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My heart is deeply burdened this morning as I write this.  I am finally beginning to understand why three times Paul used the phrase “according to my gospel” (Romans 2:16, 16:25, 2 Timothy 2:8).  The gospel and the responsibility of it became very personal to him.  He had an understanding of the ramifications of his teachings on the lives of his hearers.  He also said in Galatians 2:7 that the gospel had been entrusted to him.

God has said this to me: “son of man, warn them.”  As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be when the Lord returns (Matthew 24:37).  Have you ever thought of that…really?  Noah spent 120 years building the ark.  2 Peter 2:5 calls him a “preacher of righteousness.”  So we know that while he was building the ark, he was preaching something…RIGHTEOUSNESS, and not one single person got saved during the course of his 120 year preaching ministry. 

Why do you think that is?  Could it be that he was preaching righteousness?  Yes, this is exactly why.  Do you remember what the Lord said to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 3:7, when He said that they would not listen to Ezekiel’s words just as they would not listen to God’s words? 

Did you really catch that just now?  Most don’t.  Because most just read the bible to read it and not to uncover its hidden truths.  God told Ezekiel that they would not listen to him JUST AS they would not listen to Him.  So obviously God had been trying to speak to them on a personal level Himself first, but they refused to listen to Him.  The same thing is happening today.  God has been trying to speak to you about sin, holiness, and righteousness and many have closed their ears and hardened their hearts towards Him.  So He sends preachers of righteousness to them and the majority will not hear them either.

People are growing very cold towards holiness and righteousness.  And more and more error is being accepted as truth.  Ungodly people are even being heralded as saints.  And no wonder, for the bible says this would happen in the last days.  Why just a few days ago a well-known minister on my Facebook page wrote about how great a Christian Mother Teresa was. 

Is he unaware of the Time Magazine interview of 12/04/89 where she is quoted as saying “All is God…Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, etc.  All have access to the same God.” Or this one taken from the book Mother Teresa: Her People and Her Work: “Whatever God is in your mind, we must accept. When we accept Him, we become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are …What God is in your mind you must accept.” Or how about this one taken from the AP on Sep. 7^th, 1997: “I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you’ve found God, it’s up to you to decide how to worship him.” Or this one from A Simple Path (page 31) “I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.”

Listen to what she said at the Worldwide Retreat for Priests, in Oct. 1984: “At the word of a priest, that little piece of bread becomes the body of Christ … Then you give this bread to us, so that we too might live and become holy …When the priest is there, then can we have our altar and our tabernacle and our Jesus. Only the priests put Jesus there for us…Jesus wants to go there, but we cannot bring him unless you first give him to us. This is why I love priests so much. We could never be what we are and do the things we do without you priests who first bring Jesus to us.”

In the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, she said on page 99 that as she was kneeling by the statue of Our Lady she heard “Our Lady” say to her, “Fear not. Teach them to say the Rosary—the family Rosary and all will be well. —Fear not—Jesus and I will be with you and your children.”

A co-worker of Mother Teresa’s was asked this question: “These people are waiting to die. What are you telling them to prepare them for death and eternity?” Mother Teresa’s co-worker (a nun) stated, “We tell them to pray to their Bhagwan, to their gods.” (Interview with Christian News) and The April 7-13, 1990, issue of Radio Times tells the story of Mother Teresa taking care of a dying Hindu priest. “She nursed him with her own hands and helped him to die reconciled with his own gods.”

Here is the point of why I shared so much about Mother Teresa…people venerate her and call her a Christian.  If she died holding on to these beliefs, then she did not make it.  Hell is full of really good people, and the wide road to hell is paved with good intentions.  So then, why do Christians even venerate someone who espoused horrible doctrines of demons, and who even actually encouraged demon worship?  Because people are being lead astray with the error of the wicked.  They believe more and more in an easy gospel and in a gospel where everyone is going to make it.

And this brings us to 2 Timothy 2:13.  I will quote it in its immediate context, and then we will discuss it.  It may just surprise you.  “Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things. Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains; but the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

This is a faithful saying:

For if we died with Him,
We shall also live with Him. 

If we endure,
We shall also reign with Him.

If we deny Him,
He also will deny us.

If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself.

