would you turn with me to 2nd Timothy 4 at verse 3 2nd Timothy 4 at verse 3 for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. It's a very great privilege which has been given to me to address you here this evening. I wish to look at five mistakes, five errors, errors which are coming into evangelical circles in our day and generation. I do not look at these things because it is a pleasure to find fault with others, but rather because our duty as those who love the Bible is to watch and to keep our eyes open and to notice and be aware of the trends and the tendencies which men have to depart from the truth. I think you would agree that that is a fair deduction from the text I have just announced. The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they keep to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things." The truth is balanced upon a nice edge always. If you push the truth that way, you lose it. And if you push the truth that way again, you lose it. Let me illustrate what I mean. Take the doctrine of God. We say that God is one and that also He is three. He is three in one. How do we explain that? by saying that God is one in His essence and three in His persons. The Father eternally begets the Son. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. And the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and from the Son. Now it's possible to push that doctrine into all sorts of distortions which is what you get from the cults and the heretics all throughout the centuries. I take that as an important illustration of how we must keep these definitions right. God is one and yet three. We must hold both of these things Of course it's a great mystery. We cannot explain it to perfection, as in glory the Lord's people will understand it, but we must define it correctly in that way. Allow me to take a second example, because over the centuries of Christian history, one of the most debated doctrines is that of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. How are we to define His blessed person? Well, we say He is one person in two natures. These two natures are distinct and they do not mix the one with the other. He is one in person and two in his natures, both God and man. Now these are very simple statements and I'm sure we are very familiar with them. But do let us appreciate that hundreds of years and tens of thousands of hours of debate, discussion, Bible study and intellectual accounting with the truth have eventually resulted in these formulae, these biblical definitions of truth. They come to us through the tradition of the church because they are biblical. And I say these things because the truth is balanced so perfectly. If we say that Christ has two persons, we are wrong. If we say that Christ has only one nature, we are wrong. So, all the time as we assess and evaluate and understand the truths of God's Word, we have to maintain this nice edge balance. Let me take one more example before I come to my five errors that we need to watch. And it is the doctrine of justification. Indeed, I'm going to take this as my first subject in a moment, but at this point I use it purely as an illustration. What is the connection between justification and the law of God, by which I mean, of course, the Ten Commandments? Well, the answer is this. Justification is poised in the balance between legalism and antinomianism. Legalism says we are saved by keeping the law, the moral law, the Ten Commandments, and that of course, of course, of course is utterly wrong. Of course we are not saved by works, but by faith alone in Christ alone. But wait a minute, does that mean that we can live as we please? Is there absolutely no relevance with the Ten Commandments? Well, that's what the antinomian tells us. But no, the Bible does not say that. We are not saved by keeping the law, but we are saved in order to keep the law. In other words, when by the grace of God, through faith alone in Christ alone, we are justified, our gratitude is such that out of love for this gracious God, we wish to spend all our life adorning the commandments of God with a holy obedience. Now, I say these things then to show that you only have to push the truth this way or that way and it is distorted and eventually it is lost. And that's how the devil is so skillful. All the heresies on earth are cleverly engineered by the devil by pushing them just a little off the balance. If you would allow a little simple illustration, the truth travels on railway lines which God himself has laid down in the Bible. And when a train or its carriages come off the railway line, we know what happens. There are serious consequences and probably casualties and even fatalities because when a train comes off the line, serious things will happen so it is with the truth and that really my beloved friends is why I choose this subject this evening because there are at least five rather serious and in some cases very serious mistakes which are creeping into evangelical and reformed churches in this country the UK I mean and also America Let me tell you what the five subjects are and then say something about each one. The first one is justification by faith. The second is the place of the Ten Commandments, the moral law, as a rule of life for believers. The Federal Vision Teaching. Federal Vision Teaching. Fourthly, the so-called Open View of God. Fifthly, Conditional Immortality. I wish to spend a little more time on the first two than on the last three. So, if I seem to be spending a disproportionate amount of time on the first two, let me