In the town where I live there is a popular preacher who tells his hearers that they will have a “second chance” of being saved, beyond death. He does not tell them how it is to be, but he is never tired holding out this doctrine of “the wider hope,” as he calls it, to his people. He has very little to say about a present salvation, and if we judge him from his silence, and the evasive way he deals with, the great truths of the Gospel, he knows very little about it, as the Book of God sets it forth. He is there, of course, to preach “the Gospel of God concerning His Son” (Rom. 1:1, 3), but he does not. Possibly he cannot. But the “second chance” seems to be according to his heart, and it certainly is very acceptable and comforting to his people. But the question I have to face is — Is it true? Is this Gospel of the “second chance” beyond death, the Gospel of God, as the Bible teaches? Or is it a fraud, a counterfeit, and a deception of the devil, put into the mouth of a professed preacher of God’s Gospel, to blind sinners, cheat them out of a present salvation, and lure them on to a lost eternity. This is the “crux” of the whole matter, and we must squarely face it. It is not what men want that should be preached, but what God says. The Word of God distinctly and plainly gives the Gospel, the good nevus of a present salvation, provided by God in grace (Titus 2:10), and proclaimed to ALL, in the Gospel. It tells also how to appropriate and possess this salvation (2 Cor. 6:2), warning all against delay, and stating that unbelievers and rejecters are “condemned already” (John 3:18), with the wrath of God abiding on them (John 3:36). There is not a single word said about a “second chance,” a time of probation, a further and better way of salvation, beyond death. What the Book does say is, that after death is “The judgment” (Heb. 9:27). The present life, the passing hour, is the only time you can count on for your salvation, and you will be wise not to neglect it, on the false hope of a “second chance,” which is nowhere promised by God in His Word, and will never be given.
Sel.