Remind them of these things. Verses 7-14

There has been a lot of misunderstanding of this “If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself” verse.  A prominent teacher named Chuck Swindoll, who was the former president of the Dallas Theological Seminary  had this to say in his teaching entitled The Problem of Defection: “If you have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are still a child of God.  You may deny Him, but He will never deny you.  Though you are faithless, He will remain faithful. And the grace of God, the seal of the Holy Spirit, preserves you permanently.  This is called the doctrine of eternal security.” 

Charles Stanley in his book entitled Eternal Security: Can You Be Sure (page 94) wrote: “…believers who lose or abandon their faith will retain their salvation, for God remains faithful.”

What in the world are these men thinking?!!  This is heresy to the greatest degree.  It promotes loose living and doesn’t demand anything of you and nullifies all responsibility on our part to obey the gospel.

This is a faithful saying:

For if we died with Him,
We shall also live with Him. 

If we endure,
We shall also reign with Him.

If we deny Him,
He also will deny us.

If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself.

Remind them of these things.

If you haven’t “died with Him” then you will not live with Him.  Have you died to the self-life and all of its pleasures and self seekings?  Have you truly died to sin?  Pay very close attention to Paul’s above quoted phrase “For if we died with Him,
 We shall also live with Him.”  Does this phrase here in 2 Timothy sound familiar to you?  It should, because the exact same phrase (almost word-for-word) can be found in Romans 6:8 which says “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”

But let us look at the context in Romans where Paul makes this statement.  The entire chapter of Romans 6 deals with dying to sin.  Romans 6:7 says “For he who has died has been freed from sin.”

So I ask you again, have you died to sin?  Or are you still living in it?  Let us move on to the next phrase… If we endure,
 We shall also reign with Him.”  But if you don’t endure, then you will not reign with Him.  Did He not say in Matthew 10:22 “…but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.” This is echoed in Mark 13:13.  This word has nothing to do with just holding on to the end.  We saw in a previous teaching that this deals with enduring temptation.  See my article entitled Spiritual Serial Killers for a fuller understanding about this. 

If we deny Him, 
He also will deny us. This should go without saying…because again and again Jesus and the apostles said and wrote that if we deny Him, then He will deny us.  The scripture references are too numerous to mention here (Matt. 10:33, Titus 1:16, and 28 others.  Just look up Strong’s number 720 in an Englishman’s).

During prayer on Thursday morning, I was crying out to God concerning Luke 24:45 where Jesus opened up their understanding so that they might comprehend the scriptures.  I was also praying Moses’ prayer found in Exodus 33:13.  And that very afternoon the Lord opened my eyes to see the truth of “If we are faithless, 
He remains faithful;
 He cannot deny Himself.  Remind them of these things.”

Consider this verse found in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie, 
Nor a son of man, that He should repent.  
Has He said, and will He not do? 
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” 

Dear ones, what God is really saying here in this 2 Timothy verse is NOT if we are faithless, He will be faithful to save us.  He is saying that if we are faithless, then He remains faithful to His Word and He remains faithful to what He has said He will do to us.  If we deny Him, He will deny us.  And just how do we deny Him?  In our living, and in the fruit that we are not producing.  Proof of this can be found in Titus 1:16 which says, “They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being disobedient and disqualified…”

God is going to faithful to His Word!!! He cannot go back on His Word.  He has to perform His Word.  And He has said that He will judge all unrighteousness and disobedience.  Revelation 21:8 says, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, and the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Did you notice the word “faithless” in that verse?  It’s the same Greek word for “faithless” found in the 2 Timothy 2:13 verse.  And notice how the section ends…”Remind them of these things.”  This is me reminding you that if you are faithless, you will not make it.  God has to stay faithful to the Words that He has spoken about what He will do to those who deny Him and are faithless.

Numbers 14:33 and Hebrews 3:19 plainly bear out that an entire generation of Israelites died in the wilderness and went to hell for one reason…FAITHLESSNESS!!!

DO NOT DARE TO PRESUME UPON GOD!! Nadab and Abihu tried to presume upon the Lord in Leviticus 10 and died because of it.  And they were priests and “children of God.”

Know this…that God will do as He said.  If you are unfaithful to Him, He will be faithful to do to you what He has said He will do to the unfaithful ones.  Please, please remember the lists given in 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:3-5 .  These three lists are a list of all the people who will not enter Heaven, and their different sins.  Please take special note of who Paul is writing to in each epistle…the saints, and also take note of how each list ends…”These shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Hebrews 4:1 TLB, “Although God’s promise of entering his place of rest still stands, some of you ought to tremble with fear, because some of you may be on the verge of failing to get there after all.”