reassure you, I shan't keep you all night with the other three, but I do want to touch on them briefly. So, taking that as our agenda tonight, let me speak first of all about justification by faith. you will know very well that this is an extremely serious and important doctrine of the Word of God. I'm sure you know very well the quotation of Martin Luther at the Reformation. He said, this is the article of a standing or a falling church. by which he means that if you lose the doctrine of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, then you cease to be a church. And of course that is what has happened to many, many churches all over the world. They cease to be churches. They are simply religious organizations but not true churches because they have lost this doctrine of justification. Now forgive me, I hope you will not feel that I am demeaning you if I give you a definition of justification by faith. I'm sure many of you could give it to me were I to speak to you confidentially. But allow me to give it to you on this occasion and then look at it and see where the errors are beginning to come in. Justification, we say, is an act of God's free grace in which He pardons all our sin and accepts us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. Now there are at least two things there of immense importance, more than two, but two especially. The first one is that justification is by faith alone. We are not justified by works of any kind. Of course, this is where true biblical religion differs very seriously with Roman Catholicism. We don't say this with any satisfaction, but with much sadness, that the Roman Catholic Church teaches something like this, that Jesus Christ has done roughly 95% of what the sinner needs. And if we believe in Jesus Christ, we have the benefit of that 95%. But the sinner needs to add to Christ's work the missing percentage, let's say 5%. How does the sinner do that? Well, he does it by prayer, by going to Mass, by going to the confession with the priest, by venerating the Virgin Mary, by the use of rosary beads, etc. So he gets his extra righteousness to add to Christ's righteousness. Now of course the great problem with that theory is how can the sinner add anything seeing all his good works are filthy rags? And the second problem with that is What is the need to add anything to Jesus Christ's righteousness, seeing it is absolutely perfect? So, there's a world of difference there between the teaching of the Bible and the teaching of Catholicism. The Bible's teaching being that by faith alone we receive the entire, complete, perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ to which nothing need be added and as soon as I believe in Jesus as my Lord and Saviour I receive this 100% righteousness to cover all my sin and to deliver me from sins past, present and future. Another point we must notice in connection with justification is this that the way whereby the sinner becomes justified before God is by imputation. God reckons the righteousness of Christ to the believing sinner. As soon as the believing sinner looks to Christ crucified for salvation, God reckons, God accounts, God imputes that righteousness to the sinner. He doesn't make the sinner 100% perfect. No, the sinner still has his indwelling sin and will do till the day of his death. But by faith alone he receives this imputed righteousness. Now, What is happening to these doctrines today? Well, one of the great mistakes is coming through what we call the new perspective teaching, the new perspective on Paul. And the second way in which this great doctrine of justification is being imperiled is through a movement called Evangelicals and Catholics Together, ECT for short. In 1977 a man, a scholar by the name of E. P. Sanders began to challenge through his writing the doctrine of justification which we in our churches believe. He was followed by Dr. N. T. Wright who is presently the Bishop of Durham and by Alistair McGrath, a distinguished scholar in England and James Dunn, Presbyterian scholar in England and others. Now these men altered the understanding of the doctrine of justification and this is what they have done. One thing they say in this new perspective is this that the Apostle Paul in the New Testament is not critical of the Jews for self-righteousness as Martin Luther thought, as the reformers all thought, as the Puritans thought, as our forefathers have always thought. No, no, they said, the new understanding of Paul is that when Paul wrote Romans, Galatians, Philippians, etc., Paul was not critical of the Jews for self-righteousness. but for excessive Jewish boasting. Boasting in other words of being Jewish. It was Jewishness which was their mistake. Their excessive boasting of their Jewishness. That's one way in which they have twisted the doctrine, rather like the dial, you know, you get on a machine. You can set it at different settings, can't you? So you turn the dial on the machine, whatever the machine may be. So they've turned the dial at that point. But then they turn the dial at another point. They fail to do justice to the teaching of the New Testament when it comes to the concept of what is the background to justification? What is the context in which justification is understood in the Bible? Now, you and I rightly understand the Bible to teach that justification refers to the law court. The law court. Let me use a little illustration. I hope you won't think me demeaning by doing so. It may just help a little. I'm the judge. You're the jury. In comes the man who is accused of some crime. I