed in that Gospel. Paul did not want to be found any longer with his own ‘righteousness’, which he learned from a false gospel and which he had placed his faith in prior to his hearing the Gospel of God, but only upon the merits of Christ did Paul now place his complete trust. Paul once held to a false gospel and now he believed the true Gospel, the only Gospel that conditions salvation from beginning to final glory upon the merits, the righteousness, of Christ alone. "Paul, when he became a Christian, gave up his brilliant prospects in regard to this life, and everything indeed on which his heart had been placed. He abandoned the hope of honor and distinction; he sacrificed every prospect of gain or ease; and he gave up his dearest friends, and separated himself from those whom he tenderly loved. He might have risen to the highest posts of honor in his native land, and the path which an ambitious young man desires was fully open before him. But all this had been cheerfully sacrificed in order that he might obtain an interest in the Savior, and partake of His blessings." Unlike many today, Paul was not moved away from the truth by the cares of this world, by a deep-seated craving for the respect and adulation of friends and family and those who listened to him. He did not compromise the truth because he wanted to hang on to what he’d built up in the world. No, he heard and believed the truth and clung to it even as he saw friends, family, public popularity and all his previous religious fame and prestige drop dramatically away. Paul knew whom he believed and he cared nothing about the cost he would have to pay in believing the Gospel. Paul did not seek to please men or gain their favor by his Gospel for it was God’s Gospel, it was widely unpopular and, needless to say, so was his claim that any who preached anything different were accursed of God despite their religiosity. Paul sought only to please God which, significantly, ties in with why he stated that no gospel other than the one he preached was to be called the Gospel of God. Paul was indeed "...set for the defense of the Gospel" (Phil. 1:17). The fact that Paul now sought to please God is testament to the fact that the only way he could do this was if he only and solely preached and defended God’s Gospel, AND CONDEMNED ALL OTHERS!! Part of believing the Gospel is to reject all others as having any power whatsoever to save. Its part of the package, it comes with the territory, or however you like to put it. This is not something we have to learn but something to which our eyes are opened at the granting of Faith.

The Scriptures say, "...it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (1 Cor. 1:21). Believe what exactly? Believe the only kind of preaching that pleases God: the proper and correct preaching of His one and only Gospel! "God was disposed, or well-pleased. The plan of salvation originated in His good pleasure, and was such as His wisdom approved. God chose this plan, so unlike all the plans of men....Not by ‘foolish preaching,’ but by the preaching of the cross, which was regarded as foolish and absurd by the men of the world. This was the peculiarity and essence of the plan of God; and this has appeared to the mass of men to be a plan devoid of wisdom, and unworthy of God. The preaching of the cross (1 Cor. 1:17,18), which is thus esteemed foolishness, is made the means of saving them, because it sets forth God’s only plan of mercy, and states the way in which lost sinners may become reconciled to God." A refutation of the Gospel is a rejection of the God of the Gospel. If preaching is so important to God, don’t you think WHAT is preached is equally as important? Of course it is. God is not pleased simply because someone is preaching but only when they are preaching His Truth. The Scriptures say that God has "...manifested His Word through preaching..." (Titus 1:3). "The meaning here is, that He has made known His eternal purpose through the preaching of the Gospel." GOD IS NOT PLEASED WHEN A PERSON PREACHES OR BELIEVES A GOSPEL, BUT ONLY WHEN THEY PREACH AND BELIEVE HIS GOSPEL! Those who believe in a false gospel and then hear the true Gospel, acknowledging it’s doctrines and yet resisting it’s attempts to convince them that they could not have been saved whilst under a counterfeit gospel, are playing with fire and there is no way you can play with fire and not get burnt, and false gospels will burn you to a crisp! Such people, unlike Paul, are not willing to give up their current comforts, friends, religious position and the respect they have gained over the years. They do not want to stand out from the crowd, preferring to remain one of the crowd rather than risk losing everyone’s respect and admiration. And, quite frankly, they simply do not want to admit, not even to themselves, that they have been deceived. Such people really have no love for God or His truth but are in love with themselves and anything religious that they can utilize to make themselves more comfortable in this world. MAKE NO MISTAKE—THE TRUTH WILL FIND YOU OUT! They show that despite all their claims to the opposite, "There is NO fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3:18 cf. Psa. 36:1). The fear of God, meaning to truly reverence God, to worship Him, does not merely concern our conduct but begins with a recognition of, and a reverence towards, His Gospel and no other. COMPROMISE IS FOR THOSE WHO SEEK THE LOVE OF MAN MORE THAN THE LOVE OF GOD! Such people compromise the Truth by saying they were saved before knowing it, thus subscribing to the unbiblical claim that a man can be just as saved whilst in ignorance of the Gospel as one who believes it. If this were so, if it were possible for a man who was in ignorance of the Gospel to be just as saved as the man who knows and believes it, WHAT THEN WOULD BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SAVED AND LOST? It could no longer be the gift of Faith, by the grace of God, in the Gospel of God. It could not even be a religious lifestyle, for that would mean that all religious people would be saved despite what they believed. Even not believing in Christ would not warrant a person’s exclusion from being numbered among the chosen!! Can you see the kind of madness one would be left with if belief of God’s Gospel was not the yardstick of salvation?

In verse 11 of Galatians 1, Paul states: "But I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached of me is not after man." Paul is here declaring to the Galatians that the Gospel which he preached was not taught to him by man, it was not according to man, did not originate with man and therefore he could not rightly be accused of seeking to please men. "He had neither received it from man, nor had it been debased or adulterated by any human admixtures." The true Gospel of God, when preached by His people, never has error mixed in with it. If it were possible for even God’s own people to preach an erroneous gospel, then it would not be God’s Gospel that was being preached, for all false gospels are identified by the errors, the ‘human admixtures’ and ‘adulterations’, which pervade them. "Paul had received it directly from the Lord Jesus," as the following verse shows: "For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Gal. 1:12). What Paul had conveyed to them was the Gospel of God, not one that came from the imagination of men. If the sequence of events had been that Paul asked God what the Gospel was, God would have answered him with exactly the same Gospel He had given him. To ask, ‘What is the Gospel’, is to ask, ‘What is God’s plan of salvation? How does He save?’ If what you have been told differs in any way, to any degree, with what God told Paul, then it is incumbent upon this author to tell you that you have been fed a false gospel, another gospel, different and distinguishable from the Gospel of God by it’s doctrines. You have not a right knowledge of God’s plan of salvation but have placed your trust in another’s plan, a different plan, a different gospel, which teaches a different christ and is promoted by a different spirit. You have no biblical right to call yourself a Christian, and stand at this moment as accursed as those Paul called accursed who brought with them another gospel. I do not say this to condemn you but to alert you to what the Scriptures teach and that you urgently need to examine what you believe with what the Scriptures say. To claim that one cannot know the Gospel exactly makes as much sense as telling the person who has asked for directions to Sydney, ‘Sorry, you can’t get there from here.’ The precious Gospel that Paul received through revelation from Jesus Christ is the only one Christ committed to his trust and the only Gospel Paul defended and promoted as the one that can rightly be called the Gospel of God. This Gospel was given, not so it would one day be forgotten or unknowable, but that it would be preached and believed. The Gospel is not some indefinable thing, something which is far off in the distance that no one can quite make out, but is as clear today as when God revealed it to His apostle, Paul. This great Gospel is recognized by the doctrines which comprise it, doctrines which are clearly taught in the pages of the Bible, and any doctrines which differ in the slightest degree from the glorious Doctrine of Christ is enough to call the gospel they are a part of another gospel and the people who believe them accursed.

Notice, too, the standard which Paul the apostle used to make his declaration that any gospel that differs from his is a false gospel. In order to know what any type of counterfeit is, be it currency, stamp or document, we need to compare that which is claimed to be authentic with the genuine article. How can one know that what is presented is a fake, if one does not have a rule by which the fake can be tested or measured? One cannot have something that is false if there is not a genuine to compare it with. And, when you have an original of anything, there invariably will be fakes, counterfeit versions of it. How could Paul warn of false gospels if there was no such thing as the true Gospel, and if he did not know what that true Gospel was? How could we today reject and flee from false gospels if God had not assured that all His people would know what the true Gospel is? Just as God has said, "...I am God, and there is none else; I am God and there is none like Me" (Isa. 46:9), so too, He says in His Word that His Gospel is THE Gospel and there are none others true; His Gospel is THE Gospel and there is none other like it. There are none others like it because no other speaks the same message; there are none others like it because only it can save. It is the only one that has ever proceeded out of the mouth of God. Just like there is no other god like God, there is no other gospel like His Gospel.

Anyone can come up to you and declare that 5 inches is a certain length. One person may say it is so long and another may say it is shorter or longer than the original estimate. The only way you can be sure as to which person is correct in their estimation is not by adding your own opinion to the mix, which would also be based on nothing but what your appraisal of how long 5 inches is, but by obtaining a ruler or tape measure—which is THE RIGHT AND PROPER STANDARD, THE RULE—and measuring the distance, which only this instrument of precision can reliably gauge. Differing views about distance will always exist and foolish men may argue their point but once the standard is found, once the precise instrument of measurement is produced, the arguments, at least from wise men, will cease and their estimate of how long a certain distance is will forever conform with that of the standard. Have you ever seen anyone argue with the standard? Have you ever seen men arguing and doubting the correctness of a tape measure who were considered wise and reasonable? The tape measure ends all arguments and only fools will not comply with it and reject all previous estimates. Tape measures are not made based on men’s opinions of how much space there should be between each mark, they are stamped out according to the proper universal standard of how much space should be between each mark. They are mathematically accurate and not mere guess work. They are reliable and accepted as the standard by which we judge distance, and are used by builder and architect alike. Imagine what confusion there would be if architects and builders did not use tape measures or rulers and merely made their plans and built their buildings based on guess work, their estimations as to distance and space! There would be no coherence, only opinion. Thus the Church of Christ is not built upon the opinions, views and interpretations of men, but on the Word of God, on the doctrines of the apostles, which reveal what is the truth of God. Christ’s people, who are of the household of God, "...are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Corner Stone" (Eph. 2:20). "That is, the doctrines of Divine revelation, whether communicated by prophets or apostles, were laid at the foundation of the Christian Church. It was not founded on philosophy, or tradition, or on human laws, or on a venerable antiquity, but on the great truths which God had revealed." And, just as there can be no true Church if it is not founded upon true doctrine, so too, there can be no true Christian whose beliefs are not based upon the great doctrines which comprise the Gospel of God. The Scriptures refer to those who are not part of the Church of God, not among those who are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets and therefore believers in God’s only Gospel, as "...strangers and foreigners..." (Eph. 2:19). Only after they have believed in God’s Gospel can any be rightly judged as "...fellowcitizens with the saints..." (Eph. 2:19). The Gospel is God’s reliable Standard. It is the Standard by which we measure Truth. Any plan of salvation, any opinion, that does not conform to God’s Gospel cannot be of God and as long as anyone places their trust in it, they cannot be of God but are doomed to eternal punishment. Paul had already told the Galatians what the Gospel was and by doing so, he was in fact also saying what the Gospel was not. He made this perfectly clear when he declared that anyone bringing a different gospel was an accursed person and so, too, was their message. Paul was saying, ‘The gospel a person preaches is not the Gospel that saves unless it agrees with what I say it is.’ Not incidentally, Paul’s warning not only concerned the future, those who would bring a false gospel, but it was a retroactive warning in that it also covered those who had brought different gospels in the past. Paul’s warning not only concerned those who would bring, but those who have brought a different gospel. This should be no less applicable in our own day, in fact more so. As we read Paul’s warning, it should not only be seen as a warning about those who will come in the future bringing false gospels, but more than ever it should be viewed as a warning about those who have brought gospels in the past that differ from Paul’s.

Truth is to be judged by what God has said it is and not by what a man believes, and is firmly convinced, God has said. The Gospel that is to be believed in, the only Gospel that did not come from man but is given by God and which reveals the Righteousness of Christ, is the Gospel that Paul and the other apostles preached and which is clearly taught throughout the pages of Holy Scripture. Many believe they know the Gospel and to their minds, they are convinced that what they believe is the truth of God, otherwise they would no doubt reject it, for who in their right mind would believe something they knew to be wrong. They believe they are comparing Scripture with Scripture when studying to see if what they believe is right. But it is often a case of falling into the familiar trap of selecting only those Scriptures with which one is already cognisant, rather than weighing things up by the whole of Scripture, in particular those Scriptures which tend to make a person feel uncomfortable in what they already believe. A man can compare Scripture with Scripture and believe he is truly testing what he believes by what the Scriptures say, but as long as he is wearing Roman Catholic, Mormon, J.W., or Arminian etc., colored glasses, he is locked into believing the false gospels that these groups teach. As is so often the case, most who read the Bible are ignorant of THE Gospel, they are blinded by the god of this world, Satan, to the truth and so, to their minds, what they see and believe does make sense. According to their limited knowledge of what the Scriptures are really saying, what they believe does appear to be the very Gospel truth of God. To their minds, that which in reality makes no sense makes perfect sense. They never realise that what they believe is nonsense. The Scriptures encourage the believer to "...believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world" (1 Jn. 4:1). People of various religious persuasions all quote this, and other verses like it, in their warnings about those who bring what they consider to be false teachings, but they err terribly who know not THE Truth, who do not begin with the truth, and who try and judge what the truth is without a saving knowledge of it. Like the disciples of the Pharisees in Matthew 22:29, Jesus will say to them, "...ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." The Roman Catholic is firmly convinced that the gospel Rome teaches was the one Paul taught, and therefore one who brings a gospel different to the one the Roman Catholic Church teaches is an accursed man promoting a false gospel. (The Roman Catholic Church places a curse upon any who teach differently to what she teaches and who says her gospel is false.) But what standard is the Roman Catholic man judging by? One can see from this that if you have not the Gospel, Paul’s Gospel, GOD’S Gospel, you will judge even it as a false gospel, as a false message delivering a false hope of salvation, all the while basing your assertion upon a false and inaccurate standard. He does not judge by the truth, but by a gospel that is as false as the one the Mormon or Seventh-Day Adventist or Charismatic might bring to him.

One cannot simply believe what one is being taught is THE Gospel, based merely on the fact that the one who preaches it has warned of false gospels. So many today believe they have the truth, not based so much on what they believe, but on what they don’t believe. So many ‘ministries’ concentrate on exposing false teachings and practices and, to the mind of many, this is enough to convince them that such a ministry must be teaching the truth about God, for look how much error they are exposing. It is a flawed logic at best and a deadly one at worst! Simply because a man comes to you warning of imminent danger, is no reason you should automatically trust this man and take him at his word. Be wary, be alert, activate your senses, but don’t automatically trust that person or think that just because he has warned you of trouble ahead, he has the right solution. Most are familiar with the story of Chicken Little, where the fox came and warned the chickens that the sky was falling. The chickens immediately believed the fox and followed him to his lair where he killed them all and ate them up! Those who warn of danger, or of false teachings by counterfeit christian organizations, are not seen as wanting to do us harm but as attempting to help us, therefore many people instinctively listen to them and count what they say as reliable and beneficial. We all tend to believe someone if they tell us to watch out for so and so. To simply presume that one is teaching the truth because their warnings of false teachings and practices have all been proven correct, is a ridiculous and nonsensical philosophy upon which to base one’s hope for salvation. Many ‘ministries’ do rightly expose a multitude of false practices and teachings. The Seventh-Day Adventist Church and the J.W.’s, for instance, each do a well researched job in exposing the erroneous teachings and practices of Roman Catholicism and both boast a sizeable number of former Roman Catholics as members of their respective organizations, but does this automatically qualify either of their gospels as the true one? Hardly. Both of these movements teach gospels which differ from one another, so how can a man rightly judge the truth by how well a ministry exposes error? Both organizations rightly say that Romanism’s gospel is a false gospel but they say this, not judging by the true Gospel, but on the fact it differs from their own perverted gospels, which they believe to be the true Gospel, but in fact are just as false as that of Roman Catholicism.

How then can a person know that what he believes is the true Gospel or a false one that cannot save? By seeing if its doctrines differ in any way from those which make up the Gospel once delivered to the apostle Paul by revelation from the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter how many differing opinions there are about what that Gospel entails, it cannot and does not alter the fact that there is only one true Gospel and that God reveals this Gospel to all His chosen ones. They will hear His voice and they will obey His Gospel (see Jn. 10:4,5,27). Some may say, ‘But how can we know for certain that what we are believing are the right doctrines which make up God’s Gospel?’ This is a very valid and important question and one which a lot of people should be asking. The short answer is: any gospel that conditions salvation on anything a man must do is a false gospel. Any salvation that is dependant on a work of man’s and not solely on the grace of God is a false gospel. Any gospel that leaves room for a man to boast in what he has done, even if he attributes what he has done to God, is a false gospel (see Eph. 2:8,9; Lk. 18:9-12). Any gospel that declares you saved whilst in ignorance of the true Gospel and bases your salvation on what you have done or what has happened to you is a false gospel. God’s Gospel is the only one that gives all the glory to God for salvation from beginning to final glory, conditioning it solely on what Christ has done to secure and maintain the salvation of all for whom He died. Anything that strays from this reveals itself as a false and misleading gospel and is promoted by Satan’s many ministries of misinformation. Some promulgators and defenders of false gospels are masters of sophistry, employing "methods of argument that are seemingly plausible though actually invalid and misleading" for they are predicated on a lie.

God has promised in His Word that His people would not be left in the dark. Speaking to believers, Paul said God had "...made known unto US the mystery of His will..." (Eph. 1:9 cf. Eph. 6:19). God’s people would hear His voice and all His people will hear and believe His Gospel: "...the sheep follow Him: for they know His voice....they shall hear My voice....My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (Jn. 10:4,16,27). The Lord Jesus said, "...Everyone that is of the Truth heareth My voice" (Jn. 18:37). To be sure of this, God has written His Word, He has recorded His Word, and not merely spoken it audibly to a few men and then hoped that His message would be relayed as accurately as when He first revealed it. With God’s Word in written form, His people would not have to blindly trust and accept what their leaders brought to them as the Word of God, but could see the Scriptures for themselves and test what was presented to them as truth. The Gospel of God is taught, it is explained, and it is made perfectly clear in the Scriptures for all that are given eyes to see it. And significantly, God has sent His Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Truth—to ensure that the elect believe the Truth of God, His Gospel (Jn. 16:7,13,14). THEY ARE GIVEN THE FAITH OF GOD, SO WHAT OTHER GOSPEL COULD THEY POSSIBLY BELIEVE THAN THE GOSPEL OF GOD!! Who would lead the saved person to believe a false gospel? The Holy Spirit of God? The One Who is called by the Son, "The Spirit of Truth" and Who said "He shall glorify Me? Would God give His Faith to one of His elect so that they would believe a false gospel? God’s Gospel plan of salvation will not, and does not, contradict one verse of Scripture. It does not leave any room for a man to boast that he has in some way, and to even the smallest degree, been an active and necessary participant, a contributor, to his own salvation. The only one that a true believer boasts in is his Lord glorying in the fact that he understands and knows Him (see Jer. 9:23,24). IF ITS ALL OF GRACE, THEN IT’S ALL OF GOD!!! If a person is truly saved by grace, then it stands to biblical reason that they are saved through FAITH in God’s only Gospel, for it is a faith which does not come from man but is given by God. THEREFORE THE SAVED PERSON IS SAVED BY THE GRACE OF GOD, THROUGH THE FAITH OF GOD, IN THE GOSPEL OF GOD, AND NO OTHER!! No other God, no other faith and no other gospel can save. It is the same God, by the same Faith in the same Gospel that every saved person has believed and will believe. If the faith you have is God-given, then you will believe in no other gospel but His. If it were possible for a truly saved person to believe wrongly about the Gospel, then they would be no different to any lost person who has placed his trust in a perverted gospel. What good would it do then for God to give His Faith to someone, if even that Faith could believe a false gospel? Why does one have to be given the faith to believe God’s Gospel? Because without it we would not and could not ever savingly believe it! The faith that is spawned from man’s fallen nature could never savingly believe the Gospel of God. No man by nature could believe this great Gospel that does not condition any part of salvation on what a man must do, but conditions it all upon what Christ has done. Man in his dead-in-sin spiritual state cannot recognize God’s Gospel of grace as being the one and only Gospel that can save, for he is conditioned by his sinful, fallen nature to believe that just as he lost his standing with God by his disobedience, he can renew it by his obedience. The faith which is given by God believes only His Gospel, and the faith which man has by nature can only believe the gospels of men.

This shatters the myth that simply because man is an imperfect creature, it is impossible for him to know exactly what the Gospel is. This pathetic and contemptible lie is the excuse many so-called ‘ministers’ use to run to and hide behind when asked the question, ‘What is the Gospel’. One would be hard-pressed to find an answer to why any true minister of God would ever shy away from answering this most vital of questions. Did the apostle Paul act in this way? Was his reaction to the jailer, when he asked this question in Acts 16, one of hesitation? Did Paul say to him, ‘Well, no one really knows what the Gospel is, its just that the Lord commanded that it be believed and preached by His people.’ What an absurd situation it would be if the Gospel of God was unknowable, in other words, for Him to have commanded that it be believed knowing that He would never fully reveal it to anyone! You see, knowing the Gospel is not about man figuring it out or locating it somewhere, nor does it hinge on how well it has been preserved down through the ages. Knowing the Gospel is all about God revealing the Gospel! It is about being given the Faith to believe it. Salvation does not depend on a man’s efforts but is a gift given by God.

If one cannot know the Gospel, then one is saying that God will not, or does not, reveal His Gospel any longer; that this only lasted for a few years and that He now saves by a different means. And, so, if none can know God’s Gospel, God would have to accept those who believe anything that even vaguely resembles it. What an insane and scripturally untenable situation that would be! If your ‘pastor’ becomes reserved or uncommunicative, or hesitant and stumbles over his words when you ask him what the Gospel is, TAKE IT AS A SURE SIGN THAT HE DOES NOT KNOW IT and you had better find someone that does! If you have any misgivings about the gospel you have been taught, do not for a moment hesitate to question it and those who teach it, subjecting both the teaching and the teachers to thorough investigation and biblical scrutiny. True Christians do not fear the Truth, nor do true Christian ministers offer any protest at having to define the Gospel they believe or having what they teach examined. The true Gospel gives all the glory for salvation to God and leaves no room for a man to boast in anything he has done in order to get saved or stay ‘saved’. It is not a complicated message. It is not a message that is difficult to understand. It is a plain and simple message: man is dead in sin and cannot come to God in and of himself (Matt. 19:25,26; Rom. 3:10,11; Eph. 2:1,12); God chose a people for Himself before the foundation of the world, not based on anything they did but upon His will, wisdom and grace (Eph. 1:3-6; 2 Tim. 1:9); Christ Jesus was sent to the earth to establish a perfect righteousness and to die for these people God had chosen and entrusted to Christ’s care (Jn. 10:27,28; 17:2,3; Eph. 5:25); their sins would be charged to Him and His Righteousness to them, thus making them wholly acceptable unto God (2 Cor. 5:21; Eph. 5:2); all these people would believe His Gospel and be saved, for this is the will of God and none of them will perish (Jn. 10:26-29). This, in a nutshell, is the Gospel of God. Of course, there are several truths about Christ, such as His virgin birth and His resurrection and the fact that the Triune God is the Creator of all things, that must also be believed in but these are generally accepted by the majority of professing christians.

