So, I made a video before, talking about the possibility of some people being able to hear the Gospel after they die. There is a very clear scripture on that in the New Testament. When I first discovered it, I went to my pastor. I was pastoring at the time myself, but I went to my lead pastor, who grew up Catholic and knew the verses very well.

He told me, “Oh, it’s not important, just ignore it.” That was in an Assemblies of God church, and he was telling me to ignore the scriptures. He said it wasn’t important. Really? When it’s saying that Jesus preached to those who died at the time of Noah, and they were being held in prison—who were once disobedient, meaning they became obedient—that’s not important?

Why would that not be important? Of course, it’s important, because it shows that the Gospel is preached to some after they die. I’ll read it to you. It’s in 1 Peter:

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)

Then, in the next chapter, it says: “For this reason the Gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh but live according to God in the spirit.” (1 Peter 4:6)

Alright, so if it says that our Lord went and preached by the Spirit to those who were held in prison from the days of Noah, when they were disobedient, then that’s what happened. We are not to brush it aside, because then we’re not going to understand other scriptures as we carefully look at them.

I want to bring one up today that was brought to my attention as I was reading it for another purpose. It says in John 11:25, Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Now, you might hear that and think, “Well, yeah, spiritually dead, and now he’s going to be spiritually alive.” No, that’s not what He’s talking about, and we know this by the next verse and the context. The context is that Lazarus has died, and Jesus wasn’t there. They thought that if He had been there, He could have kept Lazarus from dying by healing him.

So, Jesus is preparing them for the miracle He’s going to do of bringing Lazarus back to life after being dead for four days. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?”

Now, the problem is that you cannot say the first part is metaphorical or spiritual. You can’t, because the second part says, “Whosoever liveth…” Well, if you’re alive spiritually, why do you need to believe in Jesus? You already believe in Jesus because you can’t be alive spiritually unless you believe in Jesus. So, this precondition of being alive is physical life, and that contrasts with what He just said about “though he were dead,” meaning physically dead.

These are physical, not spiritual. They’re physical, because both of them—whether they’re alive or dead before they believe—they’re spiritually dead, right? And that’s why verse 26 is there: to prevent us from interpreting verse 25 as referring to spiritual death. It’s physical death. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead—like Lazarus—yet shall he live.”

But was Lazarus dead? No, he was sleeping. But what about this? This says, “Though he were dead, yet shall he live if he believeth in Me.” Well, if he’s alive when he starts believing in Jesus, then he will always live, because it says so: “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” Which means, if someone believes in Jesus and their body dies, they’re not dead.

So, if this person believed in Jesus before he died (I’m talking about verse 25 now), though he were dead, if that man had believed in Jesus while he was still alive, then he didn’t die spiritually. There’s no way possible of interpreting this as spiritual death. It’s impossible. It’s literally impossible. This is without a doubt—because of verse 26 contrasting with it—without a doubt, physical death.

This means that you can’t come to believe in Jesus Christ after physical death. That’s right. And we know that from 1 Peter as well. I’m sure these aren’t the only scriptures that testify to it.

How’s that for thinking about something for a long time and hard? What are you going to make of that? Does that mean we don’t need to preach the Gospel? Yeah, we do. And why do we need to preach the Gospel? Think about it.

Well, we’ve got Revelation, where it talks about the preaching of the Gospel to the ends of the earth before the other things happen. So, that has to happen. Has it happened already? Maybe.

Why do we preach the Gospel to the living? Because they are here. We don’t have access to the dead to preach to them. That’s up to Jesus. It’s our job to preach to the living. Why do we preach to the living? For the same reason that if the dead do get preached to, they are preached to so that they will live. So that they will not die.

We preach to people so that they will not die. And I’m not talking about just physical death; I’m talking about the second death. Because if you do not believe in Jesus and live your actions out—because everyone lives out actions, no matter how small or insignificant they seem—everyone lives out actions as long as they live, even if it’s for a few seconds.

When you believe in Jesus, whatever actions you have available to you, you must live out. Otherwise, your faith is dead, and your faith is not complete. Jacob, a.k.a. James, says, “Faith without actions is dead.” You’ll read it as “works” or “deeds” in your translations, but it’s literally “actions.” It’s the same word in Greek.

Faith without actions is dead, and faith is made complete by actions. Your faith is not complete until you do. When you do, then your faith is made complete. And if our hearts condemn us when we are before God, then our actions reassure us that our faith is genuine and we are in Christ.

Romans 8:1 says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Those actions—of not being according to the lust of the flesh but according to the will of the Father in heaven—prove to us that we are in Christ. It’s the completion of our faith. It proves that our faith is not dead.

Because you can have faith in Christ as the Son of God, and it be a dead faith. Even Jesus said that with the seed sower—that’s the point of that parable: to show that faith can fail. So, you must be careful with your faith, because it can fail.

The seed that produced an abundance was the seed that was rooted deep, which was not choked out by the worries and cares of life, which was not stolen away by the devil. You have to be careful. Jesus didn’t say that for no reason.

So, dig deep. Here on the channel, there are a thousand videos—closing in on a thousand now—and they’re all very solid. Nearly every one of them is Bible teaching. Some of them are words of encouragement. There are a few—just a small handful—that are prophecy. Rarely do I speak a prophetic word, but sometimes, yes.

But it’s Bible teaching. So, dig deep. Put your roots down deep. This is the channel to do that, because we dig into the testimony of God and we see what that means for us and what to do. And I’m constantly calling you to stop sinning. That’s right—you must stop sinning.

That’s some of the actions there. Walk not according to the lust of the flesh but according to the Spirit, according to the will of the Father. You stop sinning and you do what’s right. First John says, the fake Christians are the ones that say they can’t stop sinning. When they say they have a relationship with the Father, they are liars. That’s what John says.

