Repentance: A Doctrine Worth Fighting For

There are people who need to be saved. You don’t know it, but perhaps that person will become the next evangelist. An American missionary in Pakistan was passing out tracts, and the General’s son read the tract and prayed the prayer of salvation, got filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak in tongues. His father disinherited him and had him thrown into prison, and had the man who baptized him killed. He fled through Russia, Turkey, Europe, and ended up in Sweden. Every year he, Christopher Alam, wins about a million people to Jesus in crusades and churches. We need to get our fixation and joy on the right things. That joy will overwhelm us, and we’ll flow in it. Isaiah 59:1-2 says: The Lord’s hand is not shortened that it can’t save, nor His ear heavy that He can’t hear. God has not lost His power. We serve the same God who raised people from the dead. What separates us from Him is our iniquities and our sins. This principle is being attacked today. We are drifting away from repentance as a foundational doctrine. We need to contend for the faith and for what’s of eternal value. There are fundamental doctrines that we need to be teaching. Let’s not be gullible. After salvation, you might sin, but there’s 1 John 1:9 and Hebrews 4:16. You can come boldly to the throne of grace. Living in sin and feeling good about it isn’t living free of condemnation. If you don’t come to the throne of grace, you won’t find mercy and grace. You can repent and get rid of your sin. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Apostle Dale explains an example of how false doctrine about grace has come into the body of Christ through one well-known preacher. Acts chapter five shows that there was no “waterfall of grace” for Ananias and Sapphira. To live free of condemnation, you must stay out of sin and live in the presence of God. God is faithful and just. After you are born-again, you need to repent when you sin! Simon the Sorcerer was born-again when he tried to buy the power to minister the Holy Ghost (Acts 8). Peter told him, “Your money perish with you… Repent therefore of this your wickedness.” Sin is sin. You don’t determine your walk with God by your emotions, but by basing it on the Word of God. Hebrews 6 says that repentance is a foundational doctrine. If there is a “waterfall of grace”, then there’s no eternal judgment or judgment in the body of Christ. In Acts there are three acts of divine judgment: Ananias and Sapphira, Elymas the Sorcerer, and King Herod. The judgment of God is real, especially with the young in the Lord and with the move of the church. God protects His church. Grace can be pushed so far that it allows sin in the church, and then the doctrine of repentance and judgment disappears. Sequentially, sin becomes crowned as the leader of the church. Sin is rooted out by the power in God to confront and deliver. Sin that tries to come in and invade like leaven in the body has to be dealt with, or it will remove the power that needs to be released. God is displeased when truth fails (Isaiah 59:14-17). By preaching the doctrine of repentance and judgment, sin is brought out of the church, and then the church can be the salt of the earth she was intended to be. We need a resurrection of these doctrines to have the boldness to speak truth. Apostle Dale told of a Russian man, who was warned by the Lord through Apostle Dale not to go to America, and who was killed in a car accident when he went there. God gives a space of time to repent. In a special service at CWI, the Lord told Apostle Dale to get up on the stage and look around. When he did, He showed him a guest couple that he was to prophesy to. He was prophesying to the man about his ministry that he was running the race, but he was on the wrong track. God said that He wanted him to get on the right track and run straight, and if he didn’t, he would die. He’s dead. If you strip away the judgment out of the body of Christ, you take away so much of the boldness. Being in the will of the God is better than being in a safe place. Apostle Dale tells of his experience in Russia when he needed to repent and how his repentance in a frustrating situation became a blessing. God and Jesus are the same. The problem is my sin. Confess your sins. Repent. Get back to God. When you repent, He can take the bad situation and turn it around to a blessing. Thank God for the doctrine of repentance. There is sin in the camp. Let’s get it out and want a deep clean.