Many are aware and believe in the historical certainty concerning the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But if what they believe about His death, burial and resurrection is not "according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3,4), then what they believe is a lie and the doctrines they have placed their faith in are false doctrines and the christ whom those doctrines portray, is a false christ. The apostle Paul, in Romans 10, testified to the fervent zeal that the Jews of Israel possessed but he said that in spite of their obvious enthusiasm, their zeal was NOT according to knowledge and therefore he counted them as lost people, as evidenced by his praying for their salvation: "...my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:1,2). Paul, too, in his pre-Gospel days, was one of those Jews who was zealous for God (see Acts 22:3), but it was not according to knowledge. Don’t ever fall into the trap of thinking that anyone, including yourself, is saved simply due to the presence of ‘zeal for God’. A ZEAL FOR GOD WITHOUT RIGHT KNOWLEDGE OF GOD CANNOT SAVE YOU. If one’s beliefs are not in line with what the whole of Scripture says about how God saves rather than just a few favorite verses, then one is believing a false gospel and false gospels can only produce false christians. The Jews no doubt believed and taught many truths about God. They knew the Old Testament prophets and so forth but none of this knowledge was salvation knowledge, it did not benefit them in the matter of salvation, otherwise Paul would not have prayed for their salvation. Also, the mere fact that the Jews looked to circumcision, something they could do, to ‘secure’ salvation, was testament enough that they did not hold to the pure Gospel of grace. The Church of Christ is not founded solely on the Old Testament prophets, but also upon the doctrine of the apostles (Eph. 2:20). A man may be convinced that what he believes is the Gospel, but neither his conviction nor any amount of accompanying sincerity is any proof, in and of itself, that what he believes is right. Nor will these things—which, when you come right down to it are nothing but emotions, what a man feels—ever make what a person believes, right. If one’s zeal of God is not according to the knowledge of God, which comes from God, then it is a zeal that is according to ignorance of God. The foundation stone of all man-made religion is ignorance. Ignorance of who God is and how He saves has sent more people to hell than just about anything else! Perhaps none can be so convinced of a matter as a child can, yet his conviction is hardly the rule whereby we can safely judge whether he is right. Why is this so? Well, just like the Jews in Paul’s day, the child has a zeal, he is exuberant in what he believes, but it is obvious to the parent that the child believes something based on a wrong perception. His zeal is obviously not based on right knowledge. Error has never prevented anybody from being zealous about God—from living a moral lifestyle, from attending ‘church’ or from avidly reading the Bible—and a continued state of ignorance will ensure that this misdirected zeal remains firmly in place. IGNORANCE IS THE MOTHER OF ALL ERROR. A man may live as moral a life as is humanly possible, running his life according to a list of do’s and don’ts. He may be as religious as he can be, kind, courteous, conscientious, humble, charitable, devoted, committed, faithful etc., but if he believes any gospel other than that one and Holy Gospel of God, he stands accursed! "There is a way that SEEMETH RIGHT unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Prov. 16:25). While it is true to say there are lots of things true Christians don’t do, it must be pointed out that at the head of that list is: THEY DO NOT BELIEVE FALSE GOSPELS! Our conviction, which is nothing more than what we believe, is no guarantee that what we are convicted of, what we believe, is the truth. Truth is what God has declared. It cannot be judged or discovered by our conviction. Man has many false gospels upon which have been founded huge religious empires, but no matter how many people believe something, no matter how ‘successful’ or large a religious organization may be, and no matter how many people it has helped to become model citizens or by clothing them and feeding them etc., if what it teaches is any gospel other than that one and Holy Gospel of God, the whole thing stands accursed of God and is a blight on His earth! Rather than saving men, these groups prevent them from knowing the truth by filling their minds with a false truth, an untruth, and lead them all to Hell. How can there be even one word of good said about such an organization, when under the cloak of ‘good deeds’ it is deceiving men with a false message of hope? To speak well of them would be like lauding the man who hands out a lovely piece of cake to people as they head unawares toward the edge of the cliff! I would much rather be warned of the impending danger if I continued on my way forward, being pointed in the right direction and handed a piece of stale bread!! The blinkered view of the benefits and good that such ‘smile all the while’ organizations perform fails to reveal the big picture, which is that NO ONE IS BEING SAVED! No one is being told the truth and so all remain lost, for their faith is in another gospel. They may well be helping their fellow man materially in this life, but the cost for this momentary earthly comfort—eternal misery—is an enormous price to pay. Jesus said of the false teachers of His day, "But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in" (Matt. 23:13). "They shut it up by their doctrines. By teaching false doctrines respecting the Messiah; by binding the people to an observance of their traditions; by opposing Jesus, and attempting to convince the people that He was an imposter, they prevented many from becoming His followers." Isn’t this what is happening in our own day? Aren’t all those who deny THE Gospel denying the true Messiah and calling Him an imposter? Of course they are. They call good evil and evil good and ask us to trust in a messiah who is NOT God’s Messiah but a charlatan who, rather than saving people from hell, leads people to it! The observance of traditions that are not based on truth and do not come from God has kept multitudes from the truth and in bondage to the false gospels which oppose the truth. Jesus said, "...ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition" (Matt. 15:6). In Luke 11:52 Jesus says, "...ye have taken away the key of knowledge..." "...they had taken away the right interpretation of the ancient prophecies respecting the Messiah, and thus had done all they could to prevent the people from receiving Jesus as the Redeemer." Such people are the murderers of men’s souls. This, is further proof of the fact that if your knowledge of the Gospel is not in accordance with the Scriptures, then you are none of His. The Lord Jesus put it this way: "...in vain they do worship Me, teaching (and believing) for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matt. 15:9).

The truth can only be judged, or measured, by itself. You cannot get to the truth by trying to judge it with nothing but false and perverted standards. It cannot be measured by the subjective. For instance, a man thinks he is a Christian. Part of his conviction may be based on the fact he has had quite a significant moral transformation in his life since becoming a ‘Christian’. One such man I know has rejected the Gospel even though he claims to believe the doctrines of it. What he cannot do is turn away from, according to his mind, the fact that upon his so-called conversion he was able, without much ado, to quit the drugs and alcohol he was abusing. This change made quite an impact on his life and he has praised his god for it ever since. This subjective experience was no doubt a very significant moment in his life and no one is doubting the reality of it, but is it a safe practice to allow oneself to be convinced, to see such an experience as positive unchallengeable proof that one is saved? Perhaps the following illustration will clear the mist from the window of anyone’s mind who is not quite sure. What are we to say about the Hindu or Buddhist man who, prior to becoming such, was also heavily into drug taking and crime, who upon his conversion to Eastern religion, also had a dramatic change come over him and enjoyed a withdrawal symptom free escape from the substances he was abusing? Is this man saved? Is this man now a child of God? Must what this man now believes be the truth of God because of what he ‘experienced’? Does his experience validate his claim of having the true God? HARDLY!! How do we know this? By what the man believes! The Buddhist or Hindu does not believe that Jesus Christ is God, let alone abide in the doctrine of Christ, so how could anyone claiming to be a Christian say that such men are saved because of what they experienced? Obviously, to judge a man saved based on what the man tells you he has experienced is utter folly. There is no such question in the real world as ‘How did God save you?’ for God only saves one way: through belief of the Gospel. A Hindu or Buddhist is judged lost, according to the Word of God, based on what he believes and does not believe, not on what he has experienced. ALL WHO DO NOT BELIEVE THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST ARE RIGHTLY JUDGED AS LOST, REGARDLESS OF THEIR EXPERIENCES. Such people trust in another gospel, another message of salvation, and therefore in another god who simply cannot save. How can anyone possibly say that the man mentioned earlier who claims to be a Christian, who claims to be a believer of the Gospel, is saved when he believes that he was saved before he knew and ‘believed’ the Gospel and who uses his subjective experiences to support his claim! You see, the Hindu and the professing Christian are in the same boat for neither one believes the Gospel.

The Lord Jesus Christ, in His final words to His apostles, said clearly, "...Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that BELIEVETH and is baptized SHALL BE SAVED; but HE THAT BELIEVETH NOT SHALL BE DAMNED" (Mk. 16:15,16). The Gospel is not extinct! It cannot be, for this command of Jesus to His disciples was not restricted to a handful of men but is an eternal decree to all His people for all time and the Message He told them to preach then is the same Message He tells His people to preach now! When Jesus commanded them to preach THE Gospel, He was commanding that HIS Gospel be preached and no other! Jesus’ words are perfectly aligned with Paul’s statement in Galatians 1 and show Paul’s words to not merely be the words of a man, but the very Words of God. And they would never have been included in the Scriptures if they were not the Words of God. He who believes the Gospel is saved and, obviously, he who does not believe the Gospel is lost. He who believes what God has said is saved, he who does not believe what God has said is lost. He who believes in God’s plan of salvation is saved and he who does not place his hope and trust in God’s plan of salvation, who believes that there is another way, is lost. Isn’t this the simplest of teachings? And doesn’t this just make so much plain sense? And if everyone believed it as God’s Word, would it not do away with all the controversies about who is saved, who isn’t saved and who might be saved? Of course it would. Black is black and white is white and never the twain shall meet. Either you believe the Gospel or you do not believe it. Either you are saved or you are not saved. Notice that Christ did not command His followers to go out into all the world and preach the Gospels, plural, but only one Gospel, the Gospel of God. Notice, too, that by telling His disciples to preach the Gospel, it is a given that they must have known what the Gospel was. So what other reason could there have been for them to preach Christ’s Gospel than that others too could know and believe it, so that they could distinguish God’s Gospel from the gospels of men! So that they could reject the false and believe and promote only the true. The Lord Jesus did not encourage the preaching of several gospels, but only one, for only one Gospel rightly declared God’s testimony and only that Gospel should be believed, because only that Gospel saves. Seeing that the Lord Jesus commanded only one Gospel to be preached, does it not then make obvious and perfect sense that there is only one Gospel Christ has commanded us to believe. If Jesus commanded His people to preach only one Gospel, then it is a given that this same Gospel is the only one He would ever encourage anyone to believe. Why? Because it is the only one that saves proving that it is the only Gospel God has! It is the only one that reveals the details of God’s plan for the salvation of His people, it reveals the only real and certain hope anyone can have for salvation. Trusting in any other plan is just plain suicide. God cannot and will not save you based on your belief of a false gospel! God does not save people based on their belief of, and their trusting in, something which HE HAS NOT SAID! You may be able to convince others that what you believe is truth, but how will you convince God? GOD DOES NOT SAVE ANYONE BASED ON WHAT THEY BELIEVE THE GOSPEL IS, BUT ON WHAT HE SAYS THE GOSPEL IS! Just as He sent only one Savior into the world, so too, there is only one Gospel that reveals this Savior. The Lord Jesus said, "I am the Way..." (Jn. 14:6). How many ways to salvation? Only one—the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, if He is revealed in only one Gospel, how can any be saved by believing other gospels, none of which reveal the only way to salvation—Christ? The Scriptures state: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself, he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar; because he believed not THE RECORD THAT GOD GAVE OF HIS SON" (1 Jn. 5:10). A record is "...a declaration by a witness who speaks with the authority of one who knows." It is a report, a testimony, a witness. To believe a false gospel is to believe a record that God has not given of His Son. It is to believe something that has been reported by one who does not know and therefore has no authority to speak. Those who do not believe God’s Gospel, which contains the truth about His Son, will perish. One can only exalt Christ by believing His Gospel. Those who do not believe it deny Him, revealing that their faith is in another, even though they call him ‘jesus’. To savingly believe God’s Gospel is to "...have the TESTIMONY OF JESUS..." (Rev. 19:10). To believe in any other is to not have the testimony of Jesus, but that of an imposter. Jesus did not say that those who believed the Gospels shall be saved, but only those who believed the one and only Gospel He commanded His disciples to teach in all the world. The Scriptures do not say, ‘Te dum, te dum everyone can come,’ regardless of what they believe, or if they believe enough, but "...whosoever BELIEVETH IN HIM should not perish, but have eternal life" (Jn. 3:15). Does what you believe paint a full picture of Who Christ is and what He has done? If not, all you have in your possession is a worthless forgery! Someone might say, ‘But I do believe in Jesus’. Yes, but is he the Jesus of the Gospel of God? (see the author’s booklet ‘God’s Only Jesus’). Again, we have one message being advocated as God’s Message. In effect, Jesus was saying that only one Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, so why would it be any different today? Why has it become ‘o.k. with God’ in the minds of so many, and why is it advocated by the largest religious institutions of the ‘christian’ persuasion, that belief of that single Gospel is NOT an absolute necessity for any to be saved? That one can become a Christian and then gradually learn and come to believe in the truths of the Gospel. That one can believe He died for all, or for the elect, and still be believing in the same Jesus. Why has Christ’s doctrine become such a dispensable and immaterial thing, a non-essential, when it comes to the matter of salvation? Something which has taken second place to a gospel that places man’s interests ahead of what the truth of God is. People who follow such thinking show that they are in disagreement with Jesus Christ, whose word has never changed on the matter. Since when has God consented to saving people who refused to believe what HE says about how HE saves? When it comes to the issue of salvation, the Gospel is the method and all others are the madness. Neither the method or the Message have ever changed, nor will they, because God told Paul and others to preach that Message, HIS Message, and to record for all time the fact that if anyone brought a different message they were to be looked at as accursed people. Not as God’s people, not as Christians, but as accursed people, the very antithesis of those who are blessed of God. How can anyone be said to be blessed of God and not know His Truth—what He has said? He who does not believe in the specific doctrine of the one and only Gospel God ever gave, which bears record of Who His Son is and what He has done, is a lost person. The Gospel is the key to heaven. False gospels have never granted access into God’s Kingdom, for just as square pegs were not made for round holes, they cannot unlock it’s door. Simply put, there is only one combination that will open a safe. Only one combination, which if followed carefully, will open the safe door. If one tries to open it equipped only with one’s idea of what the combination is or with only part of the combination, the door will never open. In perfect harmony with what Paul preached, these words of Jesus the Lord in Mark 16, are seen as a clear indication that there is only one Gospel. IT ALONE MUST BE PREACHED AND THEREFORE IT ALONE MUST BE BELIEVED. If you want to be saved, BELIEVE WHAT GOD HAS SAID, believe His report of Who His Son is and what He has done, and reject everything that conflicts with what God has said. It is not enough to simply say, ‘I believe all that God has said and I reject all that is not of Him’, for if you do not know what He has said, how can you believe it? And, if you do not know what is not of Him, how can you reject it or repent of it? How can you turn from something if you do not know what it is? And how can you turn to something if you do not know what it is? If the solution to the universal problem of man’s dilemma of life all hinged on the answer to 4 + 4, and Jesus was the only one who had that answer, does it sound reasonable to you that He would say to His disciples, ‘Go and tell them the answer is 6, 9, 12 or any number other than the correct number/answer, 4'? Do you think He would have said, ‘Tell them to believe any number they believe to be the right answer and if they are sincere enough in whatever they believe, I will save them?’ Or, ‘Tell them the answer is 8 but that any other number they believe to be the answer will be just as correct and I will save them anyway?’ Surely not. So how can any claim to be in their right minds and say that they are deserving of our trust when they say that any other gospel apart from, or as well as, the one Jesus commanded be preached and believed, can save just as well. Those who preach false gospels are blind and so are all those who believe them (see Matt. 15:13,14). A humble and hard working teacher does not tell his students that 4 + 4 = 9 or 10, or encourages his students to feel free to solve this particular mathematical equation with whatever number they feel is right, or with a number they believe it should equal. No, any teacher worth his salt tells his students the correct answer and then encourages them to not ever believe that the situation will one day change, that one day 4 + 4 will not equal 8, or will not only equal 8, but that one may be able to answer the question with whatever number they like and still be correct. Even my 5 year old son can understand that! The Gospel of God has never changed, and the fact that one must believe this Gospel to be saved will also never change. Why would God ever change His Gospel anyway? To change it would mean it was in some way deficient or flawed. This would mean that those who believed it before it was changed were saved by some inferior version—the best God could come up with at the time. How could He ever change His Gospel after telling us in His Word—thereby before witnesses, binding Himself to His promise—that anything which differed from it is a false gospel and the people who believe it accursed.

If this Great Gospel of Jesus Christ must be believed in order for one to be saved, then it stands to reason that it can be known; that it is distinguishable from all false gospels. For it to be believed, it must be distinguishable, it must be identifiable, it must stand out from ALL others. A gospel is distinguishable by its doctrines. If those doctrines are not ALL in accord with the Gospel of Christ, then it is a false gospel and a man does not have God if he does not abide in His doctrine. If the doctrines a man preaches or believes are in line with what the Word of God teaches, then it may, with a justified confidence, be trusted in as the very Doctrine of Christ. ONE MESSAGE, NOT SEVERAL, is entitled to be called the Gospel of God. ONE MESSAGE is to be preached and therefore ONE MESSAGE ONLY is to be believed and obeyed as the very Message, the Gospel, of God. No other message qualifies as God’s Message. No other gospel is necessary, for what purpose would it serve that the true Gospel does not!! No other gospel can save apart from the Gospel that God has declared. No false gospel is like the true Gospel, for every false gospel leaves room for a man to boast in what he has done or must do to get saved and/or stay saved. No gospel is like God’s Gospel, which gives ALL the glory for salvation from beginning to final glory to God because it is only made possible by His grace, and teaches that the Righteousness of Christ alone is sufficient to save and preserve a man for heaven; that nothing a man can do or refrains from doing can, or does, play any part in what saves him; that salvation really is ALL of grace and not a bit of it is merited by anything a man does. Salvation is by what God has done, not by what a man must do. The Gospel of God is the Word of God and not the word of man. It has nothing in common with the ideas of man as pertaining to salvation. No religion on this earth has ever devised a message of salvation that conditions salvation solely on grace, for all of man’s gospels have one thing in common and that is that in some way, in some measure and to various degrees, MAN must do something to qualify himself as being fit to be saved or to remain ‘saved’. And there is a huge gulf between God’s Gospel of grace and man’s gospels of works. They were formed on diametrically opposing principals: ONE GIVES ALL THE GLORY TO GOD AND THE OTHER LEAVES ROOM FOR MAN TO BOAST. You see, God does not add anything to His Gospel that man must do to attain or ensure salvation, for this would automatically and immediately change it from a Gospel of grace—something unmerited and freely given by God thus causing the glory for it to be shared between God and man—to a gospel of works (see Rom. 11:6). Many falsely accuse us of conditioning salvation on knowledge, for we say that for a man to be saved he must know and believe the Gospel. But what we are saying is not what our opponents have inferred and would like to convince others we are saying. A man must believe the Gospel, not in order to get saved, but to show that he is saved. A man’s believing God’s Gospel shows that God has revealed Himself to that person. It is not principally a matter of knowledge, but of revelation. Hence, man is not rewarded with salvation because he has believed, but the fact that he believes is the evidence that God has visited that person with His grace and granted them the Faith to believe His Gospel. Anyone who does not believe the Gospel evidences an absence of grace, an absence of God in their lives. It is important to note that God’s grace is not that which enables a man to believe, but the grace of God is that whereby a person is given the faith that ensures a man believes in HIS Gospel alone. "Thy people shall be willing in the day of THY power..." (Psa. 110:3). No man chooses God; no man decides in and of himself to come to God, but the Scriptures say: "Blessed is the man whom THOU CHOOSEST, and CAUSEST to approach unto Thee..." (Psa. 65:4). This is not a gospel of works, but the Gospel of Grace. It is not of man’s doing, it is ALL of God. "All men by nature (and therefore every gospel that man has ever imagined) seek salvation by the law. They set up some standard which they mean to comply with, and expect to be saved by conformity to that. With some it is the law of honor, with others the law of honesty, with others the laws of kindness and courtesy, and with others the law of God. If they comply with the requirements of these laws, they suppose that they will be safe; and it is only the grace of God showing them how defective their standard is, or how far they come from complying with its demands, that can ever bring them from this dangerous dependance." That is the fundamental difference between man’s gospels and God’s Gospel: man’s gospels insist that man must do something, that there is some condition he needs to meet, some initiatory act he needs to perform, for him to become saved or remain ‘saved’. Consequently, such gospels leave room for a man to boast that he has played a part in his own salvation (whether he attributes what he has done to God or not) and to establishing a righteousness of his own, and are therefore anti-grace. If the gospel you believe conditions any part of salvation on what you must do, then you have a gospel of works and the apostle said, "...if it be of works, THEN IS IT NO MORE GRACE..." (Rom. 11:6). Such a gospel is diametrically opposed to God’s Gospel, which says that by the Righteousness, the obedience, of ONE a man is saved (Rom. 5:19). On the other hand, Paul said, if salvation is "...by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace..." (Rom. 11:6). In other words, if salvation is by works then it is not of God, but if it is of grace then it is not of man. ADD ANYTHING TO GRACE AND IT CEASES TO BE GRACE! ADD ANYTHING TO WHAT GOD HAS SAID AND IT BECOMES WHAT GOD HAS NOT SAID! One cannot have a gospel of grace and works, for the two will not mix, they cannot co-exist. Faith properly preached, grace properly preached will leave no room for a man to boast. Either you believe salvation is all of God or you do not believe it is all of God. Either you do not frustrate the grace of God by believing in the imputed righteousness of Christ or you do frustrate—nullify—the grace of God by believing that righteousness can come, or that salvation can be held on to, by an act of personal obedience. The apostle Paul, like all true believers, "...do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. 2:21). One cannot have a salvation that begins by grace but is only successfully completed by a man’s works (Gal. 3:3). You cannot have the Gospel of grace, or salvation by grace, if any part of it is conditioned on man. Its either all of God or all of man, for the two can never be reconciled. Again, many claim to believe all this, that it is all Christ, that Christ is their all in all and that we play no part in our own salvation, that even our faith, our believing, is a gift from God and does not come from within ourselves. Yet this profession of faith is mere lip service, for they also say that BEFORE believing this they were just as saved! Or they think that one must keep up a certain standard of holy living to ensure one remains saved, never realising that such thinking is conducive to a salvation that is not secured by what Christ has done but is dependant on what we do! The whole works or grace/works system is nothing but a gigantic religious fraud! Those who believe in a false gospel are fooling themselves all of the time! They are only fooling themselves if they think they believe in salvation by grace; they are only fooling themselves if they think they believe the Gospel of God. I dare say that before ‘believing’ the truth, they were believing something other than the truth, so my question to these people is, Upon what do you base your salvation? What is the foundation of your salvation? I hope they would not insult my intelligence by saying that it is the Gospel of God, for they have just said that they were saved BEFORE they believed it!!! What a dilemma these people will find themselves in trying to explain all this to God and what sheer terror they will experience when they hear the awesome words: "I NEVER KNEW YOU: DEPART FROM ME, YE THAT WORK INIQUITY" (Matt. 7:23).

