Without faith and surrender to Jesus Christ, man remains condemned, lost, dead in sin, without hope, any hope, and outside of Jesus Christ there is no one else that can help a sinner out of the hell he is destined to! For it is written: ‘Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from His presence and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead great and small, standing before the throne and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they have done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and the Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life. He was thrown into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20: 11-15) The drama that continues is that men, in general, are encouraged, by many factors ‘en vogue’ today, not to believe in the Bible, and yet nowhere else can God be found as He is, for He has chosen to reveal Himself in Christ through the Gospel. Jesus said to Phillip, one of His twelve apostles: ‘Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father also’! (John 14: 9) Being a Trinity they are one!

Therefore, the way out of condemnation and into salvation starts with the preaching of the Gospel. The Gospel is what Jesus started to preach in the synagogues, in the temple courts in Jerusalem, many times in the country side. It is what He commanded his disciples to do, for He had to return to heaven, and leave them to continue what He started, so they did, and it is still done to this very day, the Gospel is preached by men that Jesus appoints to it, filling them with the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul, whom I have mentioned, says: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith, from the first to the last, just as it is written the righteous will live by faith.’(Romans 1: 16-17) It is not something you deserve by doing your best, or good living as it is believed, it is underserved, given freely by the grace of God!

Now, when we read the Gospel, which tells us what Jesus did and taught, as written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we discover that without knowing the love of God we cannot grasp and understand the spiritual sense of all that is written in the Bible, let alone believe it. Yet, during the last three years of His life, from Nazareth to the Cross, on which He died, that is all that Jesus did.He preached the Gospel, from the North to the South, from East to West of His country, because that was what God told Him to do, so, He did it, and it brought the greatest joy and deliverance to men; deliverance from the power of sin, death, and Satan! That is what all preachers should do even now! Thank the Lord, many still do! For as I quoted, what the apostle Paul said: ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.’ After all these centuries there still is nothing else, faith in the Gospel is what solves the plight that the people find themselves in because of sin. To be saved is so simple, yet because man is what he is, he finds it so impossible to believe! Jesus did everything that was necessary to save your soul, all that remains for you to do is to believe in Him and surrender! ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.’ (Acts 16: 31) It worked for the jailor in Philippi centuries ago, it worked for me and millions like me, to this very day. Thus, the Gospel, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will do it for you! When we are in need we seek help, but no one can help us out of sin and its power, turn to Jesus for He is looking out for you!

In the upper room, in the city of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ spent thelast hours of life with His disciples, He concluded the Passover feast with a prayer. It really is the greatest prayer He ever prayed, the only one that He prayed audibly in the presence of His disciples; it really is what should be called ‘the Lord’s prayer’! It touched them so much that, for our blessing, the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle John to write it, forty to fifty years after Jesus prayed it! The prayer Jesus prayed, written in the Gospel of John chapter seventeen, shows that Jesus really wanted the best for His disciples that He loved so much! He was about to leave them to fend for themselves, knowing that Satan hated them just like he hated Him; for Satan hates those that belong to Jesus! Therefore, He really did the best He could for them by committing them into the care of Almighty God, their heavenly Father!