hear the evidence. The lawyers have spoken on both sides. I as the judge now need to pronounce about this man that he is either guilty or he is not guilty. Now, the law court is the scene, the scenario, the context in which that happens. It's not the doctor's surgery. You see, God saves us, if you like, in three ways. He saves us as a doctor by making us holy. Sin has made us sick. So, as a doctor, God heals us. And we refer to that as sanctification. It is the inward cleansing of our vile nature by the power of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word of God. That's sanctification. It's not justification. Then again, secondly, as a father, God adopts us into His family. Sin has alienated us from God. so when God saves any man or woman he brings them into their family by adoption and they become members of his own family what then about justification? well in justification God does not act as a father nor as a doctor he acts as a judge And the context in which he pronounces upon the sinner is that of the law court. And God either says you are guilty or you are not guilty. That is the context in which we refer to the subject of righteousness or unrighteousness, guilt or pardon. We must not change that scenario. But this is what the new perspective people do. They discard this law court context for justification and in its place, what do they substitute? They substitute the concept of covenant. They say it is a covenant context in which the sinner receives justification. Righteousness, they say, Righteousness is not being right with God in terms of the moral law and justified through the imputation of Christ's righteousness, no. The New Perspective says to us that righteousness is a covenant word. Now listen to this. And the way we get into the covenant is very much connected with baptism. Now you can see where that's going. It's going off the track, along the line of sacramentalism. Now, there's another attack upon justification and it comes from what I mentioned before as evangelicals and Catholics together. Just a word about that movement. What is it? Roman Catholic scholars and a number of evangelical scholars began in 1992 to seek to find a way to bring these two religious points of view together. They have sought to compose a document which is pleasing to both. Now you won't be surprised when I say to you that the great stumbling block has been the doctrine of justification, how a sinner becomes right with God. There are two things, my dear friends, that the Roman Catholic Church will never, never, never say. One is that the sinner is saved by faith alone, in Christ alone, without works of any kind. They will never say that. If they did say that, they would cease to exist as a Roman Catholic Church. For the obvious reason that there'd be no need for priests, no need for masses, no need for these additions which their tradition have brought with them over the years. They would just cease to be the entity they are. And the other thing the Roman Catholic Church will never say is that we are saved by imputation. They always bring along the idea of God making us righteous in the act of justification. So I mention then these two things, and if anyone wishes to know what books to study on the subject, might I very quickly mention one or two. The best book, I think, in the world on the subject of justification is called just that, Justification, by James Buchanan. He was a 19th century preacher to Scotland, professor, distinguished man, and the banner of truth reprinted his book some years ago. I strongly recommend it. If anyone wishes to study up this new perspective teaching, I recommend a book called The Great Exchange by Philip Eveson, published by Day One. And this very year there is a third book I mention which is worth getting and it's called Risking the Truth by Martin Downes done by Christian Focus Press in the north of Scotland. I leave that aside and come to the second of these errors which is creeping into churches. And the second error is the view that the Ten Commandments are not to be regarded as the rule of life for the Christian believer. Now, our forefathers, going right the way back at least to Calvin, but further back than that, but let's say at least to Calvin, have taken the view that the Ten Commandments is a moral law given by God for mankind both for the Old Testament and for the New Testament and that it will be valid and binding on the consciences of men until the end of the world. Now we say that there are three forms of law in the Old Testament. There is first of all the ceremonial law Second, there is the judicial law, and third, there is the moral law. Oh, I hope you'll pardon me if I'm saying things which you've known from your primary school days. I don't want, again, I say to insult anyone by speaking beneath your dignity. I'm sure many of you know these things very well and I'm delighted to think so. But the sad fact is, beloved friends, that these elemental doctrines of God's Word are being allowed to slide with serious consequences, as I hope to show you. Now, take these three forms of law which God gave in the Old Testament. I trust we all understand that the ceremonial law which had to do with offering of blood sacrifices and beasts and killing animals and the sprinkling of their blood, all that has completely been abolished because our Lord Jesus Christ has come, He shed His precious blood on the cross as the Lamb slain to bring redemption to all His people. So, we agree the ceremonial law has gone. What about the judicial law? Well, that was the law which