Whatever Happened To Sin? by Steve Shipley

Back in the 80's, Christian musician, Steve Taylor, asked the question in one of his songs, "What ever happened to sin?" I'm sure he's still asking the question today. The politically correct churches of our "enlightened" age no longer mention sin or it's consequences. To even imply that an individual is a sinner is offensive and may cause people to leave the church along with their wallets. In previous centuries, men of God cared little for the feelings of men and even less for their gold, but instead longed for their souls. And to win souls for Christ, the unadulterated Gospel must be preached, sin must be exposed, and genuine repentance must be found in the heart.

In the beginning years of our country's birth, A small man with a small voice, preached a resounding message of truth that left the unconverted naked and bare, many running to Jesus' arms and others running away. But rest assured, there were no tares in Jonathan Edward's wheat field. No one sat on the fence, and no one thought for a minute that he might be saved on Sunday and sneak around with the devil on Monday. The following is an excerpt from Edward's sermon entitled, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the dammed in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to save you one moment.
It is everlasting wrath. it would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity.There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be.
And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying in a loud voice to poor sinners. Let everyone that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, now hearken to the loud calls of God's word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day of great favor to some, will doubtless be a day of remarkable vengeance to others. Men's hearts harden and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this., it they neglect their souls; and never was there such great danger of such persons being given up to hardness of heart and blindness of men.
If this should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day, and curse the day you were ever born, to see such a season of the pouring out of God's Spirit, and will wish you had died and gone to hell before you had seen it.
Therefore, let everyone of you that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath that is to come.

Precious Lord, raise up men and women who will preach the true Gospel like Jonathan Edwards.

People who are not afraid to offend in order to save.