In light of all this, how can anyone say that there is more than one Gospel that can save? More than one Gospel that relates God’s Holy message of salvation? Or more than one Gospel which preaches the true Jesus the only true Savior? How many Gospels could there possibly be which save, when the apostle said anything different to his Gospel was a false one, a nonsense when it came to salvation? This was not only due to the fact that it was the only Gospel God gave him, but indisputably shows that this Gospel is the only Gospel that can rightly be called the Gospel of grace. In other words, it is the only Gospel that is based on grace, for there could only be one such Gospel. All others may include a perverted version of grace, but are founded on works. Thus one cannot escape the fact that there can only be ONE plan of salvation that is all of grace and it is God’s plan. All others then must, of necessity, include within them a degree of works. The apostle Paul warned of "another gospel...another christ...another spirit..." (2 Cor. 11:4). These would all be recognizable and distinguishable from the true Gospel, the true Christ, the true Holy Spirit. Do you think that a false gospel, which is inextricably connected to a false jesus and a counterfeit holy spirit, could ever save anyone or teach the True Christ? Do you think that any person believing in such a gospel is saved, or who believes they were saved whilst believing it, even though they no longer believe it, claiming to now believe the true Gospel? Or how about the possibility of the true Gospel ever presenting you with a false savior? None can rightly answer ‘yes’ to any one of these questions, so how and why do people insist that they were saved before they heard the true Gospel? What are they basing this assertion on? Surely it cannot be truth? For the true Gospel denies that any other gospel conveys the truth of God. IF IT IS NOT THE GOSPEL OF GOD IT CANNOT BE THE GOSPEL OF TRUTH. False gospels are brought forth by a false spirit and promote false christs, therefore how can they save? Only the true Gospel taught by the True Holy Spirit teaches the true Christ. The Scriptures say that the Holy Spirit would only ever tell of the true Jesus and never a counterfeit: "...the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, HE SHALL TESTIFY OF ME....when He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all Truth...He shall glorify Me..." (Jn. 15:26; 16:13,14). "For as many as are led of the Spirit of God, THEY are the sons of God" (Rom. 8:14). Obviously then, those who are not led by the Spirit of Truth do not believe the truth and therefore cannot count themselves as the sons of God. This true Jesus of whom the Holy Spirit testifies is the same one that God bears record to in His Gospel. It has never been any different, it will never be any different. The Scriptures abound with verse after verse which state that only one message, God’s Message: His Holy Gospel, saves; only one Message which God recognizes as His Gospel; only one Message that qualifies as GOD’S Message. Here is just a sample: Jesus said, "...repent ye, and believe the Gospel" (Mk. 1:15). Which Gospel is that? Is it any gospel that mentions the words ‘grace’ and ‘jesus’? NO! Is it a gospel that you believe is the Gospel? NO! It is the only Gospel that GOD BELIEVES is the Gospel! The one which, according to the Lord Jesus, must be believed—HIS GOSPEL!! Do you honestly believe that Christ would encourage the belief of any gospel other than His own Gospel? And what do you think Christ is commanding that we repent of here? Just evil deeds and immoral acts? NO! Repent of false teachings which lead you to false gospels and the dishonoring of God and His Gospel! Its all connected isn’t it? Repent and believe. Of course it is. The call is to STOP believing a lie and START believing the Truth! The Scriptures say that the Christian is not to strive "...but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient" (2 Tim. 2:24). To what end must the believer display such gentleness, such meekness, as he speaks with those who oppose the Gospel? In the hope that God "...will give them repentance TO THE ACKNOWLEDGING OF THE TRUTH" (2 Tim. 2:25). "That they will perceive and recognize and become accurately acquainted with and acknowledge it." Do you believe that when Christ commanded people to "believe THE Gospel", He was referring to several different plans of salvation? Are you honestly of the opinion that if all the gospels, including the true Gospel, were laid at God’s feet and He was asked to point to the one which saves, that He would point to any other one than His own Gospel or to any other one as well as His own? Can you honestly say that you believe, in light of what Jesus has said concerning His Gospel—that it must be rightly preached and equally as rightly believed—that what you believe about His Gospel does not matter? How could what the Gospel of Christ be not matter? And when exactly did it begin to not matter? When exactly did it stop featuring prominently in what a man had to believe in order to be saved? Do you honestly think that Christ would encourage people to abide in the doctrines of a false gospel when, by the Holy Spirit working through the apostle John, He has stated that "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God..." (2 Jn. 9 cf. Jn. 5:38). If you abide in anything that is not the doctrine of Christ, that is, if you abide in doctrines that form a false gospel, you simply do not, you cannot, have God! To deny this is to deny the essentiality of right doctrine—the right Gospel. What next? That one does not even require the right God!!! In your wildest imagination can you, in light of all this evidence, honestly conclude that ‘doctrine doesn’t matter’, that what the Gospel—that which one must believe in order to be saved—actually is ‘doesn’t matter’ and that God will save you even though you are ignorant of His Gospel and the fact that it is the only one which saves; that you do not believe His Gospel and have not repented of all others? Do you honestly believe that one could, with great vigor, trustingly hold and be faithful to a flawed gospel riddled with doctrinal blemishes, to what God has NOT said will save, and expect Christ to defend you to His Father, declaring you a believer in HIS Gospel? Could you imagine Christ saying, ‘This man did not believe your Gospel, Father, but he was a good man so could you save him anyway?’ Paul wrote in Romans 1:1: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God." Paul was not separated unto several gospels but to ONE Gospel, the Gospel of God. Being separated to the Gospel also meant that Paul was separated from every false gospel. He was kept, by the grace of God, from believing, and teaching, any of them. He was appointed by the Sovereign God to believe and preach only the Gospel of God, and this Gospel is the only one he ever preached whilst a servant of Christ. Paul also beseeched his hearers to "...mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrines which ye have learned; and avoid them. FOR THEY THAT ARE SUCH SERVE NOT OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple" (Rom. 16:17,18). Those who bring false gospels are the real troublemakers and Paul said that such people do not serve the Lord Jesus Christ but their own bellies, by which he meant: "Their own lusts; their own private interests; they do this to obtain support. The authors of parties and divisions, in church and state, have this usually in view. It is for the indulgence of some earthly appetite; to obtain office or property; or to gratify the love of dominion." Paul also warned the Philippian Christians of such people, calling them "...the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things" (Phil. 3:18,19). What made a person an enemy of the cross of Christ is that they taught and believed a false gospel, which misrepresented what Christ had actually done on the cross, and for whom He had done it, thereby presenting a false savior.

Like Paul, all true Christians are separated unto the Gospel of God. AND THEY HAVE NEVER, AS CHRISTIANS, BEEN SEPARATED UNTO ANY OTHER GOSPEL! When God gets hold of you, there is only one Gospel He brings to you and that is His Gospel. Whether you have changed gospels once, twice or dozens of times, and however close you came to the truth, you can be sure that before you ever believed the true Gospel, belief in any of the others did not ever entitle you to heaven. No elect person was ever headed for heaven whilst believing in a false gospel. You are never a Christian before the faith that comes from God and that believes only His Gospel is given to you. Paul stated: "...I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for IT IS THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION..." (Rom. 1:16). Men may think it foolish, but however much Paul was ridiculed for his belief in that which man held in contempt, he was not ashamed of this Gospel for it was the very power of God unto the salvation of all His people. Only the Gospel of Christ has the power to save, all other gospels are impotent—POWER-LESS—because they are not of God. "This expression (power of God) means, that it (the Gospel) is the way in which God exerts His power in the salvation of men. It is the efficacious or mighty plan, by which power goes forth to save, and by which all the obstacles of man’s redemption are taken away." Needless to say, this power does not accompany false gospels, thereby making it impossible for anyone to be saved who believes in them. "This expression implies, (1) that it is God’s plan, or His appointment. It is not the device of man. (2) It is adapted to the end. It is fitted to overcome the obstacles in the way. It is not merely the instrument by which God exerts His power, but it has an inherent adaptedness to the end, and it is fitted to accomplish salvation to man, so that it may be denominated ‘power’. (3) It is mighty: hence it is called power, and the power of God. It is not a feeble and ineffectual instrumentality..." Not surprisingly, what has also been termed ‘the power of God’ in the Scriptures, is what His Gospel is all about: the doctrine of the cross. Without the true preaching of the cross you have no Gospel. "For THE PREACHING OF THE CROSS is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved IT IS THE POWER OF GOD" (1 Cor. 1:18). Notice to whom the preaching of the Cross, which is the nucleus of the Gospel, is foolishness to: "them that perish", them that believe not the Gospel but count it foolishness who chose to place their faith and trust in another. All those who deny the Gospel by refusing to believe the truth of Who Christ is, what He has done upon the cross and for whom He has done it, are those that perish. Conversely, those who are saved do not consider the doctrine of the cross, the Gospel, as foolishness, but all other gospels as foolish messages which cannot save. These are the saved people, the ones who believe that only the Gospel of God is the power of God unto salvation—or has the power to save—and that all other messages are powerless to save, nothing but lies fit only for the foolish. "Thus the preaching of the cross is the power of God; and every minister may present it with the assurance that he is presenting, not a cunningly devised fable, but a system really fitted to save men; and yet, that its reception by the human mind depends on the promised presence of the Holy Spirit." The preaching of the cross is the preaching of what Christ did there and for whom He did it. Paul referred to it a few verses later when he said: "...we preach Christ crucified..." (1 Cor. 1:23). To preach Christ and to believe Christ is not merely to preach and believe that He existed, but to preach and believe what He did. To believe that one can be saved by belief in something other than the only Gospel of God is to believe that the preaching of the cross, or the Gospel, is foolishness. To preach and believe what Christ did not do is to preach and believe another gospel. The Gospel of Christ, that which correctly sets forth the message of the cross, is the power of God unto salvation, and was the single message of salvation that Paul the apostle was not ashamed to preach or believe. It was the only Gospel he held to. All others were considered false, rebellious and perverted versions of that one and glorious single salvation statement of God.

"...for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel" (1 Cor. 4:15). Paul here states: "I have begotten you by preaching His Gospel and by His assistance. I was the instrument of your conversion. By means of the Gospel, by preaching it to you; that is, by the truth." There is no conversion lest the right Gospel, God’s Gospel, is preached. There is no conversion unless the truth has been heard and believed. A person cannot be born again unless they have heard and believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not a counterfeit; not a fake, not another gospel, not one that is accurate except on a few issues, but CHRIST’S GOSPEL ALONE, the one that is accurate on ALL issues!! In accordance with such teaching, the apostle James says, "Of His own will BEGAT HE US WITH THE WORD OF TRUTH..." (Js. 1:18 cf. Eph. 1:11). God could not have begotten anyone without the Word of Truth. According to James, a Christian is begotten by God, not through the lies of men, not through false gospels, but only with the Truth of God: His Gospel. None ever became children of God whilst believing in a gospel that was not of God. No false preacher ever begat a genuine Christian by means of a false gospel. Just as a human father begets his sons by his seed, so too, God Almighty begets His sons via the means of His spiritual seed: the Gospel. This line of reasoning is also plainly evident in the writings of the apostle Peter who, like James and Paul, was also inspired by the Holy Spirit to write along the same lines when he said of his fellow believers: "Being BORN AGAIN, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible (seed), BY THE WORD OF GOD, which liveth and abideth forever...and this is the word which BY THE GOSPEL is preached unto you" (1 Pet. 1:23,25). The seed of God is the Gospel of God, without which there is no birth into His kingdom. Again, there is no conversion, there is no being born again but by the Gospel of God. (see the author’s booklet ‘Born of the Gospel’)

None are saved without THE Gospel. None are saved before the Gospel or whilst in denial that there is only one Gospel a person can believe in and truly consider themselves saved. Only if the Gospel has reached your ears and been received into your heart can you scripturally judge yourself saved. These are among the hardest sayings of all for unregenerate religious men to acknowledge and accept, which is why they remain unregenerate, for most believe that they were saved before ever hearing the right Gospel, through which, the apostle Paul said, he had begotten, and could only have begotten, the Corinthians. How could Paul have begotten the Corinthians by teaching them a gospel that was powerless to save? How can anyone be saved whilst placing their faith in a gospel that does not have the support, or backing, of God? Paul goes on to say: "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you THE GOSPEL which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; BY WHICH ALSO YE ARE SAVED..." (1 Cor. 15:1). The Word of God knows of only one type of justified people and they are those who were SAVED BY THE GOSPEL!! The Gospel that Paul preached, which the Corinthians had received and wherein they now abided, was the only Gospel by which they could have been saved. It is that Gospel alone, identified by its distinctive doctrines, by which all Christians are saved. If another has been preached and trusted in there can be no hope of salvation, for there is only one Gospel by which a man is saved. There are none who are saved by a false gospel! None who are convinced that they do believe the Gospel, such as the Reformed Calvinist, are saved who believe that they were saved when they abided in doctrines other than those of the Gospel of God. Nor is the man saved who believes that others such as Arminians, who deny the Gospel of God, are saved. There is nothing but sheer ignorance of the truth, oftentimes wilful, by which these people judge accursed people saved. Those who are under the impression that they truly abide in the doctrine of Christ, yet believe they were saved whilst not abiding in His doctrine, are deceiving themselves because by saying that they were saved before they heard the true Gospel, they are actually insisting that one can be saved whilst abiding in a gospel that is simply not Christ’s. It seems to all come down to ‘intentions’. Somewhere along the way people have conned themselves into believing that as long as they meant to believe in the true God they will be saved, regardless of how much the doctrines they believed were a denial of the true God. Any who claim to believe the Gospel, yet immediately begin to object to the ramifications clearly taught in the Scriptures, show that they really don’t believe the Gospel at all, for their arguments against the ramifications of not believing the specific doctrines of the Gospel always reveal that they believe that either they or others, usually someone dear to them, were or can be saved prior to belief of the Gospel. So what are they really saying? They are saying that the doctrines we preach as the Gospel are correct, they are the doctrines of God, but one can be saved before knowing and believing them! WHAT AN ABSOLUTE OUTRAGE!! What an insult to the testimony of God that He has only one Gospel and that without that Gospel there is no salvation, no hope of salvation outside His plan to save. I have had several reformed ministers say that the Gospel I preach is the Gospel. One remarked, ‘I cannot fault it.’ Another man commented, ‘Your presentation of the Gospel is the clearest most precise declaration of Truth I have ever heard aside from the scriptures themselves." Even though such men may preach the same doctrines we do, they deny the truth as the one road to God by declaring that they or others were and are saved before or without belief of these faultless doctrines! I mean, really, what kind of creature are we dealing with here? Its like they are saying ‘Yes, 4 is the only correct answer to 2 + 2 but other numbers, if they don’t stray too far from 4, are just as right’! Such people have not merely lost the plot, they haven’t the remotest idea what it is! One of the most important things to notice is that no believer mentioned in the Scriptures ever offered up one word of protest against the fact that only belief in God’s Gospel saves. Paul’s words to the Corinthians may be phrased thus, ‘Ye are saved by the Gospel; ye were never saved whilst believing anything other than the Gospel I gave you.’ Such a statement makes it perfectly clear that the Corinthians were not in a saved state before they heard and believed the Gospel. HOW CAN YOU BE SAVED BY BELIEVING IN A PLAN OF SALVATION THAT CANNOT SAVE YOU? They may have been religious before hearing the Gospel, they may even have believed in the existence of Christ, but there is no way any of them could have rightly claimed to be a Christian, a follower of Christ and His Gospel, before they heard His Gospel. Some may say to this, ‘Surely it is enough to know enough and rightly consider oneself saved and a follower of Christ. What about the followers of Hitler? Did his followers have to know and believe all of his policies before they could rightly be called Hitlerites?’ The plain and simple answer to that, of course, is ‘no’. The difference between being a follower of Hitler and a disciple of Christ is the fact that there was only one Hitler. There was not a gaggle of Hitler’s running around Europe claiming to be the Fuhrer. But there are a multitude of false christs in this world claiming to be the Savior and to believe only a handful of general doctrines concerning Him, which are found in many, if not most, gospels, is not enough to prove you believe in the True Jesus. The doctrines you believe will identify the christ you have. Thus, belief of God’s Gospel, which is the only one that bears HIS record of His Son, is paramount to being saved. If you are rescued from a burning building, what a fool you would be to say that you were a rescued person whilst remaining inside the building, blinded by smoke and struggling for breath, having no idea what was about to occur! Once a person is removed from the building, once a person is removed from the darkness of false gospels and brought into the light of the glorious Gospel of God, then one may say that one is rescued, then may one be at liberty and have every right to say they are SAVED! In the verses immediately following 1 Corinthians 15:1, Paul details what he meant by ‘Gospel’ by talking about Christ’s death, burial and resurrection "according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3,4). There is no point in talking about or praising God for the death, burial and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ if your knowledge of these things is not in accordance with the Scriptures. As with the ignorant Jews in Romans 10, your zeal might be extremely high, but if what you know about these things is not according to knowledge, the Scriptures, the Gospel, then you have not God.

A further nail in the coffin of those who insist they were saved without the Gospel who consider themselves saved before ever hearing it, is the following telling statement by the apostle Paul: "But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost" (2 Cor. 4:3). Paul speaks of those to whom the Gospel is not known (hid) as having their minds blinded by the god of this world and as "...them which BELIEVE NOT, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, Who is the image of God, should shine unto them" (2 Cor. 4:4). Now do not make the mistake of thinking that the lost referred to here are only the irreligious, those who have no interest in any gospel at all. No, indeed. God said that there are none righteous, not that there are none religious (Rom. 3:10). The world is running over with lost religious people who believe all sorts of lies and blasphemies about God, all the while thinking that they are followers of God. Yet they are without the Gospel of God and are therefore without God Himself. The word hid means ‘cover up’, ‘conceal’, or ‘veiled’. Those who cannot see the Gospel—whether they have never heard it or whether they have heard it but have rejected it as the truth of God—are said to be the lost. There is no better word to describe their spiritual state other than lost. They have not ‘found God’, they have not been found of God, who have not yet seen the glory of the Gospel, or who claim that there is salvation outside of the Faith which believes it. WHAT GREATER EVIDENCE OF LOSTNESS, OF NOT HAVING SEEN THE GLORY OF THE GOSPEL, IS THERE THAN WHEN A PERSON BELIEVES THAT ONE IS, OR CAN BE, SAVED WITHOUT IT! Just as a footnote, there are those who are of the idea that it would be unfair of God to condemn people who have never even heard the Gospel in their lifetime. Such people are working on the premise that these people would, or at least might, have believed it if they’d heard it. But how can this be when God’s method of salvation is for His people, all His elect, to hear the Gospel and believe it. It is certain therefore that those who die without ever having heard the Gospel never would have believed it anyway. Man perishes principally because he is a sinner. His unbelief towards the Gospel being the indisputable evidence of his accursedness. If God has not chosen to save all, then He most certainly was, and is, not under any obligation to make sure everyone would at least hear His Gospel.

Again, many believe the issue of doctrine to be a relatively minor one, that we all have our various ideas and opinions about God and salvation etc. But to say that anyone has the Truth, the only Gospel that saves, is just a bit too rich for most people. One wonders what such people would have said if they had been alive in Paul’s day and heard Paul claim to have the truth. Do they believe that the truth died with him? Or perhaps they believe that those whom he taught were the last ones to know and believe what the true Gospel actually is. Just when did God’s people no longer have and believe His Gospel, and exactly when was it that God decided that He would save people who believed just about every perversion of it? The religious world is convinced that the fact we all agree that we are sinners in need of salvation and that God is our hope, means that we will all be saved and our doctrinal errors excused because, after all, we are only sinners. Some believe that all doctrinal discrepancies and differences will be corrected when we get to heaven and only then will we know what the true Gospel is! Do you believe this is the attitude Christ has? Do you believe that doctrine is only a minor thing to the Lord Jesus; that He will teach you the true Gospel only when you get to heaven; that He will merely overlook your errors when it comes to the Gospel, in particular those doctrines which concern His atoning work upon the cross and whose sins He made atonement for, and welcome you into heaven regardless of your errors, regardless of the lies you believed about Him and His Sacrifice upon the Tree? Hardly! So then, what will befall those who believed not the Gospel but trusted in others? Peter asks the question for us: "...what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God?" (1 Pet. 4:17). The Scriptures speak with the utmost clarity, revealing the gravity of the situation for all those who die not believing in God’s only Gospel, who die in unbelief, and reveal that, far from overlooking a person’s belief in error when it comes to the question of what the Gospel is, of their trusting in a false gospel, "...the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire TAKING VENGEANCE ON THEM that know not God, and that OBEY NOT THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST" (2 Thess. 1:7,8). Christ will not love them! He will not be patient with them, forgiving their ignorance and error concerning His Gospel but will act vengefully towards all those who did not obey His Gospel and believe His way of salvation. TO NOT OBEY THE GOSPEL IS TO KNOW NOT GOD. To not know the Gospel is to draw the wrath of God, not His pity! We see from this that, far from being a minor matter, doctrinal error when it comes to the issue of the Gospel, of salvation, is as serious a matter as one can get. Far from being accepted into heaven, those who believed false gospels, even those who have ‘more truth than error’, and those who claimed to have been saved before ‘obeying’ the doctrine of God’s Gospel, will have the very vengeance of Christ fall upon them!! YOU MAY BE ABLE TO FOOL YOURSELVES AND TO CONVINCE OTHERS THAT YOU ARE SAVED, BUT YOU CAN NEVER FOOL CHRIST OR CONVINCE HIM THAT YOU WERE SAVED BEFORE YOU CLAIM TO HAVE OBEYED HIS GOSPEL! Christ will have His day of retribution upon all those who dishonored His Gospel by not obeying it, for they are fully deserving of it. He will have His way with those who believed and taught lies about Him and what He did. We all know just how serious the crime of slander is among men, well now you realise just how serious a matter slander is when it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and what the only Gospel is that testifies of Him! To believe that any other gospel apart from Christ’s Gospel can save, is one of the worst blasphemies one can commit. The very concept is enough to make the angels in heaven draw back in horror!! It is to tell God that He is wrong in saying that belief in any other gospel apart from His cannot save but only curse. The Lord Jesus will one day take His vengeance upon you! Paul told us, didn’t he, that those who preached a gospel which differed from his were accursed and this verse in 2 Thessalonians reveals what their end shall be. I pray it will not be your end. Believe the Gospel and repent of ever thinking you were saved whilst believing any other, and you will be saved! Notice again, just as in 2 John and in Paul’s words concerning the lost Jews in Romans 10, this verse in 2 Thessalonians reveals that knowledge of the truth is coupled with knowledge of God: knowing Who He is and what He has done. Those who do not know the doctrine of God do not know Him, and those who do not know Him show they cannot be obeying His Gospel. For how can you obey that which you are not aware of, or believe that which you do not hold to be the truth? And my friend, if you do not agree with this, there is one who speaks with greater authority and who is far more reliable than you or those who have taught you erroneous doctrine, who does. John the apostle declared: "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, HATH NOT GOD. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he (as distinct from the one who does not abide in Christ’s doctrine) HATH both the Father and the Son" (2 Jn. 9 cf. Jn. 15:6). And while we are quoting Scripture, ponder this verse: "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1 Jn. 5:12). Eternal life is only in the Son of God (1 Jn. 5:11) and if you do not have Him you do not have eternal life. None can abide before they know and believe. None can have eternal life abiding in them, and in turn have the Son of God, if they are not abiding in the Doctrine of, and which alone reveals, the Son of God. In light of this, we see that it is not only the overseers of the Church of Christ who must hold "...fast the faithful Word..." (Titus 1:9), but that all those who belong to Christ’s Church must hold to, and abide in, the true Doctrine of the Gospel (cf. Titus 2:7). I recall Faith movement preacher, Kenneth Copeland, once state that a steward, or minister, of God was to be found ‘faithful not accurate’. But how, it may be asked, can a steward of God be found faithful to God if he is not accurately teaching the Gospel of God! And how can anyone rightly call themselves Christian if they are not faithful to, and therefore accurately believing in, God’s only Gospel? None have God who obey not His Gospel. You may think you do, you may feel that you do, many ‘great theologians’ of the past and present may assure you that you do, but the first and last word on the matter belongs to God Himself Who, through His Word, ensures that when you did not, or if you still do not, believe His Gospel you simply did not/do not have Him. AN ABSENCE OF THE GOSPEL MEANS AN ABSENCE OF GOD!! Its as simple as the fact that a football player cannot be said to have played for a team or be a player with a particular team BEFORE he actually joins the team!! One cannot be a player of a particular team simply because one plays football. One cannot presume that a person kicking a football in the park actually plays professional football even if he is wearing the proper attire, let alone assume that he is contracted to a particular team. Paul, in 2 Thessalonians, spoke with the same certainty he demonstrated throughout his writings concerning the Gospel. He writes that belief in any gospel other than the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ will attract, not the pleasure of God, not the forgiveness of God nor the mercy or love or grace of God, but the wrath of God and that Christ Himself, in flaming fire no less, will take vengeance on all those who opposed His Gospel by not believing it to be the sole Gospel by which a man is saved.

