Your choice

"If you will simply repent of your sin and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, you will miss Hell and gain Heaven. Still on the other hand, if you refuse to repent then not even God Himself can keep you out of Hell" Len Colp

Schmurtis said:

The main point isn't going to heaven or hell. That is a bad motivation. The main motivation should be that we get to spend eternity in a restored relationship with our creator, it doesn't matter where as long as we're with him.

We're giving people bad reasons when we say Christ came so we didn't have to go to hell. It's SO much more then that! It about the restored relationship.

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You may have a point that seeking God under fear of Hell or just to go to Heaven is a bad motivate.

Still it was that fear that drove many of us down the aisle to "the Mercy Seat" to cry out for mercy. Most of the great revivals that are record with the winning of large numbers of people to the Lord are those where sermons where often called "Hell Fire and Brimstone" sermons.

If you have read Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners In The Hands Of an Angry God", that sermon sent people running to the "Mercy Seat" long before the sermon was half done. In fact many felt that they might not reach the alter before God would strike them down in anger over their wickedness.

The fact is that ministers no longer preach of God's hate for sin. We have paid a high price for that neglect. Both sinners and back sliders sit comfortably in the pew with little fear of Hell or of God's wrath. They look at God, if they think of Him at all, as the kindly old grandfather type.

I would be the first to admit that there is room in today's church as there has always been for sermons on the Wrath of God, of punishment in Hell for the sinner, of Heaven with all its glories, and the Biblical messages on how to live the Christian life in this world in which we live.

The reason we don't see old time revival services where sinners can't wait to get to "the Mercy Seat" is because ministers fear to preach on God's hate of sin (not the sinner but the sinner's sins), or Heaven's glory. Ministers spend most of their time preaching on the sunny side of Christianity in this world. It has left the world with no fear of Hell and no desire to go to Heaven.