Sean Gooding Archives

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

“But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus, we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

Most of us find great comfort in these words. The world is getting worse and worse, but Jesus is coming soon. We just need to hold on a bit longer. But the reality is that we do not know when the Lord will return. I have a friend that I went to seminary with who commented as he (and I, for that matter) got closer to the 65-year-old retirement age that he had not really planned ahead for retirement, as he had expected the Lord to return already. But here we both are, getting older, the world getting more and more evil, and yet, Jesus has not come to get us. We do not know when He will come, and all who claim to know are liars.

I saw an interview with a Muslim man yesterday that was done here in Canada. The young reporter asked what they thought about the homosexual movement and the growth of it. The man commented that under Sharia Law, these persons involved in homosexuality would be executed. The young man asked if he thought that Canada should do the same. The Muslim man responded that by 2060 or so, there will be enough Muslims in Canada to take over the government and the laws, so they just have to wait a bit. They, the Muslims, keep having lots of children, and the Canadian families are no longer having lots and lots of babies. He estimated by 2060, just 36 years, they would be running the country.

These kinds of shifts are happening in many Western countries in Europe, and even in the USA, but there is a very large Christian population in the USA, so it would take longer.

I immediately thought of my daughters and my granddaughters; what would happen to them? Both of my daughters are saved; one would be about 60 if this transition took place, and the other in her late 40s. They could wake up to a land where they have no freedoms, and being a Christian is not just frowned upon; it would be illegal. The punishment would be loss of life. My granddaughters would have to stay home, have no chance to drive, get an education, attend church freely, and on and on.

Make no mistake; this man is voicing the thoughts of millions of Muslims here in North America. They knew, and they planned to play the long game. Right now, it seems like a long way away, but 36 years is not that long.

What if Jesus tarries?

This is from our perspective; I understand that Jesus is never late. But what if He tarries? Am I, as a pastor, preparing our youth to stand for Jesus in the midst of serious bodily harm? How do we do that?

We have to teach them to love Jesus more than life itself and to make Him the absolute Lord.

For many of us, 36 years from now, we will not be here. Our kids and grandkids will have to bear the pain and suffering. I have friends in Pakistan who are Christian, and they tell me often that they have no rights. Just recently, some of the Christians had their homes raided, and they were beaten and had their homes ransacked. There was no recourse for them. That could happen here.

What if true Bible Christianity became an underground religion like it was in Europe and many parts of the world for centuries? What if our folks are hunted and killed for the cause of Jesus? Are they ready? Have they been prepared to lose jobs, lose freedoms, and lose lives for Jesus?

I dare say that most of us, even today, are not ready to do so. Our churches keep compromising the Gospel, changing the truth about Jesus, and most of them have no clue that they are the ones to be killed first.

We in North America, with our freedoms, have exported the Gospel to the ends of the world. The association that I am with, the American Baptist Association, had their annual meeting this week, and we have missionaries from 27 countries represented, 85 missionaries all together, if memory serves me right.

Just this morning, I learned that my brother will be venturing to Columbia to help house churches there for 2 weeks in the near future. The little churches I pastor help a missionary in Bangladesh and a local mission outreach to single moms, as well as missionaries in Ukraine and Pakistan. For now, our freedoms are being used by many godly churches to export the Gospel of Jesus. Praise God!!! Other than financial sacrifices, a lot of our people are not being called to sacrifice much in the way of self and family.

But if Jesus tarries, the day will come, and what then? Will we have prepared them for this change? Will we have demonstrated our love for the Lord so vividly and cultivated such real relationships with the Lord that they are able to endure, yes, and even thrive in those hard times?

I pray that Jesus comes for us soon. I want to fly; I don’t want to go the way of the grave. We should hope but not let our hope blind our reality. Satan is coming for God’s people, and we are letting in the very people he is going to use against us. We are feeding the hand that will bite us.

Now, the good news is that many Muslims have seen the light and have found Jesus as Savior. They are fervent in their evangelism of the Muslim masses, and many are turning to Jesus. God is good! Over the next 36 years or so, may the Lord reap a harvest amongst the Muslims to turn them to Jesus, and may we be a part of that in honest prayer for their souls.

But as that man being interviewed said, the goal is to rule us here in Canada. Imagine what happens to our economy if the US imposes sanctions or closes the borders because of Islamic rhetoric. The fallout will be catastrophic.

No one wants to be a fearmonger, but as I read through the Old Testament prophets (I am no prophet), it is clear that God uses other people to punish those who rebel against Him. He uses pagan forces to humble those who once called Him Lord but turned their backs on Him.

Canada has turned its back on the Lord God. He has blessed us with fertile land, food resources beyond measure, and the ability to have all varieties of minerals, oil, gold, fresh water, and open air. God has every right to make life hard on us. He would be justified in His judgments of us.