Those who are saved, who are "beloved of the Lord," have been chosen by God from the beginning to salvation "...through sanctification of the Spirit AND BELIEF OF THE TRUTH" (2 Thess. 2:13 cf. Jn. 17:17). Believing the truth, the Gospel of God, is just as essential to being saved as sanctification is. To believe the truth is to have faith in it. To believe the truth is to have been given the only faith that believes it and rejects everything else. There is only one faith that comes from God and it believes in truth, not error, it believes God’s Gospel and no other. Just as "...God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness" (1 Thess. 4:7), so too, He has called His chosen ones not to remain in error but to believe His Truth. Error, when it comes to the Gospel, is doctrinal immorality! To be sanctified is to be separated unto, and by, God. "Sanctification is that relationship with God into which men enter by faith in Christ," as He is revealed in the Gospel, "and to which their sole title is the death of Christ." The Lord Jesus says that the justified man is "...SANCTIFIED BY FAITH that is in ME" (Acts 26:18 cf. Jn. 17:17; 1 Cor. 6:11; Eph. 5:25,26; Col. 1:22; Heb. 10:10,29; 13;12). The chosen of God will believe the truth of God. Those of whom this Scripture speaks, in its context, are in sharp contrast with those who "...received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (2 Thess. 2:10). Again, we see salvation coupled, not with the love of a lie, which by definition is what all false gospels are, but with the love of the truth as it is revealed in God’s only Gospel. There is no salvation for those who are without the love of the Truth of God. THERE IS NO SALVATION FOR THOSE WHO CLAIM TO HAVE BEEN SAVED WHILST DEVOID OF THE LOVE OF GOD’S GOSPEL! These people are under strong delusion that they should believe a lie (see 2 Thess. 2:11). The delusion is not that they believe a lie but that they believe this lie to be the truth, they believe a false gospel to be the true one. "Distaste for truth is the precursor of the rejection of it." Those who "resist the truth" are said to be men of corrupt minds" (2 Tim. 3:8 cf. 1 Tim. 6:3-5). As with 1 Thessalonians 1:8 & 9, the following Scriptures are quite clear as to the end which awaits such people: "That they all might be DAMNED who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess. 2:12). In case you are in any doubt, or would like to dispute what Paul is referring to here when he speaks of "belief of the Truth", the next verse will dispel any doubts and put an abrupt halt to any such perverse disputations: "Whereunto He called you BY OUR GOSPEL, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thess. 2:14). If you are not called by God’s Gospel you will not obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. God calls by His Gospel and no other. Can you imagine God calling by any other gospel than His own, or by one in addition to His own? That’s exactly what people are claiming when they insist they were saved by believing something other than God’s Gospel. God’s people are all called to believe the truth. That’s how God saves them—BY THE TRUTH!! Obviously then they are not born into it. Immediately prior to being called to believe the truth, all God’s elect believed in something other than the truth and had to be called out of that mess and into God’s Truth. If one has to be called into truth, believing the Gospel, then whatever one was abiding in beforehand could not be the truth, it could not have been God’s Gospel, which one must believe in order to be saved. They are not called to disbelieve it, reject it or not recognize it, FOR THIS IS THE STATE THEY ARE CALLED OUT OF AND DELIVERED FROM!! If even the elect were not actually saved before they were given the faith to believe the only Gospel of salvation, what makes anyone think they were saved without the Gospel? Do the Scriptures say that those who are to be saved are to believe anything but the truth? No. Are they called to believe a perverted gospel? No. Are they called to believe mostly truth but also some lies? No. Are they called to at first believe a lie and then gradually come to the truth? NO! They are called to believe the Gospel of God and no other and therefore they believe in the Gospel of God and no other. THE CHRISTIAN IS THE MASTERPIECE OF ALL OF GOD’S CREATION! They are given the Faith that believes only One Gospel and therefore they are all united in that one Gospel and agree together that no other can save. The elect of God are called to believe the Gospel of God and no other because they already believed in another! All true believers "...stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the Gospel" (Phil. 1:27). Just as no other jesus can save but the true One, so too, no other gospel can save but the true one. The elect of God do not come to the Gospel, they are born of it. Salvation does not come before the Gospel is heard and believed but ALWAYS AFTER THE GOSPEL IS HEARD AND BELIEVED!! The plant does not come before the seed. So too, there can be no believer without the Gospel Seed of God, for the true believer is born of the Gospel. No justified believer ever ‘comes to the Gospel’, but rather comes FROM the Gospel, just as no plant ever precedes the seed but rather sprouts from it. God calls by His Gospel alone. By no other gospel is one able to obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. He appoints a man to salvation by causing him to believe the truth, not reject it for a lie. God has never called His chosen by any gospel other than by His one and only Gospel, the result being the obtaining of the glory of Jesus Christ. This is something that could never occur by believing a lie. The only thing that will be obtained by believing a false gospel is DAMNATION!! Far from obtaining the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, the believer of false gospels will receive the doom of the Devil! A man’s being appointed to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, evidences his appointment by BELIEVING the Gospel and rejecting all others as having any potential or potency to save. Any who have this back to front have not God. This mere handful of Scriptures should be enough to convince any honest person that there is no salvation without the Gospel of God; that any true believer rejects every false gospel he ever believed before hearing and believing the true Gospel of God; and the monstrous lie that one was, or can be, saved before, or without, the Gospel of God, which is the only power of God unto salvation. This is not rocket science! One does not require the mind of an astro-physicist to understand it. It is the Word of God and it is as plain and as simple as it is true.

Just as we are not to have any false gods (Ex. 20:3), so too, the Christian must not, and does not, tolerate the false gospels which identify false gods. We are not to have a Pantheon in our hearts that caters to false gods and their powerless plans to save, but there is to be room only for a single Throne for the only God whose Gospel does save. And may no one fall under the power of the lie of the Devil by believing that they follow the true God because they refer to their god as ‘God’ or call him ‘Jesus’. False gods are not only identified by their names, but by the doctrines contained in the false gospels which promote belief in them. Many call themselves ‘Christian’ and many refer to their ‘god’ as Jesus, or Father, or Almighty, or Jehovah or any number of the true names of God found in the Scriptures, but it is what these people say and believe about their gods, it is what these people teach about their gods through their gospels, that reveals their gods to be counterfeits. "For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). One can know who and what a person believes in their heart by the doctrine they speak. Doctrine draws the line between the true and the false, between the true God and all false gods and separates the true Gospel from all counterfeits. True doctrine will never reveal a false god and false doctrine will never, and has never, revealed the True God. What you say about God defines the god you believe in and if he is not the true God, then the doctrine you have is false doctrine, the gospel you believe is not God’s Gospel, and you are not saved. Now, if you have a problem with this, don’t cry and try to argue with me about it; don’t try and start a word-war with me about it, your argument is with God. He said it long before I ever did! Doctrine, and not one’s alleged love for God or the fact that one uses the right names and titles of God, is that which gives us concrete evidence as to which god we are believing in. No doubt every person’s intention is to believe and pray to the true God and no doubt they do this with a high level of sincerity and zeal, but just as with the Jews of Romans 10, if their intentions, sincerity and zeal do not comply with the right knowledge of God, which comes from understanding His doctrine, they show that the true God has not revealed Himself to them, they cannot be abiding in His Gospel, they cannot be born of Him, and therefore they cannot be saved. And no sloppy sentimentality is going to help them one iota. Scripture says believe the Gospel or perish! Now, a lot of people get offended at this. They say, ‘That is such a harsh and cold statement.’ I doubt if such people would be of the same opinion if they drove up to the edge of a cliff and were confronted by a sign saying, ‘Stop here or you will die!’ Can you imagine anyone being offended by such a sign and driving over the edge in spite of it! Of course not. Warnings that have to do with life and death are all black and white. They are not harsh, but clear and distinct so that none can be mistaken. Warnings are not meant to harm or offend, but exist so that you will not do what you are being warned WILL cause you harm, and that you will do what will be of benefit to you. Believe what God has said about salvation or you will remain in a hopeless lost state.

Now some may be getting extremely fidgety and upset by now, even riled by what has been said thus far, who are of the opinion that what we deem to be false gospels are in reality the true Gospel but with the tiniest particles of error in them, errors so slight and insignificant that such gospels cannot be said to be false. They may be asking, ‘How do we know that what we are being told is the truth about what exactly constitutes a false gospel? How wrong does a gospel have to be in order to qualify it as a false message of salvation, a false gospel? And how can we be absolutely sure that what we are being told is dependable?’ In my pre-Gospel days, I asked both a Presbyterian pastor and a very scholarly minded man, ‘How wrong does one have to be to be lost?’ Neither man was able to answer me. They had no idea how wrong a person had to be that would reveal them to be in a lost state. Many, whose minds are conformed to this world’s way of thinking, believe that if one is more right than wrong about what the Gospel is, it is enough to qualify them as true believers. That a gospel which has more truth in it than error is, in fact, not a false gospel, it is not what Paul was talking about, but despite its error, qualifies as the true Gospel. Many think that the "any other gospel" Paul was talking about were only those messages that are overtly false and not those that have more truth in them than not, those that only marginally ‘stray’ from the truth. Their question would be, ‘What exactly makes a gospel a false gospel, i.e., without the power to save?’ Or they may phrase it thus, ‘What is it that would remove the power to save from the true Gospel? Such people fail to realise the gist of what the Scriptures are saying. They fail miserably to get the point of what is being said in such simple terms as "He who believeth not shall be damned" (Mk. 16:16). That which would remove the power to save from God’s Gospel is ANYTHING that is added to, or taken away from, what HE HAS SAID. Someone may tell another person a story and ask that person to share the story with another. If the person deviates in any way from the story he was told then the story he tells is no longer the one he was told. It has lost its impact! It is not the story he was told, no matter how well he remembered it, if it strayed from the details of what he was told. If it was not what God has said EXACTLY, then the gospel you believe in has no power to save you. The doctrines of the Gospel have to do with grace and any tampering with them can only result in a perverted gospel of works. The Gospel is so perfectly balanced that if you take from it or add to it even the smallest component, the whole will tip over and you will be left with an unbalanced doctrinal mess. People talk about ‘finding a balance’ when it comes to the matter of doctrine. This way of thinking makes balance a synonym for truth. To find a balance suggests that no one has yet found it. We do not have to find a balance, for God gives His perfectly balanced Gospel to all whom He has chosen. There is no need to make up some patchwork ‘gospel’ consisting of a little truth from here and a little truth from there. We do not have to make up a gospel, for God already has the Gospel we are to believe in. We do not have to balance anything, but just believe what God has said! Fence-sitters argue that both Calvinism and Arminianism have some truths and we need to strike the right balance between the two. But they never actually tell you what that ‘balance’ is! In listening to such people, one is left with a sense of the Truth of God concerning salvation being something that we cannot attain to in this life. Such people almost warn others that they should never actually declare any set of doctrines to be the indisputable Gospel of God, and thus to busy themselves only in finding the right balance, whilst never actually determining what it is. Doesn’t this remind you of those Paul spoke of in 2 Timothy: "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth" (2 Tim. 3:7). If what you believe strays, to any length, from what God has said, it has no power to save you.

The best and quickest way to understand what a false gospel is, is to begin with the true Gospel. Then, if one is presented with a gospel that includes any changes, by either adding to it or taking anything away, one can easily see it for what it is. A false gospel is any gospel that does not say exactly the same thing as God’s Gospel says. ANY DEVIATION IS A SURE SIGN THAT IT IS NOT GOD’S GOSPEL! Again, we draw the reader’s attention to Galatians 5:9 where Paul warned that a little leaven will leaven the whole lump. The word little here comes from the Greek word mikros from which we get our word micro, meaning very small. This confirms that even the slightest error when it comes to the Gospel is enough to brand that message a false gospel. How could it not be so? If there is anything different about a gospel, anything in it which differs from that great Gospel of God, it is a gospel that cannot save and God will not tolerate anyone who believes in anything that differs from His Gospel!! God does not stray from His truth, He does not change, nor has His message of how He saves changed. His message does not contain error of any size and so any message that does contain even the most minute error cannot be God’s Gospel. All those, no matter what their appearance or reputation or how respected they are as religious leaders or worshippers, are lost the Scriptures say, if they do not believe the specific doctrines of that one particular and specific Gospel of God. How else could false gospels be distinguished from the true Gospel if it were not by what they teach? In other words, by what they say. Some might say, ‘But isn’t that discriminating?’ Well, my friend, what do you think you are doing when you choose to believe one gospel over another? And what, may I ask, is wrong with discriminating between right and wrong? We do it every day of our lives in a myriad of ways. One might insist, ‘I’ve got every right to believe the gospel of my choosing.’ NOT AFTER GOD HAS SAID, ‘BELIEVE MY GOSPEL OR PERISH’ YOU HAVEN’T!!! God discriminates between those who believe His Gospel and those who do not. Those who believe are saved, and those who do not believe perish. The Word, or Gospel, of God speaks about specific tangible things and is not an intangible, subjective and ungraspable matter. It is not something that has no definite shape or that changes shape like some psychedelic bubble, appearing in different forms to different people. It is a solid construction of unchangeable doctrines. The only ones who cannot see it are blind, and the ones who see the false as the true have an impaired vision, a vision blurred by the errors they cannot see through. There is nothing vague about the Gospel of God, for it deals in specifics. If you do not believe the Gospel, that is, all the doctrines which make up the Gospel, just as God revealed them to Paul and how he has related them through the Scriptures, then you may well be believing in a gospel, but my friend IT IS NOT THE GOSPEL OF GOD!!! Now, there will be some who will protest and with as impressive and wise sounding voice as they can muster, say, ‘How can we believe the Gospel like Paul believed it; how can you say that the Gospel in all its detail that God revealed to Paul is the exact same Gospel in all its detail that we must believe to be saved? Surely the element of human imperfection must be considered in all this. The fact that a number of people in a room having a message whispered into their ears and attempting to pass it on to the others will, in a matter of minutes, always end up with a different message than what the first person was told, should convince anyone that there will invariably be error when man attempts to pass a message on to others? So how can the same message, the same Gospel, be passed on accurately over thousands of years?’ This is a common response, but a poor argument and one that is easily answered. Many believe that we cannot know the Gospel perfectly as delivered to Paul in all its precise detail because we are human and therefore subject to error and imperfection. They say that some truths have been lost and others so irreparably distorted that we can never know what they originally taught. Therefore, everyone will believe in a gospel that contains error of some kind but because the main doctrines, and these change depending on which group you listen to, are adhered to, salvation is assured. Yet these same people come to us, with authority no less, saying that what they teach is the word of God, and even call some of their church services ‘Gospel services’! But if a saved person can get the Gospel wrong, what security can he or anyone else have that he is right about anything concerning the Word of God? Perhaps there is no one who rightly understands and preaches anything in the Word of God? Maybe everyone’s interpretation of the Scriptures is just that, an interpretation and not what God meant at all. If such a thing were true, then what would have been the use of God making sure Paul and the other writers of Scripture knew, and could teach, the Gospel accurately, just as it was delivered to them, if gradually the knowledge of it would be lost and all anyone, including the chosen of God, would be left with was a fragmented Gospel that was indistinguishable from false gospels, which would have been condemned by Paul and others, not to mention God, as another gospel! And what would have been the use of the exhortation for the stewards of God’s Word to "...be found faithful" (1 Cor. 4:2) to the Gospel, if none of them were able to, despite their being called to the truth and to be administrators of it, to teach it? All this can also be easily answered by referring the reader back to what Paul said in Galatians 1:8: "...though we, or an angel from heaven, preach ANY OTHER gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." The business of everyone who desires to be saved is to know that Gospel. Surely God, Who inspired Paul to write these words and would have all who read them under no illusion that if they believed any gospel other than the one Paul was talking about they would be accursed people, was more than capable of ensuring that His Gospel would remain, down through the centuries, intact and whole just as when it was revealed to the apostle. It would have had to have been, for the Word of God says that any gospel that strays, in its doctrinal content, from the Gospel He gave Paul, is a false gospel which cannot save. God sends the gift of Faith to His people in order that they will believe in His Gospel and no other, in the only Gospel that contains nothing but truth and not the slightest error. If we did not have the true Gospel, there would be no way to recognise the true Christ or discern a false gospel. Simply because natural man is confused over what the Gospel is, and yet is convinced that one is saved without an exact knowledge of it, is no reason to conclude that God does not have just one Gospel that saves or that He has failed in making certain that His one Gospel would remain intact for all His people to know and believe. GOD’S PEOPLE ARE CALLED TO BELIEVE THE TRUTH, NOT TO WANDER ABOUT IN A DAZE FOREVER WONDERING AND ARGUING ABOUT WHAT IT IS! Obviously, to be called to "belief of the truth", the Truth must be out there for one to be called to and believe. Scripture says that to be saved is "...to come unto the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4), not to remain in ignorance of it, partial or otherwise. The way a gospel is recognized as not having come from God is if it strays from the Gospel Paul preached. If God were not already committed to His Gospel, His one plan for the salvation of His people, He absolutely, not only for all time but for all eternity, bound Himself permanently to this Message, and this Message ALONE that has the power to save, when He warned through Paul that belief in any other was evidence of an accursed state. Therefore, of necessity, God has committed Himself—He is eternally obligated—to ensuring that His Message remains just as it was when He delivered it to Paul. Based on this alone, one can be certain of the fact that God has safeguarded, and guaranteed, that the Gospel He gave Paul would be the Gospel every chosen child of God would believe, right down to the very last believer. God’s Gospel is ETERNAL, it is EVERLASTING, therefore it will last forever; its contents would, and could, never change, it would never be subject to change, for it is God’s eternal statement of the only way to salvation. Just as Jesus Christ is "...the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Heb. 13:8), the Gospel which reveals this immutable Savior also remains the same, hence the following verse warns "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines" (Heb. 13:9). Christ does not change therefore the teachings about Him do not change! Doctrines which are not part of the Gospel of God; doctrines which teach strange things about the Savior, Who does not change, do not save anyone. "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines." Why? Because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever! ‘Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.’ Why? BECAUSE THE GOSPEL IS THE SAME YESTERDAY, TODAY AND FOREVER!! How could the chosen of God ever teach anything different to it, when the Gospel of God is what they are called, and chosen, to believe!! Nowhere in the Scriptures will you find any believer confused over what the truth is, or believing some hybrid of truth and error. THE SAVED BELIEVE THE TRUTH AND THE DAMNED BELIEVE IT NOT! If there was not Truth to believe, then how could anyone declare a person to be an unbeliever? How could Paul have ever called anyone lost? Picture if you will a maze. A maze has many different paths and they all lead to different ends. Only one path leads to freedom and all the others, no matter how close they come to the exit point, can only lead to a dead end. Only God’s Gospel leads to Him. It is the only Gospel that comes from Him and therefore the only Gospel that leads to Him. The best any false gospel can do is lead you to a dead end. Further convincing evidence showing that the Gospel Paul and the other writers of the New Testament had preached is the same Gospel that all true believers preach and believe today, is found in the words concerning the angel in Revelation who was said to have "...the EVERLASTING GOSPEL to preach unto them that dwell on the earth..." (Rev. 14:6). Is what you believe the everlasting Gospel, or something that has only existed for a short time having come from the mind of man and not the mouth of God? How can any truly saved person be believing in a gospel that in any way differs from the one Paul preached, when Paul said that those who believe any other are lost? This is God’s Word we are talking about here, His eternal plan for the salvation of His people. Surely God, Who had declared that there is only one Gospel that saves those who believe it and that all others damn their believers, would not have left His very people in such terror as to not know what His true Gospel was, though they knew it existed! Surely God would not have demanded people to believe His Gospel, surely the Lord Jesus Christ would not have commanded this great Gospel be preached to every creature, if, with the advent of time, it were to be perverted by His own people and the peculiarities of it becoming mere topics of debate, with the truth of it being determined by the most intelligent and intellectual of men from the most influential and powerful religious institutions. If such were the case, the best anyone could have is merely a man’s opinion of what the Gospel is as that one true Gospel of God. Even then, if the best we could believe were a gospel that contained some error, it would still have to be considered ‘the Gospel’, wouldn’t it? And so what would happen to those who believed a gospel that strayed from the best version we had of God’s original Message? We would still have to work by the same rule that God originally set, that any who strayed from His Gospel were damned. And, by the way, who would be given the authority to say what the best version of the Gospel is, which would come closest to God’s original, and how would we know they were right? What a mess this would leave us all in. But thankfully, the Gospel God delivered to Paul is the very same Gospel He has delivered, and continues to deliver, to all those He has chosen to hear it and believe it. If God saves in a particular way as revealed in and by His Gospel, how can you honestly believe that He would save anyone who believed a gospel that declared a different way to salvation? IF GOD’S GOSPEL WERE LOST, THEN NO ONE HAS ANY HOPE OF SALVATION! Paul’s words in Galatians assure anyone who reads them that what he preached then is what he would be preaching now, and is therefore what has been, and will continue to be, faithfully preached by all God’s children throughout the ages, right down to the very last nanosecond of time.