God gave to the Jewish nation because that nation was a theocracy, a nation, in other words, under the authority of God directly. God was the immediate, direct king of the Jewish nation and therefore as such he gave them specific laws including certain punishments, stoning to death, for instance, those who were witches or burning them or something of the sort, that kind of thing. These punishments and so on, these were given directly by God. Now, what about that? Is the judicial law still in force for us today? Well, we say no, because the church of the New Testament age is no longer a theocracy in that sense. We are a universal body stretching throughout the nations of the world. However, we do concede that some of the great principles of the judicial law may, in certain cases, have their application today. But as a whole, we lay it aside. But, here's the big thing, the moral law, the Ten Commandments, we say, is binding upon the consciences of God's people today as much as ever. Now I have to say to you that sadly that is the matter which is being contested, being disagreed with, being challenged and who is challenging it? It's being challenged by people who wish to be known as New Covenant teachers, New Covenant theology. Now what is the New Covenant theology? What's it all about? Well briefly it's this. It denies that there are three forms of law in the Old Testament. It affirms that there is only one form of law in the Old Testament and that all the form of law has been abolished. They say that the law, including the moral law, was for Old Testament Israel. as the old covenant people. And they say that only those parts of the moral law which are explicitly reaffirmed by Christ or his apostles in the New Testament is valid for us. In other words, the Ten Commandments as such are not a rule of life for the Christian believer today. They would also say that the fourth commandment dealing with the Sabbath day is ceremonial and that it does not bind the Christian today. Now, this is a very serious thing. And you can see, my dear friends, that if Christians who are evangelical allow themselves to go in the direction of this new covenant teaching, there will be serious casualties. Let me mention some of the casualties, some of the ill effects. One of them surely is this. It means that the believer does not bind his own conscience to a careful adherence to the ten laws which we call the moral law. The moral law is based upon the character of God, not the will of God. The ceremonial law was based upon the will of God. But the moral law is based upon the character of God. You say, what's the difference? Well, the difference is this, that what is based upon the will of God, God may suspend or abolish when a different dispensation comes in the life of his people. And with the coming of Pentecost, a new dispensation has come. So God has abolished those Old Testament sacrifices. They're inappropriate now. But the moral law is enforced because it's based upon the very character of God. God requires the things the Ten Commandments stipulates because He is that kind of God. And as believers, our duty, if we are believers, is to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling in terms of what God has stipulated He requires of us to do. The Ten Commandments. I hope nobody misunderstands me. Let me say again, we are not saved by keeping the Ten Commandments. I hope I made that clear. But once we are saved, the Ten Commandments show us the kind of life that God requires us to live. Now, you may say, where in Scripture do we have that? Well, in the time I have, I give you just three texts very quickly. First of all, In Matthew 5, let me quote verses 17 and 18, Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, Think not that I am come to destroy the law. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. And that means, of course, that the moral law will be in force until the end of the world. Only then will history be brought to its conclusion. Then take the Apostle Paul writing in Romans 13 verses 8 and 9. He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law, the moral law. For this thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou should love thy neighbor as thyself. Now Jesus Christ our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount makes it clear that the Ten Commandments are there as the rule of believers life as much now as ever they were and that the Apostle Paul tells us that love which is the great demand of New Testament ethics simply means keeping the law and doing so as those who love God with all their heart and their neighbours themselves And then we find the Apostle James writing in his little book, and what does James say? Chapter 2, verses 10 and 11. Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, and yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law now that's most important it tells us very clearly that in the teaching of that writer James it is the understood necessary duty of all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to bind their own consciences by the moral law because in that way They will love their neighbor as themselves and live to the glory of God. So I say, beloved friends, we have to watch this new covenant teaching. It leads to worldliness, and what else could it lead to but a careless misuse of the Lord's day, the Christian Sabbath day. Now, in the short time I shall keep you further, I want to speak very briefly about three further errors. So far I have spoken about the dangers to justification and the moral law as a rule of life for Christians. The three that I look at briefly now are these. They're called the Federal Vision Teaching. Federal Vision Teaching. Second, the Open View of God. And third, Conditional Immortality. What do we mean by the Federal Vision Teaching? This is something which has come from America. Sometimes it's referred to as Auburn Avenue Teaching. The notable proponents of it are Douglas Wilson, Tom Barach, Richard Lusk, Steve Schlissel. It began in 2002, so it's pretty new, at the Auburn Avenue Pastors' Conference at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, PCA, in Louisiana, so it's about seven years old. But it is having a remarkable effect in troubling many, many churches in the United States and it's bound to have its effect upon us if we do not keep ourselves aware of it. They, as a movement, these federal vision men, they are suspicious of systematic theology. They are suspicious of the confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession and catechisms. They wish to redefine the terms of theology such as adoption, regeneration, justification and so on. they have a high view of the sacraments and Douglas Wilson is on record as having said this, baptism unites us to Christ and to His body, the church, by the power of the Spirit. I give you that again, baptism unites us to Christ and to His body by the power of the Spirit. But then we might ask ourselves, if that's the case, why was it said by Christ to Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. So here you see is something which is making its inroads against the doctrine of regeneration. So much is made of the covenant, they keep talking about the covenant of God with man, that Christ is almost lost sight of. My friends, the one we glory in is Christ, His birth, His life, His death, His offices of prophet, priest and king, His blood, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His threefold offices of the right hand of God, His second coming. Christ is everything in the gospel. But the danger with this movement, called Federal Vision Theology, is that Christ is allowed to slip into the background and the concept of covenant is put into the foreground. Oh yes, I know there is teaching about covenant in the Bible, of course there is, but only within its proper biblical proportions. I have to say to you, sadly, that they tend to go along with this new perspective view on justification that I mentioned earlier. They agree with a certain American professor named Norman Shepard whose view of justification was suspect and is suspect. Shepard taught this, that the faith with which we are saved in the gospel involves also faithfulness. and for that teaching he was and is regarded with a good deal of suspicion. Faith and faithfulness are not identical, are they? Faithfulness involves human works. The federal vision teaching, I have to say, is similar in some respects to the high church sacramentalism. which came into the Church of England at the time of the Oxford Movement in the 1830s into the Church of England. This movement now is a similar thing in the Presbyterian Church and it has caused great heartache in many parts of America and it's bound to float across the Atlantic to us. My beloved friends, I say we need to be aware of the existence of this federal vision theology. Fourthly, I speak of the open view of God. What is the open view of God? Some professed evangelicals have taught this view, namely Clark Pinnock, Robert Brough, Greg Boyd. These are among the names of those who professed It is a challenge to the biblical view of God as all-knowing and all-sovereign. It has a low view of God's absolute sovereignty. It represents God as having certain problems. It revives the old question which liberals, liberal theologians used to ask. And this was the question, if God is infinitely good and wise and powerful, why does God allow so much evil and suffering in the world? And does God really know the future? These are the questions which are posed by the open view of God. It is the idea that God is baffled about the future. He is struggling to put right the mistakes which men make because men have freedom of expression, freedom of agency. So God is forever having to put things right and He can never be sure, God can never be sure what will happen in the end because He has to keep adjusting what men are putting wrong. This especially comes to light in one expression found in several places of the Bible where God is said to repent, to repent. They say that when the Bible tells us that God repents and the Bible does say that in various places such as for instance in Genesis 6 just before the flood God repents that he has made man, he has grieved at the sins of man, you remember the text? Now says the open vision of God, God repents, that is to say he is truly perplexed and has to adjust his own purposes in terms of what man has done wrong. And they insist that the word repentance in God should be used just as it is used in man. Now what are we going to say about that view? Well, I remind you of the way the Puritans used to define this word repentance in reference to God. I think this is helpful. The Puritan definition is this. Repentance in man is a changing of his will. Repentance, however, in God is His willing of a change. No, the problems which sin creates in this world, says the Bible, are all foreseen by God. Nothing ever takes the Almighty God by surprise. It is a grave misrepresentation to think that God ever represents God is ever represented as being perplexed in the sense that man repents, God never repents. And