Oh Lord, please don’t tarry… but what if He does?

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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Matthew 12:34-37

³⁴ “Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. ³⁵ A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. ³⁶ But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. ³⁷ For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Please do not stop reading; this title is just a bit of sarcasm. There is no such thing as a politically correct Jesus. That Jesus only exists in the minds of many modern Christians. There are a lot of churches that have stopped using words or phrases like ‘washed in the blood,’ ‘crucifixion,’ ‘hell,’ ‘hell fire,’ and many other kinds of ‘offensive’ phrases. In our mid-week Bible study this week, I pointed out that all too often, we do not mention Hell a lot in our services and our teaching, but that Jesus spoke about Hell a lot. He described Hell, both the physical and mental pain of it.

In Luke 16, when He tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, in Luke 16:24, we see the rich man’s physical pain.

“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.”

But in verses 27-28, he is mentally tormented that his brother may come to this place as well

“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’

Hell, we are told, is a place of pain, torment, mental anguish, separation from God, and many other painful things. Jesus came to die for my sins and yours so that we do not have to go to Hell. We can choose eternal life with Him. When we make Hell less horrible, we make His loving act on the cross less gracious and less powerful.

A little earlier in our text (verses 22-24), we see Jesus calling out the hypocrisy of the ‘spiritual’ leaders. They saw Jesus casting out demons, and they accused Him of operating by the power of Beelzebub or Satan. They accuse Jesus of working with Satan! Jesus tells them they are idiots, as they know full well that a divided house cannot stand. But these folks know that; thus, Jesus calls them vipers, snakes, deceivers, and dangerous. They look sleek like a snake, and they are just as deadly.

In verse 35, Jesus makes a comparison to show that these men are evil from the inside. They are dangerous. They looked safe, and they were revered by all around them, but Jesus hated their hypocrisy. He could see what they were truly like inside. He had no respect for them, and He had no issue calling them out.

Sadly, we do not do that anymore. We are more concerned with hurting people’s feelings than being right with God. In doing so, we have watered down the Gospel and cheapened the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Salvation was that gruesome; God chose crucifixion for a reason; no other execution was this gruesome and this bloody. This took a long, painful time, and it subjected both the one being crucified and the loved one observing it to a lot of pain. We often forget that Jesus hung on the cross for the better part of 6 hours. The Romans knew how to milk death for the maximum amount of intimidation. This is the route God chose to sacrifice Jesus. They had 6,000 years of human history to choose, and they chose this time and this way.

But in our time, evil men, some looking like ‘preachers’ – in nice suits, in lovely buildings, and many leading very large churches – have stopped preaching about the blood, about Hell, about the tribulation and the pain that is coming on the earth. They no longer talk about the holiness and the wrath of God. We forget too often that the same God that knows the number of hairs on your head also rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. The same God that parted the Red Sea also sent venomous snakes that killed thousands and thousands. The same God that sent Jesus to rescue us made Hell for Satan and his angels.

So, let us get back to hell-fire preaching. Hell is still hot. There is a Heaven to gain but also a Hell to shun. The more we appreciate and understand the pain and suffering Jesus went through, the more precious His grace and the more wonderful His offer of salvation.

Sadly, there is still a generation of vipers around who prey on God’s people for their money and use God’s people for their own promotion, to sell their books and conferences. They speak just enough truth to deceive the masses, but they have not fooled God. Too many, looking for hope, have fallen into their spell of ‘good feelings over true repentance.’ They have fallen for ‘get better’ rather than ‘get saved.’ They have been told they are not that bad; they just need a little bit of Jesus, and all will be well.

Hell will be filled with people who went to church and yet missed Jesus. May God help me and others like me to put away the politically correct talk if we do it. People need to know the real Jesus. The one who came as a man, the one who really suffered and really died, was really buried, really resurrected, and is really coming back to JUDGE the whole world. And, yes, there are people who will be going to Hell forever, including the rich man of Luke 16, who is still there and will never get out, never.

Stop watering down or softening the message of the Gospel. We are not good; we are evil to the core, and there is not one shred of goodness in us. Thus, Jesus came to be good for us, to be righteousness for us, and to offer us a way out of Hell. I pray that you have chosen to get out of Hell. I did back in 1981. I was a lost, hell-bound teenager, and I asked Jesus to forgive me and save me. He did! Thank God for hell-fire preachers; run from those who are not.

2 Timothy 3:5-7, “having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How To Connect with Us

On Facebook (live broadcast of Sunday’s Message at 11 am): https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Online: https://www.mmbchurch.ca

Email: support@mmbchurch.ca

Sean Gooding

What if Jesus Tarries? :: By Sean Gooding

Politically Correct Jesus :: By Sean Gooding