Petty doctrinal differences that do not matter and which make no difference to the salvation of a man, are not what we are talking about or even remotely interested in. No, no my friend! It is not the relatively minor doctrines that have nothing to do with salvation issues that we speak of , but the most vital, the most major, doctrines which make up the glorious Gospel of Christ. We are not in the business of splitting hairs, for we are dealing with the most major doctrines of the Bible. The Gospel of Christ has, in fact, no minor, insignificant doctrines, for in calling us to believe the Gospel, the Lord Jesus meant ALL of it and not part of it or even most of it. Only believing in part of the Gospel message leaves a person with another gospel. Whenever the issue of doctrinal discrepancies arise during the course of a discussion on the matter of the Gospel, I always like to take the person that opposes what we are saying to the very heart of the Gospel, the very hub of it, that to which all the spokes are attached and without which they would fall into a heap, the central tenet of God’s only Gospel: The Person and Work of Jesus Christ the Lord. Here is the most important doctrine, the heart and soul doctrine, in all of Scripture. Here is what all of Scripture ultimately points to: Who is Christ, what did He do and for whom did He do it? To believe rightly about these things is to believe God and the Savior Whom He has sent. Christ is the Chief Cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). He is what His Church is built on and He is revealed only in the Gospel of God. Without Him you have no Gospel. Without the true Christ as revealed in the true Gospel there can be no sure hope of salvation. One can be certain that if one holds to false and erroneous teachings concerning the Person and Work of Christ, then one has embraced a false gospel which is not of God and which cannot save. "He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" (Jn. 3:18). To believe on Jesus is to believe in His name, in other words to believe that He would be the Savior of His people, that He would "...save HIS people from THEIR sins" (Matt. 1:21)—those whom God had given Him for whom He would lay down His life (see Jn. 17:2; Eph 5:25; 1 Cor. 5:7). "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). And no gospel under heaven reveals the Man behind that Name other than the unique Gospel of God. The correct preaching of the cross is the power of God unto salvation. The preaching of the cross is not the preaching of some piece of wood, nor of the fact that God’s Son died there, but about the Man Who died on that wood and what He did in and through His death. How could you possibly be preaching, or believing, the cross of Christ and omit the details of what He did on that cross, what He accomplished? You cannot be preaching Christ if you do not accurately preach the details of His particular death and what it meant. You cannot be believing Christ if you do not believe the specifics of His particular death and what it accomplished. "But we preach Christ CRUCIFIED..." Paul not only preached the Person of Christ, he also preached WHAT HE DID! The two cannot be separated, for to preach one is to preach the other; to believe one is to believe the other. If your gospel does not contain this truth, you do not know Him, you do not believe in HIS name, you cannot be saved. If your gospel does not correctly preach the cross—Christ and Him crucified—then I GUARANTEE you that your gospel is one that bases salvation to some degree on works! No false gospel could ever be called the power of God unto salvation, and therefore, no incorrect preaching of the cross of Christ could ever be called the power of God unto salvation. If it has not the power to save it is not worthy of belief. No false gospel has ever taught the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth concerning the true Jesus Christ. The finer detail of the teachings concerning Christ’s Person and Work will be taught in the last portion of this booklet, which will present the Gospel of God. (for an even more detailed study, see the author’s booklet ‘Atonement for Whom?). It shall be presumed that the reader believes correctly that Christ Jesus came to this earth as man, was virgin born, lived His life in perfect obedience to the laws of God, did not sin in any way, died on a cross, was buried and after three days and three nights was resurrected and is now seated at the right hand of God. If you do not even believe these truths, then I fail to see how you can consider yourself Christian. The historical aspect of these facts are, for the most part, adhered to by people of vastly differing religions. But believing in historical, verifiable fact is not the saving knowledge that is necessary for a person to show they have had the mighty Gospel of God revealed to them. For instance, a Roman Catholic might well believe that Christ died on a cross on Calvary’s Hill. But what did He do there, Who did He die for and why did He have to die on a cross, or die at all when He had never sinned, are questions that the Roman Catholic has vastly different answers to than what the Scriptures do. What you believe about the Person and Work of Jesus Christ will reveal whether you believe God’s Gospel or whether you have placed your faith, albeit unknowingly, in another gospel which cannot save.

The following is a case in point: The biggest lie, the most common fallacy, about what Christ has done and for whom He has done it is that which is termed Universal Atonement. This most popular and accepted doctrine among professing christians is that which claims that Christ died on the cross, paying for the sins of every man, woman and child ever born and all that is now required to make this a successful endeavor in saving people is for each individual, out of his own free will, to stand up and choose God. The Scriptures are in clear denial of such a teaching, for they state adamantly that no man is righteous and that all are dead in sin, without God and therefore without hope in this world. If you are without the Gospel then you are without God, and therefore remain dead in your sins. This is why a person is said to be lost who has not had the mighty Gospel of God revealed to them. It is impossible for a man, in and of himself, to get saved. There is nothing man can do, for all fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). No one, even based on their best deeds, are acceptable to Him, for man at his best state is nothing but vanity (Psa. 39:5). All a man’s righteousnesses are nothing but filthy rags before God (Isa. 64:6). Nothing man does in his efforts to obey God amounts to a hill of beans. So there is no way a man can come to God and choose God, which the doctrine of universal atonement insists upon whether or not it deems God’s help or grace as necessary in enabling him to do this, unless God makes the first move. Jesus said, "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him..." (Jn. 6:44). Man is dead in sin, not merely wounded by the Fall and still able to ‘reach out for God’, but completely helpless and unable to even recognise the true God. Scripture says, "...there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God" (Rom. 3:11 cf. 1 Cor. 2:14), for man is "...DEAD in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). Now how can any man ‘reach out to God and choose Him’ when the Scriptures clearly state that in and of himself NO man, not a single one, has ever, or can ever, seek Him!!! Salvation, according to the Scriptures, is therefore only possible by the will of God and not by the will or works of man. The saved are they "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (Jn. 1:13). The Bible says there are none by nature who even seek God, so how in the world can anyone say they were saved while not believing the Gospel of God? If before ‘believing’ the Gospel of God you were not seeking God, HOW ON EARTH COULD YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED OF GOD? The Word of God says, "...the world by wisdom KNEW NOT GOD..." (1 Cor. 1:21), which perfectly corroborates the verse in Romans 3 which says that no man understands or seeks God. Man needs to be saved; he needs to be told something he cannot know by nature and then he needs to understand and believe it! The world by its wisdom, by its mode of thinking, did not know God. It has not obtained the true knowledge of Him and has never devised or believed a gospel wherein the true God is revealed. Only the preaching of the Gospel will save them that believe it (1 Cor. 1:21). A person who does not believe the Gospel reveals an unregenerate heart, which is resident in all lost persons, so how could such a person be said to be seeking God, let alone be in a saved/justified state? Those who think they were saved before hearing the Gospel are not only saying that they did seek God, but that they actually ‘found Him’, all before knowing Him as He is revealed in His Gospel!! To say that one was saved before one heard and believed God’s Gospel is like saying that one paid a visit to a friend’s house before one knew the address!! None seek the God of the Gospel, which is why none are saved before God reveals Himself through that Gospel. Most people believe they are seeking God, but the Scriptures say that none of them seek the true God and therefore none of them are believing in the true God’s Gospel. Seeing then that it is abundantly clear that not all are saved, it stands to biblical reason that God has not willed to save every individual, but in His wisdom has chosen to save some. It therefore also stands to biblical reason that God, having sent His Son to the earth, did not send Him for the purpose of paying the penalty of sin for every individual, for then all would be saved, but only the penalty that the sins of those God has chosen and appointed unto salvation have incurred. "...He shall save HIS people from THEIR sins" (Matt. 1:21). "...Christ...loved THE CHURCH (the called out ones, or, the ones HE called out), and gave Himself for IT; that He might sanctify and cleanse IT..." (Eph. 5:25,26). Writing to believers, the apostle Paul stated: "...Christ our Passover is sacrificed FOR US" (1 Cor. 5:7). God Himself says, "...for the transgression of MY PEOPLE was He (Jesus) stricken" (Isa. 53:8). Christ was not stricken for the sins of those who were not among God’s chosen, who would not believe His Gospel.

Again, this is the quickest way we can learn if the gospel a man is preaching is false or true, by what he says about the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. No other doctrine has been more ferociously and doggedly attacked by Satan and his vast army of religiously deluded people than the doctrine of the Blood of Christ. There are many other doctrines of course which will reveal a false gospel just as clearly, but this doctrine of what Christ did by His death upon the Tree and for whom He did it is the main doctrine of the Gospel, it lies at the very heart of the Gospel, and anyone who denies the truth of it denies the very power of God unto salvation. Incredibly, it was brought to the attention of this author that there are some Reformed Calvinists, no less, who even disagree with this! Who say that the Person and Work of Christ is not the central tenet of the Gospel! What, may I ask, is? What is there left if one removes Christ’s Person and Work from the Gospel, for every other doctrine in the Gospel points to this doctrine. The entire Old Testament points to the coming Messiah and what He would do and the New Testament reveals that He did it!! The Scriptures say that it is "...through Him (Christ) we...have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (Eph. 2:18). Again, Jesus Christ is the Chief Cornerstone (Eph. 2:20), not only of His Church but of all Scripture, including the Gospel. None can accuse us of straining at a gnat, or think that we are being overly pedantic or picky, arguing over doctrines that are not salvation issues. We are talking about the biggest and most important doctrine of them all—the doctrine of the preaching of the cross, which Scripture calls the very power of God unto salvation. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HOW GOD SAVES AND BY WHOM HE SAVES! It is of a surety that if one is wrong about the central issue of the Gospel, whatever gospel one is believing in, it is not the Gospel of God. God is not going to lead you to believe a lie about His Son and then save you based on your belief of it. Doctrine that concerns salvation, in particular the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, is the principal way we can identify and distinguish a false gospel from the true Gospel.

Two verses which are most pertinent to our study of how many gospels there are which are to be believed in order for a person to rightly consider themselves saved, is that found in the first chapter of the Book of Ephesians. These Scriptures will show the reader how utterly impossible it is to trust in Christ for one’s salvation before one has heard and believed in the Gospel of Christ: "That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ. In Whom ye also trusted, AFTER that ye heard the Word of Truth, THE GOSPEL OF YOUR SALVATION: in Whom also AFTER that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1:12,13). Note the emphasis Paul placed, by twice using the word ‘after’, on salvation being an impossibility, a figment of one’s imagination, if one has not heard and believed the Gospel. If you have not heard God’s Word of Truth—the Gospel—then you cannot trust in the true Savior. Obviously then, this shows that the Savior who is to be trusted in is ONLY revealed in that Word of Truth, the Gospel, and unless one believes in it one cannot believe in Him. The fact that trusting in the true Savior can only come AFTER one has heard the true Gospel that alone reveals that Savior, is at once a very simple thing which hardly needs any mention at all, and yet a most profound thing which must be made as clear as possible over and over and over again, as the Scriptures show that one cannot trust—look to for salvation—in Christ and consider oneself sealed for all eternity with that Holy Spirit of God, before one has heard and believed the Gospel of God. In other words, Paul is saying that there is no trusting in the true Christ, no being sealed by His Holy Spirit, without the Gospel. "The sealing was the result of believing, and that was the result of hearing the Gospel." THE ISSUE IS NOT THAT A MAN ‘BELIEVES’, BUT WHAT A MAN BELIEVES! Is it the truth or is it a cunningly devised imitation, or a fable? Doesn’t it make perfect biblical sense to say that if one can only trust in Christ after one has heard the Gospel, any christ—whose person or work would naturally differ from the true—who was trusted in before one heard the Gospel was a false christ? Now in light of these Scriptures, we challenge the reader to try and convince yourself that you were, or that one can be, saved before hearing the Gospel, and how you or anyone else could be sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, that is, have God’s stamp of ownership on you, before you believe the one and only Gospel of God. One can be assured that before one believed the Gospel, one did not believe the Gospel. Everyone will agree that there is no salvation, no saved state, before one is sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, therefore, what makes one think that they were saved before they believed the Gospel, seeing that one can only be sealed with the Holy Spirit after one has heard and believed the Gospel of God? The passage we have before us is perhaps the clearest evidence of the truth that no one is saved before hearing and believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this next passage of Scripture confirms this truth. Colossians 1:5,6 contains Paul’s words written to saved people, to believers. He speaks to them of the hope of eternal happiness in heaven "...whereof ye heard before IN THE WORD OF THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL" (Col. 1:5). They heard of this hope of heaven when the true Gospel was first preached to them. Then in verse 6 Paul adds, this Gospel "...bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, SINCE the day ye heard of it, and KNEW the grace of God IN TRUTH." Not before the day they heard of it, not before they knew the grace of God in truth, but SINCE the day, AFTER it! Interestingly, the word since means ‘during or throughout the period of time after; because of; from’. Notice also that a person’s bearing fruit unto God is clearly linked here with KNOWING the grace of God in truth, and where else will you hear the truth about the grace of God but in His Gospel. It goes without saying, that knowing the grace of God in truth would have to include knowing God Himself in truth, according to truth and not error. The Gospel of God, if you will, is an only child. It has no siblings, but just as Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, His Gospel is the only one that came from God, through which He saves sinners. The Ephesians passage does not say gospels, but Gospel, singular. Belief in any other gospel, which is to say abiding in false doctrines regarding the testimony of God concerning the fallen state of man and what His Son has done in saving those whom the Father gave to Him, is the surest most irrefutable sign of a lost person. One cannot trust in the true Christ by believing a gospel which promotes another christ. The reason none can trust in the true Christ before hearing the Word of Truth, the Gospel, is that Jesus Christ is revealed only and exclusively in God’s Gospel and no other, and all of God’s people believe in that Gospel and no other. The Christ that saves is in the Gospel, just as those He saves are in Him (1 Cor. 1:30). If you are trusting in a christ who died for everybody, or in a christ who died for the elect but who will save a person even though they believe He died for everybody, you have a false christ. HOW COULD BELIEVING SOMETHING THAT CHRIST DID NOT DO BE CONSTRUED AS BELIEVING IN HIM? To believe a false gospel is to believe in that which Christ did not do! It is to place your trust in something, and therefore in someone, which does not even exist. You will never find the true Jesus in a false gospel. What the Scriptures are saying in Ephesians 1 is that you cannot trust in Him whom you do not know. How can you believe in Him of Whom you have not heard? The Scriptures indeed say: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13), but so many who are quick to quote this verse almost always fail to go on and quote the verses immediately following it. The very next verse asks, "How then shall they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?..." (Rom. 10:14). YOU CAN ONLY CALL ON THE ONE YOU BELIEVE IN. You cannot be calling on the true God if you believe in a false god, and, you cannot call on a false god if indeed you believe in the true God. How can a person holding to a false gospel possibly be calling on the true Christ, Whom that gospel does not reveal, and in whom they do not believe? It would be like expecting the true Jesus to claim responsibility for something He did not do. And how can anyone believe in the true Jesus if they have not even heard the only Gospel which reveals Him? If we love God because He loved us first (1 Jn. 4:19), then it proves that no man can call on God before He has revealed Himself via the Gospel. You cannot call on God, love God, before God saves you. If such was not the case, then salvation would be something merited by a man who conformed to a directive. It would no longer be something given but earned. You cannot call on, or trust in, the true Christ if you have not believed in Him. "In other words, calling on the name of the Lord is preceded by faith" (L.S.). If there is no saving Faith present, which can only come by hearing the Word of the Gospel, how can the one you are calling on be the Savior defined and identified in the Gospel? You may well be calling on the name ‘jesus’, but if it is not the Jesus of the Gospel, how can you be calling on the true Savior? No one has any right to say they believe in Jesus if they have never heard the true Gospel, which alone reveals Him. How can you call on the true Christ if all you have been taught, and believe in, is a false christ? How can you say you believe in the true Savior when the only one you have ever heard of is a false savior? False gospels reveal false saviors and they are only adhered to by false christians. You cannot savingly trust in Him if all that you have is a false gospel, which cannot and never has revealed the true God. You cannot know the true Christ if you have not heard and believed His Gospel. Only the true Jesus of the Gospel is said to be "...the image of God..." (2 Cor. 4:4). A false jesus of a false gospel could hardly be said to fit this description. Thus we learn the most basic of principles: just as a false jesus cannot be the true, so too, a false gospel cannot save you. The only way you can know Him, and therefore trust Him and be sealed with the Holy Spirit, is if God reveals Him to you in and by His glorious Gospel, and grants you the Faith to believe in Him. The reason Paul condemned every other gospel except his own Gospel, revealed to him by God, is obvious: every other gospel promotes another jesus. A simple rule to live by when it comes to the Gospel is: when you see the word ERROR, read COUNTERFEIT. Any gospel that is not God’s Gospel comes from men and not from God; it comes from the ‘wisdom’ of men, by which no man can know God, not the Wisdom of God. No false gospel could ever be called ‘the power of God unto salvation’, for they are all reliant on ‘the power of man’ to either attain and/or maintain salvation. Only a Gospel fully reliant on grace could rightly be called the power of God unto salvation. A false gospel is not the Word of Truth, it is nothing but a lie. Those who believe a false gospel, who have placed their trust in, and hidden themselves under, falsehood, having taken refuge in lies about God and His Son, have literally made a COVENANT WITH DEATH!! (see Isa. 28:15).

As further confirmation of the fact that none can be saved before they have heard and believed the Gospel of Christ, and that those who claim to believe the true Gospel yet insist they were saved before they ever heard, understood and believed it are equally as lost, we will turn to the very words of the Lord Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew. Salvation is about knowing God, and for zeal of God to be of any benefit, for it to be revealed as God-given, for it to be a godly thing, it must be according to the knowledge of God and in line with what He says His Gospel is. Great multitudes were gathered together around Jesus and He spoke many things unto them in parables. But the people did not understand what He was saying: "And the disciples came, and said unto Him, Why speakest Thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, because it is given unto YOU to KNOW the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given" (Matt. 13:11 cf. Col. 1:26). Right away we see the difference between saved and lost: the saved are those who know the mysteries of heaven and the lost are those to whom this knowledge is not given. Remember the Jews whose zeal was not according to knowledge (see Rom 10:1-4)? The "mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" is nothing more or less than the preaching of the Gospel. God’s got the truth and He’s not keeping it a secret; it is no longer a mystery but has been clearly revealed in His Gospel (see Rom. 16:25,26 cf. Acts 20:24,25). It is knowable through revelation, hence it is believable. "The word ‘mystery’ in the Bible, properly means a thing that is concealed, or that has been concealed. It does not mean that the thing was incomprehensible, or even difficult to be understood. The thing might be plain enough if revealed, but it means simply that it had not been made known. Thus the mysteries of the kingdom do not mean any doctrines incomprehensible in themselves considered, but simply doctrines about the preaching of the Gospel, and the establishment of the new kingdom of the Messiah which had not been understood, and which were as yet concealed from the great body of the Jews." A ‘revealed religion’ is that which is "...based on the revelation by God to man of ideas that he would not have arrived at by his natural reason alone." Further on in this chapter, in verse 15, we see the process that has been put in place by God, which is consistent with the proper reception of His Gospel, and therefore, conversion: "For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should SEE with their eyes, and HEAR with their ears, and should UNDERSTAND with their heart, AND SHOULD BE CONVERTED, and I should heal them" (cf. Jn. 12:40). Now just take a good close look at all these terms and see the contrast, see the difference between a saved man and a lost man. The lost man is described as having a heart that is waxed gross, a term which is ‘...commonly applied to the body, but is also used to denote one who is stupid and foolish in mind. Here it means that the people were so sensual and corrupt, that they did not see or understand the pure spiritual principles of the Gospel." They have ears that are dull of hearing, eyes that they have closed and they do not have a heart that understands so that they should be converted. These words of Jesus show conclusively that which is beyond dispute: all such people who cannot see, hear or understand the Gospel are unconverted. In order to be properly, biblically converted from man’s ideas to God’s Word, a man MUST hear, see and understand the Gospel. Being converted and born again are synonymous terms (see Matt. 18:3 & Jn. 3:3). Now, as for those who can truly say they are converted, that they are born again, Jesus says they actually see with their eyes, they do hear with their ears and they understand with their heart and therein lies the evidence of their conversion. THIS is biblical conversion, that which is based on tangible things and not on some mystical, or even life-changing, experience.

Again, we see clearly that to be converted is no subjective matter. Conversion is not about experiences of tremendous or instantaneous moral reformation. Conversion is not about feeling light headed and ‘spiritual’ and having all sorts of transcendental experiences. True biblical conversion is never a subjective experience that is without the presence of God’s seed: the Gospel. Some are convinced that the Holy Spirit is that ‘element in conversion’ that transcends or goes beyond, and is not restricted by, the uncompromising rigidity or boundaries of Doctrine. But how can this be when the Holy Spirit is referred to three times in the Gospel of John as the Spirit of truth! They see the subjective as more real and trustworthy than the objective, and easily verifiable, truth of God. These people have been mesmerised by the ‘beautiful’ side of evil. They fail to realise how Satan can provide a person with ethereal experiences that lift the heart, that titillate the soul and senses and how he has been doing this for thousands of years amongst those who knew not God yet considered themselves to be people of God. Experiences which are accompanied by, or lead a person to, false gospels are not to be trusted no matter how lovely and life changing they may be, or however much they appear to have led a person to be consumed with ‘God’. If their experiences have led them to a false gospel, one can be certain they did not come from God. Those who claim to perform miracles of healing and other such feats are nothing but charlatans, ministers of Satan, if these acts are accompanied by false gospels. God is not going to perform, nor has He ever performed, miracles through one who promotes a false gospel! THAT WHICH COMES FROM GOD WILL ALWAYS TAKE YOU TO GOD AND THE FAITH WHICH BELIEVES EXCLUSIVELY IN HIS GOSPEL. ‘Believe the Gospel’ is the command, not ‘wait or hope and look for an experience’.

Again, the Word of God tells us that conversion is about seeing, hearing and understanding. Seeing, hearing and understanding what? Seeing the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ of course! Hearing the glorious Truth of God as revealed in His great Gospel; and understanding what God has said in that great Gospel about His Son and how He saves and that it is this message that one must believe in order to be saved, to the exclusion of all others, for all others differ to some degree with what God has said in HIS Gospel and therefore cannot be of Him, for they do not reveal HIS plan of salvation. Otherwise they would not be referred to as ‘other gospels’. How else can a false gospel be discerned other than by what it says? That is why Paul condemned every other gospel apart from the Gospel he preached, because none of them were the same message that God had revealed to him. Paul, like all true Christians, had a zeal of God and it WAS according to knowledge. Just as works cancel out grace and vice versa (Rom. 11:6), so too, belief in a false gospel cancels, or rules, out any possibility of savingly believing in the true Gospel. In other words, no one can simultaneously believe a false gospel and savingly believe the True. It would be like standing on two boats at the same time, one of which is sinking. As long as you have one foot placed on the boat that is sinking, you will not be standing for long. One needs to abandon the sinking vessel ALTOGETHER! To savingly believe the Gospel, one must have BOTH feet firmly planted on it! One must be rooted and grounded in it. THE GOOD SHIP GOSPEL IS THE ONLY ONE THAT WILL KEEP YOU AFLOAT AND SAIL YOU RIGHT INTO GLORY!! Saving faith in the true Gospel automatically negates the possibility that the person who has been given it will ever again believe a false gospel. The Christian believes the true Gospel, not with the fickle faith of man, but with the undeviating Faith of God. Why did Paul so loathe messages that differed from his? BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT GOD’S MESSAGE! Many of them contained several truths that were part of the true Gospel, for without this subtle tactic of Satan’s they would have been instantly rejected by all professing christians, but it was what was added to those truths, or left out, that made these gospels false gospels and those who believed them accursed.