Paul explains that in Romans 7—there’s someone who can’t stop sinning because they are a slave to the members of their body and its lusts. They are not real Christians. They do not know who can save them from this body of death. They don’t know.

And John says that if you walk in the darkness and claim to have fellowship with the Father, you lie and do not do the truth. That’s actions, by the way—you do not do the truth. You may believe the truth, but if you don’t do it, then what’s the alternative to not doing the truth? The truth is to stop sinning and do what’s right. The alternative is to sin and not do what’s right.

Do you think you have fellowship with the Father if you can’t stop sinning? Jesus said, “If the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.” Free from what? Guilt? No. Guilt is a good thing. A guilty conscience is what keeps us in check. God said, “I will write my laws on their hearts.” You will feel guilty if you go against the laws of God. It’s a good thing.

If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed—from the power of sin and death. You no longer have to obey sin. Paul says many times that you’re going to serve either sin or righteousness. Which one is it? Jesus calls you to that also—you can only serve one master. Choose. Choose today whom you will serve: sin or righteousness.

Stop going around lying to people and making them twice the sons of hell that you are by saying that no one can help but sin as long as they’re in the body. You wicked unbelievers, you will be condemned with the world. Watch my last video from 1 Corinthians 11. You will be condemned with the world because you are wicked.

Stop spreading lies, because you call God a liar every time you do that. Jesus said, “Stop sinning,” many times. Paul said, “Awake to righteousness and sin not.” I say this to your shame because some are without the knowledge of God. Paul says that. Paul says, “Awake to righteousness and sin not. Stop sinning.”

Jesus says, “Stop sinning,” on multiple occasions. John says, “I write this to you, dear children, so that you may not sin.” Stop sinning. He says that those who walk in darkness and say they have fellowship with the Father lie and do not do the truth. Stop sinning.

Peter says, “Be holy because I am holy,” quoting God from the Old Testament to Christians in the New Testament, demanding that you be holy just as God is holy. And I can hear many of you apostate believers—you who follow the false gospels of the apostate churches—saying, “Sinless perfection! Sinless perfection!” like those annoying little birds outside: “Sinless perfection! Sinless perfection!”

First off, perfection is not the word. You probably read that in your King James Bible. The word is completion, not perfection. The only one who was ever perfect was Jesus. But we can be made complete, whole, sinless. That’s what we’re saying. We’re not saying we’ve never sinned—you’ve sinned, I’ve sinned, yes. But what has Christ come for? Not to make us believe we’ve never sinned, but to rescue us from our sins in all ways—not in some imaginary way that tries to lie to God and fool Him. God is not a fool—God cannot be fooled.

He’s rescuing us from sin in a real, tangible, actual way—by purging that sin out of us, not just the guilt of the sins we’ve committed, but to get rid of that propensity to do those same sins again. He purges us of the sin because when we sin, we not only create guilt and condemnation upon ourselves—the wrath of God—but we also create a rut. Even if it’s the first time, we make a little rut that makes it easier to go along that path than anywhere else.

The more we do that sin, the deeper the rut we make. We look at it and think, “Well, that’s easier; let’s go that way.” Sin purges us of those things. He cleans out that rut so it’s level ground again. He gets rid of that condemnation off of us by the power of His blood. He does both of these things.

If you truly want to be free from sin, you need to believe in Jesus—in the way that Jacob, a.k.a. James, explains it clearly enough so that even a child could understand. “Faith without actions is dead. Faith is made complete by actions.” Get out there and live your faith. Stop sinning.

If you feel like you can’t stop sinning, throw yourself on the floor before the holy God. Beg Him for help. Beg the Father for help. Beg Him to send holy angels to fight the fight with you, not for you, but with you. Because you have to fight the fight against sin, but God gives you the power. It says that God does not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear up under, and He always provides a way through, not out, but through.

Temptation is not sin. Temptation is what precedes sin. Temptation is that pressure, that nervousness, that anxiety, that unbridled desire that’s trying to push us to sin. That’s temptation—not sin itself, but temptation. God does not allow us to undergo any temptation that is too powerful for us to stand up under—meaning we won’t do the sin or be crushed down by the weight of that temptation.

He doesn’t ever allow us to undergo any temptation that is too great for us to stand up under. So, those of you who cry out, “I can’t help but sin as long as I’m in the body,” you call God a liar. You directly call God a liar by that statement. And you nullify the power of Jesus’s blood. It has no purpose in your life.

Jesus isn’t going to fool God—that’s not why He died. He didn’t die to trick or fool God, to lie to God. That’s how sick this message is. It should send up red flags all over, showing that this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That’s the gospel of the devil.

You need to read the Gospel accounts all over again. Unplug from your apostate preachers and teachers and churches and all the Christian musicians out there. Stop listening to all of them for 40 days.

Hey, listen: if Noah and the other seven could tolerate being with all those animals in the ark for 40 days, you can tolerate unplugging from all of those animals for 40 days. Just read the Gospel accounts and listen to Jesus without any preconceptions—just come and listen to Him as if you’d never heard Him before.

You can go down to the description and find a link called the “40-Day Jesus Challenge.” We don’t charge for anything—everything is free. All the resources we create are free. The translation we’re making of the Bible is free and will always be free. Go take the 40-Day Jesus Challenge.

Because if you don’t, then it’s your own fault that you will be condemned to hell and then thrown into the lake of burning sulfur and suffer the second death. But I have better hope for you than that, because you’re here at the end of this video. That tells me something. There is hope for you.

May the Lord bless you as you seek Him with all your heart.