that is what is meant by Balaam when Balaam in Numbers 23, 19 says this, God is not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. The open view of God is utterly unworthy of God. It is a distortion of the biblical character of God, in which we are told that God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, all-knowing, all-wise, foreordaining whatsoever comes to pass, never perplexed by the circumstances which occur in His providence, because providence is itself foreordained by God. After all, does it not say in Ephesians 1.11, He worketh all things according to the counsel of His own will. God is so much above everything that the Bible portrays Him thus, of Him and through Him and to Him are all things. The open view of God, therefore, brings God down from a glorious, high, sovereign majesty to a being who is worried, troubled, perplexed as men are in this world. No, no. The repentance of God is not His changing His mind. It is His willing of a change in us so that the judgements we deserve are averted by the grace of God. As you see, for instance, in the case of the Ninevites to whom God sent Jonah as a prophet, the Lord repented of the evil He proposed to do them in this sense that He gave them grace to repent so that the judgment they deserve could be averted consistently with His own justice and His own glory. Fifthly and finally and briefly, I mention conditional immortality. A number of evangelicals have come to believe in what we call annihilation. It goes like this. There are different forms of it, but this is, I think, the most common form. Annihilation teaches that believers in Christ when they die will go to heaven and enjoy eternal life in glory. And with that we agree. But it goes on to say that unbelievers will after death enter into hell. On the day of judgment they will be judged and then the wicked will suffer a bit more for their sins in this world and then they will be snuffed out, simply done away with. They will cease to exist. Now, I grant you that there are variations on this subject. There are various terms used. Some talk of post-mortem evangelism. That means giving the sinner a second chance after he has left this world by death. Some speak of mortalism and some speak of conditional immortality or conditionalism. There are various names and various forms of it. But the crucial mistake is this. It fails to do justice to the biblical evidence that the sinner will enter into eternal punishment and he will suffer eternal punishment. There are so many texts, I just simply give you one which seems to me at any rate to be very clear. Mark 9, 44, 46 and 48 is a repeated text and this is what the Lord Jesus Christ says about the wicked. Their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched. It's very hard to understand however anyone could read those words and interpret them to mean anything other than that the sinner who enters into hell unrepentant and lost is a person who will suffer eternal punishment, their womb dieth not, their fire shall not be quenched. Now, this is of the utmost importance, because if we allow ourselves to be misled on this serious doctrine, it greatly weakens the Gospel's call to repentance. If there is no such thing as an eternal punishment for the wicked in hell, then that's very good news. for the impenitent sinner. He is able to flatter himself that he can go on for a time in his sin, that at death he has to suffer something, that in the day of judgment he has to suffer something more perhaps, but the happy day will come when he will cease to exist and all his pain and misery will be over. That will be good news indeed for the wicked. And lying at the root of this mistake is failure to appreciate the sinfulness of sin. Sin is provocation of the great glory of God. Sin is nothing less than hatred of God. Sin is an infinite evil and it will be punished by God with an infinite or eternal punishment. And the only remedy is that we should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ's infinitely valuable sacrifice, and that is His atoning propitiatory death upon the cross, whereby He is rendered to God's justice of full satisfaction, so that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I close, my dear friends, and I remind you of these five subjects as I do so. Justification by faith is under attack by two sources, by the new perspective on Paul and by evangelicals and Catholics together. Second, the moral law as a rule of life for the believer is under attack by the new covenant teaching. Third, federal vision teaching, I maintain, is bringing in that sacramentalism which did a tremendous harm to the Church of England in the period of the 1830s, the Oxford Movement, and is in danger of infecting evangelical churches today. The open view of God is in grave danger of giving to men a low, weak, puny, and feeble understanding of the glorious character of God, demeaning to Him, dishonoring to Him, and deceiving to ourselves. And finally, conditional immortality, teaching that the sinner eventually will be simply annihilated and blotted out, means that the call of the gospel would have less effect upon his conscience and the realization that once he leaves this world impenitent, not believing in Christ, he might suppose there is some hope that he will be eternally blotted out in the end. And we must tell the sinner It is a lie. As I close, my beloved friends, let me say, oh, let us watch against all these evils and let us pray the Almighty God that as long as we live, we and our churches may be kept sound in the faith. Thank you.