After telling the parable of the sower, Christ explained to His disciples the things that have to do with true biblical conversion, reaffirming what He had said in verse 15,: "But he that received seed into the good ground is he that HEARETH the Word, AND UNDERSTANDETH it; which also beareth fruit..." (Matt. 13:23). The seed spoken of is of course the Word of God, the Gospel (Mk. 4:14; Lk. 8:11), and for it to be said that it has been properly received, there must be evidence that it has been heard and understood. Only then is fruit produced to the glory of God. No one can please God without faith, the Scriptures say, and everyone knows that faith comes by hearing and the hearing by the Word, which is the Gospel of God: "But without faith it is impossible to please Him..." (Heb. 11:6). "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom. 10:17). Faith can only come by hearing the Word of the Gospel. How can one have saving Faith if that Faith has not the Gospel of God to believe in? Obviously one cannot have saving Faith if one has not heard the Gospel, which that Faith was given to believe!! The Gospel never comes to an elect person without the Faith to believe it. There is no true saving Faith without the hearing of the Gospel, just as there is no trusting in the true Christ before one has believed the Gospel. Any honest person must admit, judging by these verses, that the Gospel must be heard for there to be a saving Faith present. Why would God give His saving Faith to someone who had never heard the Gospel? What would they do with this Faith? Believe another gospel which cannot save? No one needs God to give them a faith to believe in a false gospel, for that is all any man by nature believes in anyway. Saving Faith is always given to one through the hearing of the Gospel. What else could one have faith in, in order to be saved? The Gospel is what God has said must be believed if any are to be saved. Faith can only come by the hearing of the Gospel, so it stands to reason that the Gospel must be heard for there to be saving Faith. The Scriptures say, "...BEFORE FAITH CAME, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed" (Gal. 3:23).It must be pointed out that while this verse is primarily talking about the Jews and the law, it is not improper to say that before saving Faith comes, all men by nature believe that they must do something to gain or maintain salvation. "The Law condemned every other mode of salvation, and the law condemned all who attempted to be justified in any other way." Man’s only ‘hope’, before faith came, was by obedience to the law, for all were kept under the law. Of course, none were ever saved by their obedience to the law: "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Curseth is everyone that continueth not in ALL things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal. 3:10). So we see that anything outside the Gospel comes under the heading works of the law. Can you begin to see that all who do not obey the law perfectly and are called curseth, ties in with Paul calling accursed all those who bring another gospel. Every gospel other than God’s Gospel promotes works to some extent as necessary to one’s salvation. In light of this, it is not difficult to see that there is only one Gospel of grace and multitudes of gospels that are of works. One comes from God, and the others are all of men. All that can exist in the mind of the unregenerate is a gospel that conditions salvation in some way and to some degree on what a man does. Men, by nature, are locked into believing systems of ‘salvation’ based on works, many of which masquerade as grace. He believes he must do something and God, in His law, has revealed what it is that man must do—OBEY AND LIVE, DISOBEY AND DIE! But He also reveals that none can do it! Therefore, no gospel that conditions any part of salvation, the attaining or maintaining of it, on what a man does, qualifies as the Gospel of God. God’s Gospel is a Gospel of grace and this is the key to understanding why all other gospels cannot save, because all other gospels promote works. Verse 24 reveals that "...the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified BY FAITH." The law shows us that none can be saved by trying to obey it, but only by Faith in the One Who HAS obeyed it: "...that we might be justified by the Faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified" (Gal. 2:16). If you believe that you were saved, or remain saved, by your obedience to a particular law of God, then the Word of God says you are "...a debtor to do the whole law" (Gal. 5:3). The believer in the Gospel of the grace of God is no longer a debtor to do the whole law for he believes in the One who fully obeyed that Law. He has been freed from that debt by the One who fully complied with every demand the law made. The Gospel believer, through the Spirit, waits "...for the hope of righteousness by faith" (Gal. 5:5 cf. 9:31,32). Obedience to the law has never saved anyone for no one has ever obeyed it perfectly. God’s law is that which points us to Christ so that we might be saved by faith in Him and not by faith in our own efforts at obeying God. The Faith that God bestows on a person is the catalyst which ensures the recipient look wholly to another for salvation and not to oneself. The faith of God causes us to look to another, for it convinces us of our sin: "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). "...the application of a law to try our conduct, instead of being a ground of justification, will be merely to show us our sinfulness....A man may esteem himself very right and correct, until he compares himself with a rule, or law....so far from being justified by it, they would be more and more condemned....the more closely and faithfully the law is preached, the more will it condemn him, and show him that he needs some other plan of salvation." And so we see that before Faith came man had no hope of salvation, which means that before the Gospel came no man can be said to have been in a saved state. The Gospel of God teaches that a man is not saved by his obedience, but only by the obedience of Christ. And this is precisely why a man cannot be saved who claims to believe the Gospel but who says that he was saved before he heard the Gospel or that others can be saved prior to believing the Gospel. The reason for this is clear in that before Faith in the Gospel of God’s Grace, there was only, and could only have been, faith in a gospel of one’s works! It will be hard for some to get their minds around this, especially those who are Calvinists convinced that they adhere to a Gospel of grace, and yet believe that one must keep up a certain level of obedience in order to stay saved, or that Arminians are just as saved as they are. Any gospel that teaches that it is Christ Who has saved us, gotten us saved, but it is what we do that gets us over the line, in other words keeps us saved to the end, is a false gospel. It is a gospel no different to the one that the Galatians were being fed, which acknowledged Christ and what He had done but added circumcision to His efforts. Belief in such a gospel will not profit any man (Gal. 5:1,2). To claim anything apart from Christ’s Righteousness "...as a thing essential to salvation, as indispensable to justification and acceptance with God...became a renouncing of Christ as Himself sufficient to save us" AND KEEP US SAVED. Anyone who believes that one must do something to either get saved or stay saved is "...a debtor to do the WHOLE law" (Gal. 5:3). Whoever believes that they must do something to justify themselves before God, or keep themselves ‘justified’, the Scriptures say: "Christ is become of no effect unto you..." (Gal. 5:4). As for every true believer, "...we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness (SOLELY) by Faith" (Gal. 5:5). The truth is, the Calvinist who believes that prior to saving Faith in the Gospel of Grace one can be saved, or that one must ‘do’ in order to remain saved, is just as lost as the Arminian is. Galatians 3:25 tells us: "...after that Faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." The Faith that God gives does not look to one’s efforts at obedience as that which will recommend, or help recommend, us unto God, it never even glances at our works, but trusts solely in, and looks only to, the obedience of Christ. Thus, this Faith that is of God trusts in no other Gospel but God’s Gospel of grace. Finally, verse 26 of Galatians 3 informs us that those who are saved "...are all the children of God BY FAITH in Christ Jesus." Therefore, before THAT Faith of God comes which believes only in God’s Gospel, the only faith a man has is one which believes in a salvation by works. The key words in the passage of Scripture we have just quoted are: "before Faith came." How can there be salvation before Faith came? The Faith sent from God and which believes only in His Gospel. How ludicrous, in light of such biblical evidence as this, is the preposterous assertion that one can have saving Faith, one can stand justified before God, without having heard His Gospel. Faith cannot exist unless there is a message heard and believed, after all, the Message is the very object of that Faith. "It cannot come otherwise than by such a message; in other words, unless there is something made known to be believed. And this shows us at once the importance of the message, and the fact that MEN ARE CONVERTED BY THE INSTRUMENTALITY OF TRUTH, AND OF TRUTH ONLY." If the message is not the true one—God’s one—then there can be no conversion. To think otherwise is to say that God converts His chosen by the instrumentality of lies. Remarkably, some are not far off believing such piffle! To be converted to something, one must have been converted from something. As long as you are in error about the Gospel, you cannot be said to be converted. To be converted is to change to another attitude or belief. Biblical conversion is to change from believing a false gospel, and the false assumption that it could ever save, to believing the one and only Gospel of God and that it alone has been fitted to save. How could conversion take place without the essentiality of the true Gospel being heard and believed? He that receives the Truth of God as revealed in His Gospel is he that has heard, understood and believed it. He has been truly converted. One cannot believe before one has understood and one cannot understand before one has heard that which is to be understood and believed. This is all so simple, so basic, as to beggar belief that a single person, let alone the majority, could fail to see and realise that there cannot be a proper biblical conversion, no proper biblical faith, before or without the Gospel being heard, understood and believed. It all goes to show the miserable condition of the lost, who have deluded minds, an obscene faith and a biblically unsupportable hope of being saved.

If one claims to have been saved without the Gospel, then one must be saying that one was saved by placing one’s faith and trust in another gospel. No other conclusion can possibly be reached, for you must believe something about God and salvation, and whatever that is forms the gospel you believe in. If a person claims to now believe the true Gospel, yet maintains that they were just as saved prior to hearing it, they too are really saying that they were saved whilst believing a false gospel that outlined a hopeless plan of salvation of which God was not the author. Curiously, none who claim this want any longer to believe what they believed before hearing the Truth. They no longer hold to the things they claim they were saved by believing! Why not? What is suddenly so wrong with that which one claims to have been saved believing before they heard the true Gospel? Why not still believe it and intersperse it with the true Gospel doctrines? If you believe you were just as saved when you believed that Christ died for all as you believe you are now that you believe that He died for God’s elect, why don’t you still believe that preaching and believing He died for all is preaching and believing the true Gospel? If you believe that faith in either teaching will equally save, then you do away with the very essence of Who Christ is because you are saying that it does not matter what you believe about who He died for, and therefore what He actually did on the cross. We must never forget that the Messiah was named JESUS because "...He shall save HIS people from THEIR sins" (Matt. 1:21). If who Christ died for does not matter, then what does? What matters about Christ’s death? If it is not what He did—which is inextricably linked with who He did it for—then what is there left? It would just be that ‘He died’. His death would be robbed of its meaning and if the meaning of His death does not matter, then what Christ did through His death and for whom He did it is made a non-essential. One would be left with an empty shell of a gospel that cannot save. If you believe you were just as saved believing universal atonement as you think you are now by believing what you call the Gospel, then why not still preach and believe that pre-Gospel rubbish? Why don’t you stick with the logo of all false gospels: good enough to save!! This would be quite humorous if it were not so serious. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, though calling the Arminian gospel another gospel, maintained that those who believed it were saved! He detested the doctrines of John Wesley and yet insisted that Wesley was saved whilst believing them!!!! This is spiritual dementia at its worst. How crazy does this sound: ‘You’re saved by believing another gospel just as I am by believing the true Gospel.’ Spurgeon believed that a person became a Christian and then either followed the Arminian or Calvinist path and even though these two gospels are diametrically opposed, Spurgeon and men like him asserted that both can save, in other words that both are the very power of God unto salvation!! Why would a person who claims to believe the true Gospel want to believe they, or anyone else, were saved prior to hearing what God has to say about His Son and how He saves, anyway? Why would a person who claims to believe the true Gospel want to believe they were saved by believing in a gospel that does not honor the true Savior? And why, believing they were saved before they heard the Gospel that denies any other gospel can save, don’t they still believe and teach the rubbish they held to before they exchanged it for the true Gospel doctrine? How can one possibly believe in the true Gospel and not recognise that the doctrines which comprise false gospels are opposed to what the true Gospel says? Such blindness betrays a remaining state of lostness. FALSE GOSPELS ARE NOT JUST ERROR, THEY ARE ENEMY! Why not from week to week preach different gospels; why not from day to day believe that one was saved by believing a lie and then the truth? My friend, changing from a false gospel to the true Gospel is not a matter of simply shifting seats on the same train so that one is now facing the opposite direction, IT IS A MATTER OF JUMPING OFF THE TRAIN YOU’RE ON AND INSIDE THE ONE TRAVELLING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION!! To say that one was saved before hearing and believing the true Gospel is like saying that a person travelling east can simultaneously be heading west! You cannot escape this logic, this biblical line of reasoning, for the Scriptures state quite emphatically that there is no conversion, no trusting in the true Christ, before or without belief in the Gospel which reveals that Christ. And, that there is no saving faith present in one who dares to attempt to have his feet in both camps.

Is not love for a particular gospel a declaration of one’s love for the god/God of that gospel? If one believes the Mormon gospel, then one is declaring one’s love for the god of that gospel and is not saved. If one believes the J.W. gospel, then one declares one’s love for the god of that gospel. If one believes the Roman Catholic gospel, then one is obviously declaring one’s love for the Roman Catholic god and how he ‘saves’. If one believes the Arminian gospel, then one is declaring one’s love for the god of that gospel. In addition, any who say that a person can be saved by believing the Arminian gospel are also declaring a love for the god of that horrendous gospel. If they say that the Arminian gospel is not a different gospel and that the Arminian god is not a different god, therefore unable to save, then we must conclude that such people are saying that God’s Gospel is at once saying that Christ died for the elect AND that He also died for every individual ever born! That what He did secured salvation for all for whom He died AND that He merely made salvation possible for all, leaving the individual to determine his own fate by either choosing or rejecting Him. Stuff and nonsense! No true believer who was formerly a Mormon, J.W., Roman Catholic or Arminian, etc., would ever say they were saved whilst believing the false gospels these groups promote. Why? Because those gospels oppose God’s Gospel! They are in opposition to, they are in competition with it, but unlike the true Gospel, the false ones cannot save. Again, to believe a gospel is to declare one’s love for the god of that gospel, it is to declare the god of that gospel to be the true God and worthy of praise and worship, and is a message to every other god of every other gospel, including the true God of the True Gospel, that you do not want any part of them. Belief in any one of these, or any other gospel that is not God’s Gospel, is a declaration of love for any other god but the True God. You cannot love the true God whilst you believe a gospel that is not His Gospel, because false gospels reveal a false god and not the true God. They are anti-God! You may say you love the true God and you may even believe it in your heart, but if it is a love that accepts other gospels as competent to save, it cannot be the love that comes from God. All those whom God causes to approach and love Him believe His Gospel and no other, for He has no other for them to believe in because no other can save! Can you honestly see God leading a person to a gospel that is not His? The true God has only one Gospel and it is the only Gospel which reveals that God. Failure to believe the true Gospel is to be in unbelief towards that Gospel, and even the most primitive religious person with minimal understanding knows there can be no salvation, no conversion, whilst a person is in unbelief. Those who are in unbelief remain unforgiven. To not believe the true Gospel, that IT ALONE is the power of God unto salvation, is to be in unbelief. It is to call God a liar. Most never think of religious people as being in unbelief. Yet, despite their religiosity, those who hold to false gospels are as much in unbelief of God’s Gospel as those who do not believe any gospel, perhaps even more so.

Believing the Gospel is believing the truth about Christ, to believe what GOD has said about His Son. It is to believe in God’s plan of salvation and to trust in no other. One cannot savingly believe the Gospel of Christ if one believes that one can be saved by faith in any other gospel. One cannot believe in Jesus as the only Way to salvation if one is convinced there is also another way. One cannot believe the Gospel of Christ if one does not abide in the doctrine of Christ. YOU CANNOT HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER. You cannot think to have God if you believe not His Gospel and you cannot have His Gospel if you abide in false doctrines. It stands to reason then that if one does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, one is abiding in the doctrines, believing the gospel, of an imposter—one who is not Christ—proving conclusively that one cannot be saved. The link between knowing and believing right doctrine with actually having God, being His chosen and saved child, is clearly visible in the following verse: "Whosoever...abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, HATH NOT GOD..." (2 Jn. 9). How clearer could it have been put! This verse just says it all. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW, UNDERSTAND AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST, YOU ARE NONE OF HIS!! It is not enough to believe you are believing His Gospel, thinking that if you are wrong God will save you anyway because you were very sincere in your faith and lived a very moral and upright life. You must actually know the Gospel and believe it, for there is no other way to abide in it and thus have God. You must abide in the Gospel or you stand accursed. Who, among professing christians, would have the audacity to say that believing in another god will save you just as believing in the true God will? Or who would dare say that being led by another spirit other than the Holy Spirit of God will just as surely bring you to the truth? And so what gives any man the right to think that belief in another gospel will save you just as surely as belief in the true one will!! When dealing with eternal issues, we must deal in reality, not in some artificial reality pumped up by our ‘wishful thinking’ and vain hopes, fuelled by emotion, that what we believe is the truth, that God cares more about His love than His Justice and Holiness and that He will save you despite your believing lies about Him and His Savior. The truth is, your religiosity carries no weight with God. Your ‘spirituality’ means nothing to God and your sincerity in believing a false gospel, far from recommending you to God, compounds the situation and will serve to doubly condemn you. You are deserving of nothing but the wrath of God, those of you who show that you have not God because you abide not in the Gospel of God. Now, I do feel sorry for those who have been misinformed about what the Gospel is, and I pray for their salvation, but no one is forcing them to believe a false gospel. If you think they are all such lovely people, just tell them of the true God of the true Gospel and see what they say about Him! Only then will you have a clear and proper view of just what lies within such people, and the kind of spirit that motivates them. That they have believed misinformation concerning the Gospel is testament to the fact that they cannot have the true God, for if He had truly revealed Himself to them they would have believed HIS Gospel and no other. One cannot be said to have God whilst not abiding in His Gospel, the Doctrine of His Son. This would be like saying that one was in the water before one had entered the pool! How can you be abiding in the doctrine of Christ before you ever heard it? How can you be in the pool while comfortably laying beside it, or even on its edge? How can you know something before you ever heard anything about it? How can you be in the car before you’ve even opened the door? Likewise, how can any say that they had God before they knew His Doctrine, the Gospel, which tells of that God and which He alone gives? And how can a person truly say, and honestly believe, anyone will believe them when they claim to believe the Gospel is God’s only power to save who are convinced one can be saved by believing something else! A person is only wet after they have jumped into the pool and not before. A person can only know something after they have heard of it. A person can only be in a car after they have opened the door. And so it is with the Gospel. A person can only know it, abide and believe in it, AFTER they have heard it. How stupid would a person sound standing there trying to convince you that they are wet, when they haven’t even touched the water! Or how silly would a person, who was obviously soaked to the bone, be to claim they were just as wet whilst dry! Or how ridiculous would it be for a person to say they are fully clothed before they have put on one stitch of clothing! Just as mad, just as utterly insane, is the person—whose foolishness is surpassed only by his ignorance—and absurd his claim, who insists they were saved before hearing and abiding in the Gospel of Christ! Paul said that he was a "...servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the ACKNOWLEDGING OF THE TRUTH...in hope of eternal life..." (Titus 1:1,2). The Faith of God’s elect is nothing less than their acknowledgement of the truth! And there can be no justified hope of eternal life if there is no acknowledgement of the truth as it is revealed in the Gospel. "The meaning of the word rendered here ‘according to’ is...‘with reference to’; that is, he was appointed to be an apostle ‘with respect to the faith’ of those whom God had chosen, or, ‘in order’ that they might be led to believe the Gospel. God had chosen them to salvation, but He intended that it should be in connection with their believing; and, ‘in order to that’, He had appointed Paul to be an apostle that he might go and make known to them the Gospel. It is the purpose of God to save His people, but He does not mean to save them as infidels, or unbelievers. He intends that they shall be believers first—and hence He sends His ministers that they may become such. ‘And the acknowledging of the truth,’ In order to secure the proper acknowledgement or recognition of the truth. The object of the apostleship, as it is of the ministry in general, is to secure the proper acknowledgement of the truth among men." God justifies the ungodly, He justifies the unbeliever, not by perpetuating their unbelief but by freeing them from it and causing them to believe in His mighty Gospel. It is the truth that makes a man free (Jn. 8:32 cf. Jn. 8:36). Belief in lies about Jesus Christ will only keep you tied to the apron strings of hell. The only way one can have acknowledgement of the truth is if one has heard the truth contained in the Gospel and been given the Faith to believe it.

How many gospels are there? Hundreds, perhaps thousands. But the real question that must be asked is: ‘How many gospels are there that save?’ Answer: ONLY ONE! But why the Gospel? Why only one Gospel? And why MUST it be believed to the exclusion of all others? The answers are quite simple: a) because it is God’s plan for salvation. b) Because God has only one plan of salvation. And, c) Because there is no other message that God has designated that reveals HIS plan of salvation. The Gospel must be believed because it is God saying, ‘This is MY plan for salvation and there is no other—DO YOU BELIEVE ME?’ If your answer is ‘Yes’, then you will believe in no other. If you do not believe it, or if you claim that some other plan for salvation revealed in another gospel can save just as well, then your answer is an unequivocal ‘NO’, and you deny what God is saying to be true. If you believe in any gospel other than—or in addition to—God’s Gospel, you call Him a liar, you are not looking to Him alone for salvation, and therefore have no right to expect to be saved and entitled to heaven. Just as God has said "Thou shalt have no other gods before (besides) Me" (Ex. 20:3), so too, He says ‘Thou shalt have no other gospels besides mine.’ Belief in any other gospel apart from God’s Gospel is to place one’s trust in a false god, a false plan of salvation. It is to be led by a lying spirit to believe in a false savior. The Gospel of God is that which must be believed, or you will perish. The Christ of that Gospel must be believed in, or you will be eternally condemned. And if the Holy Spirit was not your teacher, you were not being directed to God’s single and unique Gospel, and the smoke of your torment shall ascend for ever and ever. Only one Gospel carries with it the title: THE POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION. It is in a league of its own. Every other gospel is NOT the power of God unto salvation, but an imagined power that only exists and thrives in the minds of lost men! Only one Gospel exists that conditions all of salvation on the grace and goodness of God. All other gospels condition salvation to some extent on what a man does. God does not save His elect according to their works, "...but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began" (2 Tim. 1:9). Therefore God does not save by false gospels, which all promote works, but only by His Gospel, which is the ONLY Gospel of grace. Any gospel you believed prior to hearing the true Gospel was a false gospel, it was a gospel of works, and no one, according to the Scriptures, can be said to have been abiding in the Gospel of Christ and truly believing in grace whilst not acknowledging the truth about Christ. How deadly is error when it comes to the Gospel!

My friend, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is THE issue. It is a life and death issue! Christ has only one Gospel and that is the only Gospel that saves. It is the only Gospel that has ever saved. It is the only Gospel that must be believed in order for one to be saved. It is the only Gospel God’s people preach and it is the only Gospel God’s people believe. All others are fakes, counterfeits, which are not worthy to be called ‘Gospel’, not worthy to be believed, for they contain doctrines which are false, tainted with lies about God and about God’s Son; lies about the plan and method of salvation that is according to God’s Word. The matter of, say, Sovereign election, is not something, which man in his natural fallen state has wrongly termed unfair, that can be mistaken by a person who is truly saved. Glorious and Sovereign election according to the will and purpose of God, according to His mercy and grace, is part of God’s Gospel, therefore essential to the preaching of it, and is precious and dear to every saved person, having been heard and believed at the time of their conversion, for to be converted is to be changed from one attitude or belief to another. The lost man’s attitude/belief is that Sovereign election is not fair and therefore he is left with the only alternative teaching, which is part of many false gospels, which concludes that a man needs to make a free will choice for God in order to be saved. Such a doctrine involves, as a necessary consequence, the belief that it is not God Who makes the difference between saved and lost, but man’s free-will decision for God. Belief in such abominable doctrines carries with it the penalty of an eternal curse. CURSED IS EVERYONE THAT BELIEVETH IN ANOTHER GOSPEL!! Believe error about the Gospel, believe that which is untrue, and you stand accursed.

Why it is a fatal error to not believe the truth of Sovereign election by the free grace and will of God and other Gospel essentials such as the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, the eternal security of a man whom God has elected unto salvation, and that unless one is submitted to the Righteousness of Christ—believing that His obedience to God is enough to save and preserve everyone for whom He died, that salvation and preservation require no additional effort on our part—one cannot be saved, is that not believing these truths, or even being undecided as to whether one believes them or not, shows that one is believing something other than the Truth of God, something other than His Gospel, which is by its very nature contradictory. That which does not come from God will not lead you to God, for it opposes Him and what He has said. None can simultaneously oppose God and what His Gospel says and have God, for if you reject His Gospel and all the ramifications of it, you are rejecting God Himself. Any teaching that differs from what God’s Gospel says opposes God, so anyone who thinks that they were saved without God’s Gospel by believing that which opposes it, is living in a fool’s paradise, which will eventually become a living, pulsating HELL!! The person who believes in that which God has not said is in ignorance/darkness, which is what a person in a saved state is brought out from in the first place. Belief of the truth, which is revealed in the doctrine of God, which every true believer abides in, is what distinguishes a saved person who has been brought out of darkness into God’s marvellous Light, from a person who is lost and sitting in darkness. Yes, Christians are different and belief in the Gospel of God is where the difference begins! The lost jailer asked: "What must I do to be saved?" The first word he heard in response to his question was "BELIEVE!" Those who do not believe are lost, for to be saved one must BELIEVE!! The state of every man by nature is shown clearly in the following verse: "Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph. 4:18 cf. Jn. 1:5). The blinded heart cannot pump the blood of eternal life. All who are without the Gospel of God are currently in this deplorable, spiritual state. Their understanding is in the dark; they are non-participants in the life of God; and this is due to their inherent ignorance of the truth about God as revealed in His Gospel, and because of the blindness of their deceitful and wicked hearts. "Ignorance is the characteristic of heathendom." Ignorance of the Gospel is not a characteristic found in ANY justified person! Ignorance, in the Bible, speaks of "...the former unregenerate condition of those who became believers (1 Pet. 1:14)." The ignorance—which is inseparably connected with unregeneracy—of the person who remains in ignorance of the Gospel cannot be called former ignorance, for they still abide in it. How can any in such a state be rightly considered saved? The unregenerate obstinately adhere to what are, ultimately, their own views rather than to God’s Word. They have yet to recognise God’s Gospel as the Word of God—His power to save—but see it as merely the words of men (1 Thess. 2:13). None can be born again and yet remain in darkness and ignorance of what the Gospel is, for "...if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are LOST" (2 Cor. 4:3). The Gospel is not hidden, it is not concealed, from the saved nor is it that which the saved are ignorant of, but only the lost. If the Gospel is hid to any man, he cannot see it, he is ‘in the dark’ concerning it, and he is therefore ignorant of it. IGNORANCE OF THE GOSPEL IS THE VERY ANTITHESIS OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE SAVED. To be saved is to KNOW and BELIEVE! One can hardly call ignorance and belief synonymous terms. Can you honestly believe that anyone in a state of ignorance can rightfully, biblically, be pronounced saved? Of course not! To make excuses for the ignorant, to base their ‘salvation’ on grounds other than "belief of the truth", not only gives them a false security but is an injustice to the Word of God!

The truth of God is revealed to His elect, and to others it is not given: "...it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given....he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it" (Matt. 13:11,23). The others don’t understand it, and so they cannot and will not receive and believe it. If it was not the Gospel by which we are to discern whether a man is saved or not, think how impossible it would be to know who was saved and who was lost, including oneself, if the only way to judge was by a person’s lifestyle. Many people that aren’t even religious live moral lifestyles and are busy workers for the community, helping their fellow man etc., yet none can seriously claim such people to be saved. If salvation was judged by works, how would anyone ever know if they had done enough to get saved or doing enough to remain saved? Millions of people say they believe in Jesus, yet their beliefs are as far apart as one group saying He is God and the other saying that He is not God. Everyone would have different opinions and there would be nothing but mass confusion. That mass confusion exists today as more and more people judge saved and lost by lifestyle, works and a perceived sincerity, rather than by what a man believes.

Just as in physical birth one is brought out of darkness (the womb), so too, to be born again (spiritual birth) one is brought out of darkness (ignorance of the truth) into God’s marvellous Light—where knowledge of His Truth lies. Ignorance of the Gospel is an unmistakeable sign of lostness. Ignorance is the antithetical womb, if you will, from which a man receives no sustenance, but is brought out of when he is given birth/life to by God through His Truth (Jas. 1:18). The Bible teaches that one cannot believe in the true Christ whilst in ignorance of Who He is and what He has done. One is not born as long as one is in the womb—one is not born again as long as one is in ignorance. Only after one has heard of the true Christ can one rightly claim to believe in Him, to be born of Him: "In Whom (Christ) ye also trusted, AFTER that ye heard the Word of Truth, THE GOSPEL of your salvation: in Whom also AFTER that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1:13). As we have already seen, this Scripture shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that one cannot believe in the true Christ who has not had that Christ revealed to them via the Word of Truth, His Doctrine: His Gospel. The only hope for sinners is revealed exclusively in God’s Gospel Message: "For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye HEARD before IN THE WORD OF THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL" (Col. 1:5). THOSE WHO HAVE NOT HEARD HAVE NO HOPE. The message of the sure hope of Heaven lies in the doctrine of the Gospel and none can bear fruit unto God before they hear His Gospel and know the grace of God IN TRUTH (see Col. 1:6 cf. Matt. 13:23). To know the grace of God is to know the God of grace. One cannot believe and trust in Christ until after one has heard His Gospel and none are sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise who have not believed that glorious Gospel wherein Christ and His Righteousness are revealed, and rejected all others no matter who taught them or how long one has believed in them (Rom. 1:16,17). The Christian is not ashamed in the Gospel that reveals the Righteousness of Christ, but he is ashamed in, and counts as dung, every gospel he ever believed before hearing and believing the Gospel of God! One cannot have true saving God-given Faith if one does not believe the one, true, God-given Gospel. And I stress, one cannot have true saving faith if one believes that one was saved whilst believing in another gospel—trusting in another message of ‘salvation’—because true saving God-given faith trusts only in one Gospel and believes only one Gospel to be salvation truth, only one Gospel that can save. Anyway you cut it, you cannot escape the fact that BEFORE FAITH WAS UNBELIEF. Before faith in God’s Gospel arrived there was nothing but unbelief of that Gospel. If this were not the case, then a person would have been saved without justifying faith. So why then is faith so necessary to salvation? The Faith that saves, believes only in God’s Gospel. Anything before that Faith believes in other gospels and therefore could not have saved you. Those who believe they were saved before hearing the doctrine of Christ are like the person who wrongly imagined twelve inches to be a certain length, then upon discovering how long twelve inches really was by the accepted standard of measurement, they conformed their thinking, yet notwithstanding this, they continued to insist that their previous appraisal was just as accurate as that deemed by the Standard! None are saved whilst insisting they were saved before hearing and ‘believing’ THE Gospel, for the very Gospel of God that such people claim to believe, denies that such a thing is possible! Those today who claim to believe the Gospel and yet do not believe that one is lost simply because of ignorance of it, or the fact that none are saved who deny this, are just like the Jews in John 5 who believed they had eternal life but did not, who claimed to love and believe the Scriptures but did not, for they did not believe in Jesus. Those who believe not in the Jesus of the Gospel have not His word abiding in them (Jn. 5:38). If the Gospel were a person, it would have as much right as the Lord Jesus Himself to say to its opponents: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think you have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me" (Jn. 5:39). If you truly and savingly believed the Gospel, you would believe that there is no hope of salvation without it! In all that it says the Gospel is all the while declaring that THIS is what you must believe, THIS is what God has said. THIS is Who Christ is and THIS is what He has done. Why do you think God gave His Gospel? Why do you think He made this Gospel convey a particular message distinguishable from all others, which were devised by the wisdom of men and through which NONE have ever known God? He said it for the purposes of identifying His Son and defining what He would do and that it be believed, for the salvation of His people, because none can be saved who believe not God’s message of salvation, who have placed their trust in something else or in addition to it! God’s Message must be believed because it is what we must place our trust in, and our hopes on, for WHAT HOPE IS THERE OUTSIDE OF WHAT GOD HAS SAID? To believe is to "entrust one’s spiritual well-being to." Now I ask you, how can you entrust your spiritual well-being to the true Jesus if you believe a false gospel? Belief is like a path. It cannot lead you to where you are not headed. It cannot lead you to where it does not emanate from. If you believe in the true Gospel, then you are headed towards the true God. If you believe a false gospel, that path cannot be taking you towards the true God, but rather to a false one. Believing is all about placing your hope in something, and if your hopes are based on a false message of salvation, then you have no hope. False gospels provide false hope. God did not lay out several plans for salvation and, importantly, He did not prepare any contingency plans of salvation for those who would not believe His ‘A’ plan. No ‘plan B’ for those who would not believe His Son died exclusively for the elect of God; no ‘plan C’ for those who would not believe in the impossibility of a man coming to God in and of his own accord, etc. God did not send out an A team of doctrines to be believed, and subsequent modified versions, the belief of which could save just as well. God will not make concessions regarding His Gospel in order to cater to man’s unbelief. GOD HAS EVICTED UNBELIEF FROM HIS CHOSEN AND REPLACED IT WITH FAITH IN HIS GOSPEL ALONE!! God is not so desperate to save people that He will compromise His Gospel in order to save even those who don’t believe it. Those who believe false gospels cannot negotiate their way out of their failure to believe God’s Good News. God did not send a version of His Gospel to a particular group of people because He knew they would not believe His original plan of salvation. Just as God sent only ONE SON into this world, He sent only ONE GOSPEL. God has only one plan, one conception of salvation, only ONE, and that plan is revealed in His Gospel ALONE. Man has conceived of numerous plans, of numerous ways to ‘get saved’, but God has only ever conceived of one plan and so only THAT plan will work. One God, one Savior, One Spirit, ONE GOSPEL!!

Again, people who firmly believe they were saved before knowing the Doctrine of the Gospel often base their salvation on a variety of subjective experiences and see such life-changing and morally reforming episodes as unquestionable proof of spiritual rebirth, despite the absence of the Seed of God, the Gospel, by which a man is born again. Many who claim to be saved have all sorts of experiences they turn to as evidence, and testimonies abound of ‘How God saved me.’ But it doesn’t matter what anyone’s testimony is of their experiences of ‘how’ they were ‘saved’. What matters is GOD’S Testimony of how He saves! God recognises only one Gospel as His and so do all His people. The apostle Paul is a perfect example of this. God saves only one way and that is by revealing His Gospel and supplying the Faith to believe it. Jesus is the only Way to God and God’s Gospel is the only way you can know Jesus, for He is revealed in no other. God speaks about His Son within the framework of His Gospel and no other. Think of it in terms of a T.V. channel. You won’t find the Gospel on any other station but God’s, and you won’t find God on any other station than the one which declares His Gospel. Or, if you will, picture the following hypothetical scenario: Before one can walk into heaven, one must present themselves to God with the gospel they believed whilst on earth. Just like the airline passenger boarding a plane who must show his ticket for verification that it is the one which the airline issued, those claiming to be Christians must ‘hand in’ their gospels to God for verification, to see whether it is the one which HE issued. If the gospel you believed was not the one and only Gospel which God issues to His people, you will be seen, just like the airplane passenger with a fake ticket, as one who is attempting to get to their intended destination under false pretences. You will be banished, just like the gospel you believed in, as an imposter. Woe to the person who presents himself to God with a false gospel tucked under his arm, expecting God to receive him based on his belief of a message that the Lord did not give. GOD WILL NOT RECEIVE YOU! HE WILL NOT RECOGNIZE YOU AS HIS CHILD, FOR YOU FAILED TO RECOGNIZE HIS GOSPEL as the true Gospel and unashamedly placed your faith in another. The Gospel of God will have no concord or fellowship with a person who professes his love for it, and yet is married to another gospel. One must be dead to all other gospels if one is to savingly and rightly be joined to God’s Gospel. The Gospel of God cannot be yoked together with one who believes he was saved prior to hearing and believing it, who refuses to reject every other gospel he previously subscribed to. Such a thing would be tantamount to asking for admittance into God’s heaven whilst arm in arm with a false god! It would be like asking one woman to marry you whilst you are in bed with another! Or like having two wives, a case of spiritual bigamy if you will. Just as in marriage where one must forsake ALL others, so too, in the eternal Marriage, one must forsake all other gods AND their gospels and declare one’s love, devotion and commitment only to the true God and His Gospel. Equally lost are those who insist that such a person is saved or says that a person who has not heard, or does not believe, THE Gospel is saved regardless. For they are advocating—contrary to what the Gospel declares—the lie that one can be ignorant of the Gospel—wilfully or otherwise—and be nonetheless saved. Salvation, then, would be something based on a person’s sincerity and ‘genuine desire for God’ and well-meaning attitude, WHATEVER THEY BELIEVED, or any number of other subjective means rather than on God’s genuine love for a person, shown by His revealing His Gospel to them and granting the Faith to believe it. "God’s love is the ONLY cause of salvation" (B.B.). And God’s love cannot be separated from His revealing His Gospel to His people. Can you see what Satan is doing? Satan has no new tricks, they are all old and predictable. In shifting the emphasis from God’s Gospel to a man’s sincerity or good intentions, he has led a multitude to virtually do away with God’s Word, believing that what God has said is either wrong or that what He has said has been misunderstood. Isn’t this what he convinced Eve of in the Garden? Jesus, to the contrary, said, "...man shall not live by bread alone, but by EVERY WORD that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4), not that which proceeds out of the mouth of man! Any gospel that is not THE Gospel, simply cannot save. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mk. 16:16). Believe what? Believe the same Gospel that Christ commanded His disciples to preach to every creature. The above verse shows that there will be no excuse for not believing the Gospel and that all such people will be eternally expelled from the presence of God. The exception to those who believe and are saved, are all those who do not believe. There is no salvation for them, only damnation.

The true Christian Faith is not a religion, nor is it primarily a lifestyle. True Christianity is all about a message—God’s Message—the Gospel, in which the Righteousness of Christ is revealed. This Gospel reveals the spiritual condition of man and God’s way of salvation. Salvation is deliverance. It means to be rescued or freed from a place of danger and brought to a place of safety. It also means to be preserved, to be kept. Salvation is God saving, or rescuing, a sinner from the eternal punishment rightly due unto his sin and transferring him to a state of eternal safety and security, where the law no longer demands punishment and Justice is satisfied. Now, how does He do this?

Before we answer this most vital of questions, we need to find out why salvation is necessary in the first place and to do this, we need to revisit what God says about the spiritual condition of man. In the Book of Genesis we see the account of Adam and Eve. God made Adam and Eve perfect, free of sin, and gave them a beautiful Garden to live in and enjoy, with wonderful trees providing succulent fruits. Their life was one of tranquil days of love, happiness, contentment and most importantly, peace with God. God said they could eat from any tree in the Garden, but warned that "...of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17). Death, previously unknown, would enter their lives—not merely physical death, but of greater significance, spiritual death. To their shame, Adam and Eve did eat of the forbidden fruit and death did enter their lives that very day, just as God had promised. Physically, they did not die immediately but the ageing process of decay and corruption, the breakdown of their physical bodies, did begin that day. However, they did immediately and literally die spiritually. They were no longer acceptable to God for they had become sinners and were unclean in His sight. This death, both physical and spiritual, has passed on to every person ever since. The Scriptural evidence for this is clear in such Scriptures as Romans 5:12. "...by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon ALL men..." This is because Adam, the first man, was made the representative of all mankind by God. As their representative, Adam’s sin was imputed (charged) to them, his descendants, the entire human race: "...by one man’s disobedience (the) many (those he represented) were made sinners..." (Rom. 5:19). The fact that both you and I sin offers undeniable evidence that we are sinners and shows that we come from the sin seed which began with Adam. Just as a grass seed will only produce grass, so too, the sin seed will only produce sinners. And every sinner needs a Savior.

Most people readily admit that they are not perfect, but a source of comfort for many is that they see themselves as only minor sinners. Most people’s assessment of themselves is along the lines of, ‘I am basically a good person. I know I’m not perfect but at least I’m not as bad as that person.’ They are most eager to see themselves in a positive light and so are quick to judge themselves by comparing themselves with others they deem not to be as moral or charitable as they, and according to this standard, they judge themselves to be basically good people, and to the religiously minded, right with God. Everyone can find someone who has sinned worse than they have, with whom they are keen to compare themselves. Many do not see themselves as having committed any serious sin, which they consider to be something like murder, armed robbery or other such crimes of extreme violence. Man, filled with an ignorance based optimism, which is fuelled by a God-defying pride produced by his natural fallen condition, sees reason to be hopeful, mainly because of the sins he has not committed, whilst conveniently turning a blind eye to those he has. To think like this is to miss the whole point. While it is true that some have sinned more than others, and to worse degrees, the reality, not to mention the gravity, of the situation is that we have ALL sinned against God: "For ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Whether you are a ‘major’ sinner or a ‘minor’ sinner, the point is, you have sinned against God. We may be able to impress one another with our moral lifestyles and charitable deeds and lovely and pleasant manner, personable character and even bubbly natures and be seen by our fellow man as righteous, but in God’s eyes all are sinners and all come far short of His standard of approval, His glory. Man has missed the mark, or target, and as for having registered points with God by his feeble attempts to make amends for his sins by doing ‘good’—man isn’t even on the scoreboard! Man in his lost state, which has produced an unsound mind unable to provide anything but a warped view when it comes to spiritual matters, is under the impression that if he does his best then God will accept him, for what more can a person do than his best? This is the sin that deceives every man by nature (his unsaved state). The fact that we are not perfect shows conclusively that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and that we can do nothing to save ourselves. This also means that even at his best, no man can turn to God and choose Him, for the Bible says no man seeks Him. God says, "...every man AT HIS BEST state is altogether vanity (unsatisfactory)" (Psa. 39:5); "...they are together become unprofitable..." (Rom. 3:12 cf. Jn. 6:63; Rom. 7:18). The best a man can do to recommend himself to God falls far short of the perfection that God demands: "...we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses (good deeds) are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities (sins), like the wind, have taken us away" (Isa. 64:6). Notice that this verse of Scripture is not talking about our bad deeds being unacceptable, for that is something which is obvious to all, but that our very best deeds, those things which most people think will recommend them to God, are in reality as filthy rags in the sight of the Holy God. There is the story of the man who was invited to a formal gathering and was told to wear his best clothes. So the man put on his best suit and upon arriving, was refused entrance because the standard of dress for men was black tie. The man found out too late that what he took to mean his best clothes was, in reality, something completely different to that which was required. Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast also teaches this. One man had entered the wedding feast not clothed with the proper wedding garment. Jewish tradition had it that the father of the groom would invite guests to the wedding of his son, providing them all with the garment they were to wear. Any who had not on the appropriate garment evidenced the fact that they were not invited (see Matt.22:11-14). The fact that they wore different clothing to that which was issued was a gross insult. Such people were cast into outer darkness. One cannot gain entrance to heaven unless one is clothed with the specific attire that God has issued. We must be clothed with the Garment God has provided, His Righteousness, and not our own, if one expects to enter into His Joy. "And to Her (the Church) was granted that She should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints" (Rev. 19:8). "It should be remarked...that it is implied here, as it is everywhere in the Scriptures, that this is not their own righteousness, for it is said that this was ‘given’ to the bride—to the saints. It is the gracious bestowment of their Lord; and the reference here must be to that righteousness which they obtain by faith—the righteousness which results from justification through the merits of the Redeemer." We must be clothed in robes that are washed and made white in the Blood of Christ (Rev. 7:14), not in rags that are polluted with our ‘good’ works. So it will be on that Great Judgement Day. "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of Righteousness..." (Isa. 61:10 cf. Zech. 3:4). Any who are not clothed with the white Robe of Righteousness provided by the Father of the Groom, shall not be admitted into the heavenly Glory. In contrast to this, religion teaches that our best deeds will recommend us to God, that we are not clothed in rags but with garments that are acceptable to God. But God says that even at our best, we all fall far short of His Standard of acceptance. This is because we are sinners and all we do is imperfect and therefore unacceptable to a Perfect God. God’s accepting man in this condition would be unfair to His Holiness. Let us not overlook one important factor: if one is to appear before God with one’s deeds, one must appear with the bad as well as the ‘good’. If our best deeds are as filthy rags, one can only imagine how our worst deeds appear in God’s sight. It is obvious that man needs something far greater than his best deeds, and someone far greater than any mortal man could ever be, in order to be saved—made acceptable in God’s sight. The doctrine that teaches man is dead to God and that consequently there is nothing he can do to recommend himself to God, including choosing God with so called ‘free will,’ is so vital, so absolutely essential, to knowing the true God that if one does not believe this, then one joins with the Arminian in believing and promoting Satan’s lie to Eve, that she would not surely die (Gen. 3:4), for they say, ‘We are not surely dead.’ In other words, "If you’re wrong on the Fall you’re wrong on it all!" (B.B.) Thus, they are guilty of saying that Christ’s death was in vain: "...if righteousness (right standing with God) come by (obedience to) the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. 2:21 cf. Gal. 3:21). In other words, if righteousness can come by man’s compliance with God’s Law then Christ has wasted His time and effort by dying on the cross for the sins of His people and establishing a Righteousness that they might be saved. Salvation would not be by grace but by works. This obedience spoken of in Galatians 2 includes choosing and coming to God by an act of one’s alleged free will, which in the context, is an act of obedience on the part of man upon which he has conditioned salvation. When speaking to the most religious people of His day, Jesus said, "...ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity" (Matt. 23:28). Man judges by his own standard and sees himself and his good deeds as good enough to even recommend him to God! Man judges according to the outward appearance but God judges according to what is in man: "...for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7 cf. Jn. 2:24,25), and at the heart of every man is the sin seed: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9 cf. Eccl. 9:3).

No matter how ‘good’ a man can become, all his efforts fail to address the root problem: his sin nature. If I may use the following illustration, man trying to get to God by what he does is like a man who has one foot nailed to the floor. No matter how much the man struggles or runs, the best he can ever do is go around in circles! He never gets anywhere because the root problem, the reason why he runs around in circles and never achieves anything, has not been addressed! For a solution to this, the root problem, which in this case is that his foot is anchored to the floor, must be solved. The fact that we are sinners, with no redeeming quality, is that which condemns us and it is a fact that none of us can change. It is the root problem and for it to be dealt with effectively, it must be dealt with BY GOD HIS WAY. Nothing we do, don’t do, or stop doing can change our sinful nature one bit. A rotten apple, no matter how fragrant it’s aroma may be, can never alter the fact that it is ROTTEN! And no one is going to accept a rotten apple to eat, no matter how fragrant it is! So too, God will never accept an imperfect and sinful man, no matter how many ‘good things’ he might do—NO MATTER HOW CLOSELY THE GOSPEL HE BELIEVES RESEMBLES GOD’S GOSPEL—because his good deeds are all imperfect and can never atone for the multitude of sins he has committed, or do away with his rotten sinful state. No matter how many times a person has obeyed the speed limit, this can never undo, excuse, or make up for the instance, or instances, when they broke the speed limit, and the full penalty must be paid. That you have broken God’s law cannot be excused simply because you had, up until that time, not broken it, if such a thing were possible. Man’s condition, and the fact that he can do nothing to change his state before God, is highlighted by God Himself in the following verse: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" (Jer. 13:23). The Word of God also says, "...verily every man AT HIS BEST state is altogether vanity" (Psa. 39:5); "...there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Rom. 3:12); "For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not" (Eccl. 7:20). Where there is imperfection there is sin and where there is sin there can never be perfection, and therefore no grounds for acceptance with God. One must have all his sin removed, and atoned for, and perfection put in its place, in order to be right with God. Despite all of man’s enthusiastic religious endeavors and beliefs, including the erroneous assumption that he can choose God at any time, or that he was saved before hearing God’s only Gospel, the Lord says, "...There is NONE righteous, no, not one: there is NONE that understandeth, there is NONE THAT SEEKETH after God. They are ALL gone out of the way, they are together become UNPROFITABLE; there is NONE that doeth good, no, NOT ONE" (Rom. 3:10-12). None by nature understand or seek after the true God. Therefore none by nature believe in the Gospel of God. It is something that has to be revealed to them for the purpose of salvation. Now if man did have a free will, he would have the capacity to choose God. But the reality is, that although he does have a will, it is a slave to sin and therefore, is not free at all, but in bondage. The whole purpose of God in giving man a ‘free will’ would have been so that some, at least, would choose him. And so in light of this, would it not be proper to say that some, by ‘choosing’ God, would have done a good thing? But how can any have done this good and noble thing, choosing God, when we have just heard that God Himself states that "THERE IS NONE THAT DOETH GOOD!!" THERE ARE NONE WHO SEEK GOD SO HOW CAN ANY CHOOSE GOD? Quite a dilemma isn’t it?

The standard by which we are to judge ourselves is the one that God has set: perfection—and if we are honest, we will admit that we are imperfect. We all fail the test no matter how ‘good’ we are or how much better than others we believe ourselves to be. The greatest commandment is to love God with all our being (perfectly). The Lord Jesus says: "...Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength....this is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law..." (Mk. 12:30 & Matt. 22:38-40). No one, not even the most religious person around, could ever say he has loved God perfectly and his fellow man as himself. So we see then that, far from being guilty of only ‘minor sins’, we all stand guilty before God of the greatest sins: not having loved God perfectly or our neighbour as ourselves. "...the Scripture hath concluded all under sin..." (Gal. 3:22 cf. Rom. 3:9). Consequently, the concept of ‘minor’ sins is a false one. Moreover, to break even one of God’s laws is to be guilty of violating the Law as a whole: "For whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (Jas. 2:10). This is said, to show us that if the law of God is not kept, obeyed perfectly, then one is under condemnation and God has made clear to us the penalty for sin: "For the wages of sin is death..." (Rom. 6:23). Sinners cannot be saved by their obedience to the Law of God, for we have rendered it impossible that any of us should be justified and saved by the Law, in that we have broken the law, we are hopeless and perpetual breakers of the Law, and have thus exposed ourselves to the penalty of the Law: "...cursed is every one that continueth not in ALL things which are written in the book of the law to do them" (Gal. 3:10 cf. Gal. 3:21,22; Heb. 7:18,19).

Society often gets into an uproar when a judge lets a criminal off with just a warning or hands down a lighter than expected sentence. The judge that does this is actually perverting justice, he is not a just judge. He might be showing mercy, but that mercy comes at the expense of the justice he claims to be a servant of. When someone commits a crime, they should pay the full penalty that the law demands for that crime. God’s Justice, on the other hand, is never perverted, it is never ignored or left unsatisfied because of His mercy. God’s justice has never been left wounded in the wake of His mercy. While it is true that God is a God of love and mercy, it is just as true and vitally important to remember that He is also a Just God, a Just Judge. God never sacrifices His Holiness to His love and mercy. God never shows mercy toward the sinner at the expense of His Justice. Those who believe that He does, neglect the fact that God did not even spare His own Son from being delivered up unto death when the sins of His elect were charged to Him (see Rom. 8:32). In light of this, what makes anyone think that God will accept them into His presence, ignoring their sins simply because He is a God of love and mercy? One must be aware of ALL the attributes of God and not just a select few in order to know Him and how He operates. God declares of Himself: "...The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin...WILL BY NO MEANS CLEAR THE GUILTY..." (Ex. 34:6,7) and "...there is no God else beside Me; a Just God and a Saviour..." (Isa. 45:21). In order for God to be the Savior and at the same time remain Just, without perverting His justice, His law must be obeyed perfectly and His justice, which demands full payment for sin, must be satisfied. How could this be accomplished? How could God save anyone based on perfect obedience and full payment for sin when no man is able to meet these demands? In other words, how could God remain Just and at the same time be the Justifier of the ungodly?

God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, that’s how! Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb of a virgin by the agency of God the Holy Spirit. He was not born of the seed of man and therefore did not carry within Him the sin seed that is resident in every man (Lk. 1:31,35). He did not descend from Adam, but came down from Heaven and was therefore without sin. Consequently, He and all that He did, was wholly acceptable to God (Matt. 3:17). Just as Adam was a representative, so too is Christ. But while Adam was the representative of all mankind, evidenced by the fact that all have sinned, Jesus Christ is the Representative of all those God gave Him—those whom God chose to save through faith in His Gospel and no other. The fact that Christ was not the representative of all, but only of those whom God gave Him, His elect, is evidenced and made obvious by the fact that not all believe His Gospel, not all are saved. For if Christ had atoned for the sins of every individual, the consequence—by the very nature of atonement—would have left no outstanding punishment for anyone and so all would be saved. The elect of God, and these alone, are the ones Christ laid down His life for. Writing to believers, the apostle Paul said, "...God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth (faith); whereunto He called you by our Gospel..." (2 Thess. 2:13); "As Thou (the Father) hast given Him (the Son) power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast GIVEN Him" (Jn. 17:3). Being chosen by God for salvation was not something that could be earned or merited, it was not a reward, for the choice was made by God before the creation of any man, solely according to His Will: "(God) hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, NOT ACCORDING TO OUR WORKS, but according to His own purpose and grace, which WAS GIVEN US in Christ Jesus BEFORE the world began" (2 Tim. 1:9 cf. Titus 3:5); "...He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world...Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, ACCORDING TO the good pleasure of HIS WILL" (Eph. 1:4,5 cf. v. 11). "The elect of God are chosen by Him to be His children, in order that they might be made to believe, not because He foresaw that they would believe." Faith, like everything else pertaining to salvation, is a gift given by God, it does not originate within ourselves: "For by grace (unmerited favor) are ye saved through faith; and that NOT OF YOURSELVES: it (faith) is the GIFT of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. 2:8,9). There is no such thing as a self-made Christian, "For we are HIS workmanship created in Christ Jesus..." (Eph. 2:10). Saving Faith ALWAYS believes THE TRUE Gospel, never a false one, for it is the Faith that comes from God and, like a magnet, is solely attracted to God’s Gospel and no other (2 Thess. 2:13,14). The principal defining characteristic of the Faith which is given by God to His people is that it believes ONLY HIS Gospel!! How could the Faith that comes from God believe in anything that did not come from God? Or how could a faith that believes in something which does not come from God be the Faith which is of God? The faith which does not save, which does not come from God as His gift, is that which emanates from man and believes that salvation can either come before or without belief in God’s only Gospel. IT IS NOT A FAITH THAT IS LOYAL AND SINGULARLY DEVOTED TO GOD’S GOSPEL! It does not believe that His Gospel is the only one that saves. To really, savingly, believe God’s Gospel is to believe that it is the only one that saves. The Faith that God gives finds comfort, refuge and security ONLY in the Doctrine of Christ. The faith that God does not give finds comfort, refuge and security in anything but the Doctrine of Christ.

Jesus Christ is the Substitute of all those God chose to save, all those the Father chose/elected and gave to Him. As their Substitute, He lived the life of perfect obedience to God’s Law that none of them ever could, thus providing the obedience they needed to become right with God: "...by the obedience of ONE (Jesus) shall (the) many (those He represented) be made righteous" (Rom. 5:19). As their Substitute, He died and was resurrected, thus paying the penalty in full for their sins: " (Jesus) was delivered for our (those He represented) offences, and was raised again for our justification (acquittal)" (Rom. 4:25). Jesus blotted out "...the handwriting of ordinances that was against us...and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross" (Col. 2:13,14). God’s Word says that all the sins of those for whom Christ died were transferred to Him, and that His Righteousness would be charged to them: "For He hath made Him (Christ) to be sin (a sin offering) for us, Who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21 cf. Rom. 4:6,8). He Who did no sin was charged with the sins of those He represented, and they who could do no righteousness, were charged with the Righteousness of Him. "...God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us..." (Rom 8:3,4). God will not, indeed cannot, charge sin to those for whom Christ died, for all their sin has been imputed to Him and His Righteousness to them! "If God be for us, who can be against us?....Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth" (Rom. 8:31,33). God is not in the business of condemning, in any way, those for whom Christ died: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus..." (Rom. 8:1). All those for whom Christ was made sin are those who will never perish, for they have been made the Righteousness of God in Him (see Gal. 3:13), and they are loved of God just as much as Jesus is (see Jn. 17:23). They have been given eternal life and shall never perish (Jn. 10:28 cf. 1 Jn. 2:25). Just as Adam’s sin was imputed to all he represented, thus condemning them, Christ’s Righteousness is imputed to all He represented, thus justifying them (making them righteous, or placing them in right standing before God). Man is judged a sinner even before he is born, before he has done any evil, for he carries within him the sin seed and is conceived in sin, going astray from the womb (Rom. 5:13,14 & Psa. 51:5 & Psa. 58:3). Doubtless you have noticed that children, even at a very young age, do not need to be taught to do wrong, IT JUST COMES NATURALLY! All those Christ represented (lived and died for) WILL BE SAVED: "Therefore as by the offence of one (Adam) judgement came upon all men (all he represented) to condemnation; EVEN SO by the righteousness of One (Christ) the free gift came upon all men (all He represented) unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience (the) many were made sinners, so BY THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE shall (the) many be made righteous" (Rom. 5:18,19). The imputation to Christ of the sins of God’s chosen people and the imputation of Christ’s Righteousness to them, is the only way that God can remain Just and at the same time be the Justifier of sinners. The penalty for the sins of God’s chosen has been paid in full in and through Christ’s death, and the perfect righteousness necessary for their justification has been established by Christ’s perfect obedience unto death. "To declare, I say, at this time HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS: that HE might be Just AND the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26). Man could never be justified by his imperfect righteousness, but only by the perfect Righteousness of a Substitute, Jesus Christ. God’s Law has been fully and perfectly obeyed by Christ, His atoning blood has been shed, and the resulting Righteousness charged to all those whom the Father gave Him. "...David...describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works....Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin" (Rom. 4:6,8). There is no reason for those chosen by God to perish, and therefore none of them ever will, for their sins have been charged to Another and they now have the Righteousness of Christ, which entitles them to eternal life. God’s Justice has been fully satisfied by Christ’s death on the cross for the sins of His people. Christ’s death on the cross was His offering to the Father on behalf of all those the Father gave Him to die for and redeem (Eph. 5:2 cf. Gen. 8:21). This sacrifice was accepted by God and thus all for whom this sacrifice was made are shown to be the chosen of God, the redeemed of God, the elect of God, THE BELIEVERS in God. No one for whom He has died shall be cast into Hell; and, He has died for no one who is cast into Hell. To be truly saved, one must EXPECT NOTHING MORE and ACCEPT NOTHING LESS than Christ’s glorious Righteousness as revealed exclusively in His Gospel, as that which ALONE is necessary to attain and maintain a state of salvation from beginning to final glory.

The popular, yet false belief that there are many and varied doctrines one can believe in— which belong to equally disparate gospels—many religious paths one can travel, but that all lead to the true God, is a vacuous lie from Hell that continues to deceive people to this day. How can one group, for instance, that teaches a gospel that says Jesus is not God and another that teaches that Jesus is God, both be right and leading people to the same God? Likewise, how can one who says that Christ’s death has accomplished eternal redemption for all for whom He died be teaching the same jesus whom the Arminians say only made salvation possible, attainable, for all and that it is possible for all to be saved, providing they choose him? Obviously one is wrong and the other is right. The Arminian savior—like all saviors of false gospels—only makes salvation ‘possible’. The true Savior of God’s Gospel MAKES SALVATION HAPPEN!! Important to note is the fact that simply because the lines may appear blurred or that some false doctrines about Christ are not as readily distinguishable, in the minds of some people, from the truth as others are, does not mean they are not different and belong to false gospels. Once examples, such as the ones we have provided, are given, it becomes clear that all the different religions, even the multitude of ‘christian’ denominations, with all their gospels, do not lead to the same god, let alone the True God, for not only do they differ greatly in what they say about God and the way to salvation, they often totally contradict each other. You know you are hearing the wrong gospel when the speaker declares that you are saved by believing, or were saved whilst you believed, another message also. Christianity is not some ecumenical free-for-all, but is exclusively for those who believe God’s Gospel and no other. Admission is permitted only for the believers of God’s Gospel.

There are many wrong answers that can be given to 2 + 2, but there is only one correct answer. So too, there are many false gods and many false christs in religion’s supermarket—all presented in packaging labelled THE GOSPEL—yet this can never erase the fact that there is only ONE TRUE God and that there is only ONE TRUE Christ. We have all seen those goods that have been packaged in containers bearing the same coloring and similar wording as that on the genuine product, but however close the imitators might come to the original, they can never match the genuine article, they can never BE the genuine article! Just because you have bought a box of cereal, does not give anyone the license to automatically think you have bought cornflakes, let alone the Kellog’s brand. Just because you believe in a gospel, does not mean you have THE Gospel. Just as your answer to an equation will reveal whether you know the correct one or not, what you say about God and about Jesus Christ will show whether you believe in the True Gospel, or in one of the many counterfeits which cannot save. Be not deceived, God warns that many "...pray unto a god that CANNOT save" (Isa. 45:20). And all these false gods are revealed in false gospels. Only ONE road leads to God, only ONE Gospel is of God: "Jesus saith...I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me" (Jn. 14:6) and "I am the Door: by ME if any man enter in, he shall be saved..." (Jn. 10:9). If you will, God’s Gospel has the scoop! God’s Gospel has the Story! God’s Gospel has the facts because only God’s Gospel has the Truth!

Religion, even that which professes to be Christian, claims to know what it is that man can do to ‘make his peace with God.’ But their teachings about salvation are false, for they all teach that man must, thereby implying that he can, to some extent do something in order to get saved and/or stay saved. This runs contrary to what God’s Gospel says, that all of salvation from beginning to end is conditioned on the perfect obedience of Christ the Lord. ALL OF RELIGION CLAIMS THAT THERE IS SOME INHERENT QUALITY IN EVERY MAN THAT CAN CAUSE HIM TO REACH OUT TO GOD, SOME INNATE GOODNESS TO WHICH GOD CAN APPEAL, OR THAT THERE ARE DEEDS MAN CAN DO WHICH WILL RECOMMEND HIM TO GOD. Such teaching readily appeals to man’s nature and is the identifying mark of religion’s false gospel. Religion has lied to man in saying that by a man’s will and work, he can come to God. Scripture says a man is born again, ...not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (Jn. 1:13). The Lord Jesus says, "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him..." (Jn. 6:44). Notice that man’s coming is not according to his choice, but exclusively that of the Father’s. Man’s inability to come to the Lord proves conclusively that there is nothing intrinsic in him that can prompt him to choose the true God or that he can even recognize Him. Jesus is saying that no man can come to God unless God has come to the man first. He did not say none will come unless they choose Him but that none can come unless the Father draws them. True Christianity is not about what we must do to get saved, but about what Christ has done to save His people from their sins. The word religion comes from the Latin religare meaning to tie up, or to bind. Religion binds you to a system of laws and duties that must be obeyed if you are to see Heaven and if disobeyed will condemn you to Hell. Religion ultimately conditions salvation on your obedience rather than Christ’s. God declares in His Holy Word that man cannot do anything to get saved—HE CANNOT CHOOSE TO BE SAVED—or stay saved, that salvation is 100% God’s work from start to finish—from beginning to final glory—and that no one is saved who believes contrary to this. Can the reader not see that the doctrine of free will leaves room for a man to boast that he has done something to begin the process of salvation, even if he attributes his decision for God to God, and that the doctrine of God’s Sovereign election leaves no room for a man to boast in such a thing? Salvation by grace is NOT God enabling the sinner to do something that will recommend him to God. Salvation by grace is God doing EVERYTHING necessary to ensure AND secure the SALVATION of His elect. This is why salvation is according to the promise of God and not the deeds of man. For if any part of salvation hinged on a man’s deeds, it would no longer be by grace (Rom. 11:6)—there would be no need for the grace of God—and, if salvation could come, or be sustained, by an act of obedience on man’s part, it would no longer require the death of the Savior (Gal. 2:21)—there would be no need for the death of Jesus. In order for salvation to be by grace it must be ALL by grace, it must be by the faith given by God in what Christ has done, not in a work done by man: "Therefore it is OF FAITH, THAT IT MIGHT BE BY GRACE; to the end the promise might be SURE (firm, or established) to all the seed..." (Rom. 4:16). If staying saved rested on what we did rather than on what Christ has done, none could ever be sure of not having lost their salvation for we are all so fickle. And besides, none of us could ever obey even one of God’s laws perfectly let alone all of them. Praise God every last bit of salvation is by His grace, with no part of it made reliant on our works! "On any other ground it could not be established. If it had depended on entire conformity to the law, the promise would never have been established, for none could have yielded such obedience." The fact that salvation is by faith and not by works proves that it is ALL conditioned on the grace of God! If you claim to have the Faith of God then you must believe the Gospel of God, which bases salvation completely on the grace of God and not on any work of man’s. Everything outside the Gospel of God seeks to usurp, or at the very least share, the glory for salvation which His Gospel says is God’s alone. The apostle says: "...OF HIM are ye in Christ Jesus...THEREFORE...he that glorieth let him glory IN THE LORD"(1 Cor. 1:30,31). Only God’s Gospel gives Him ALL the glory for salvation because it is the ONLY Gospel that leaves no room for a man to boast, for it conditions no part of salvation on him but all of it upon the Savior! What better news could there possibly be for man than to learn that God, Who demands perfection, does not save sinners based on their imperfect efforts—He cannot for they can never meet His requirements—but on the perfect obedience unto death (the Righteousness) of Jesus Christ imputed to them! What a burden has been lifted off the shoulders of all those whom God has chosen (see Matt. 11:28). The Bible does not say that obedience is unnecessary, that one can simply believe in Christ and then live as one pleases (see Rom. 6:1,2). Obedience is very important in the life of a saved sinner, but that obedience is not what saved him or keeps him saved! To believe that it is, is to believe another gospel, which denies the completeness of the Righteousness of Christ to save and maintain salvation and says that one needs to, at least to some degree, supplement the righteousness of Christ by one’s own obedience in order to get saved or ensure one remains saved. We have learnt that there is nothing a man can do to get saved, so what makes anyone think that a saved man can, or is required to, do anything to stay saved? Surely what Christ has done to save is also enough to keep a man saved. Surely Christ would not have given up His life to redeem those He died for only to see all His work go to waste because they failed to maintain their salvation by their works! And how could a man ever know if he had obeyed enough in order to keep himself saved? And where, I might add, are the Scriptures that support such nonsense? The Word of God says that people who think that their obedience is necessary, that it is required to supplement—thereby blasphemously implying that there is some deficiency in what Christ has done for them to get or remain ‘saved’—are lost. All such people are, like the Jews, "...going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God" (Rom. 10:3). The reason they do this, say the Scriptures, is that they are "...ignorant of God’s righteousness" (Rom. 10:3), of His way of salvation as revealed in His Gospel. The saved man is "...complete in Him" (Col. 2:10) AND KNOWS IT! He does not seek to establish his own righteousness by conditioning even the smallest part of salvation on his own obedience, for he is satisfied with, and trusts in, Christ’s obedience, IN HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS which was revealed to him in the Gospel, to save him and keep him saved. The true believer knows that Christ’s righteousness is enough to save and keep saved all for whom He died, that there is no deficiency in it and therefore no need for some supplementary act of obedience on our part to make it complete. "All that is necessary to secure your salvation is to be found in the Lord Jesus....There is no necessity, therefore, that we should look to the aid of philosophy, as if there was a defect in the teachings of the Savior; or to human strength, as if He were unable to save us; or to the merits of the saints, as if those of the Redeemer were not sufficient to meet all our wants." The Gospel believer is not only a saved person, he is a kept person, a protected person. The Christian is "...sanctified by God the Father, and PRESERVED in Jesus Christ..." (Jd. 1 cf. Psa. 97:10). The word preserved here means to keep an eye on, to guard from loss or injury; "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus UNTO (not because of) good works" (Eph. 2:10). Anyone who bases their salvation, or believes it to be in any way to any degree dependant, on what they do and don’t do, shows that they are not submitted to the Righteousness of Christ, but instead are seeking to establish a righteousness of their own (see Rom. 10:1-4). Such people, like the Jews in Romans 9, have "...not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by Faith, but as it were by the works of the law..." (Rom. 9:31,32). If you believe that any part of your salvation is reliant on your personal obedience, then regardless of what else you ‘believe’, you show that you are trying to establish a righteousness of your own, that you are not in fact solely reliant upon Christ’s Righteousness for your salvation, therefore revealing that you are a believer in a false gospel. A SALVATION CONDITIONED TO ANY DEGREE ON A MAN’S OBEDIENCE WOULD BE UNSUSTAINABLE! Unless one’s ‘salvation’ is all based, conditioned, grounded and reliant on Christ, it is a mere figment of your imagination, it does not even exist, let alone could it last! Again, a believer’s obedience is important, but it is only by the obedience of ONE, Jesus Christ, that a man is made righteous and that state of righteousness sustained (Rom. 5:19).

This is the Gospel that saves! This is God’s Good News! Only those who believe the Gospel, which reveals Christ’s Righteousness alone as that which saves sinners and keeps them saved, will enter into Heaven with nothing to fear. Those who do not believe this Gospel shall be damned—condemned to Hell forever (Mk. 16:16). Scripture says the day is coming when "...the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, AND THAT OBEY NOT THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST" (2 Thess. 1:7,8). No matter how many ‘good deeds’ a man may perform, or how many truths he lays claim to believing, this can never be a substitute for his ignorance/disbelief of the True Gospel. The righteousness, or good works, of man, which includes his so-called free-will decision for God, coupled with belief in a mere handful of basic Bible truths, is no safe conduit to salvation but rather a raging torrent that will take him to the waterfall and drop him to his doom. Man’s righteousness is not the Perfect Righteousness of Christ’s, therefore his sins remain charged to him. If you try and join your efforts at obedience with the perfect obedience of Christ, you will have something which is not perfect and so will not save you. Those whom the Lord is not willing should perish, never will perish, for they have been provided with a Savior Whose Righteousness alone saves. God has given them to Christ, He has committed and entrusted to the charge, or care, of Christ the Savior, all those whom He is not willing should perish and they shall all be saved. These are God’s sheep, they hear His voice and believe and follow Him. Just as the Father has given them to His Son, so too, He has given His Son as Savior to them!

A cursory reading of the Scriptures often leaves a person with only a superficial understanding of what God is saying and not the proper one. To then go off and assume that which one believes the Scriptures are saying is what they are really saying, is sheer folly. Those who refuse to study and ‘dig deeper’ into a verse or doctrine, betray an attitude of prejudice. He who does not properly reason from the Scriptures, reveals a bias against that which he fears will prove what he believes to be wrong. He who will not reason from the Scriptures is a slave to that which he holds to, or rather holds him, which he is not willing to have examined and therefore not permit it to be challenged, even by the Light of God’s Word. He has pre-judged something based on inadequate, insufficient, or false information. He is comfortable with it and therefore refuses to allow himself to view ALL the evidence. Their yearn to learn, if they ever had one, has become dulled, leaving them with the stubborn attitude of staying with what they know. Such a person reveals an unteachable spirit and an unwillingness to stand corrected and see God’s Truth. They reveal a fear of the truth, and that innate fear that pervades every man’s soul: CHANGE! Such a person is enslaved to the traditions of men and religious institutions of the world, wilfully ignorant of what God’s Word is really saying. Such a person has become comfortably numb and is living in a religious comfort zone. All he has is a vain religion, a useless gospel, the god of which cannot save him. "To act without clear understanding; to form habits without investigation; to follow a path all one’s life without knowing where it really leads, SUCH IS THE BEHAVIOR OF THE MULTITUDE." Conversely, the true believer is to "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, RIGHTLY dividing the Word of Truth" (2 Tim. 2:15).

The only ‘qualification’ required, in human terms, for one to be saved is: "..believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved..." (Acts 16:31). The very next verse in this chapter reveals that those who gave this answer to the man who asked, "What must I do to be saved?" "...spake unto him the WORD OF THE LORD..." The context of this chapter shows that the Word of the Lord which they taught the man was indeed the GOSPEL (see Acts 16:10). The only way one can believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is to hear God’s only Gospel wherein Christ and His Righteousness is revealed: "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God" (Rom. 10:17). True saving Faith will not come by hearing any other gospel—which are filled with words other than God’s Word. The Scriptures make clear that saving Faith is not something that comes from man, but is a gift given to man by the grace of God that believes in no other gospel but God’s unique and only Gospel (see Eph. 2:8).True saving Faith honors the Word of God because it believes the Word of God. The faith that is placed in another gospel dishonors what God has said because it refutes His Gospel. If one is saved only by believing God’s Gospel, how can anyone say that they were saved before ever hearing it?

"For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for IT is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth....for THEREIN is the righteousness of God revealed..." (Rom. 1:16,17).

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